Amco Mexican Elbow
The handheld lime and lemon press that nearly every bar in the world uses for fresh citrus. Amco Houseworks’ Mexican Elbow has been the standard model since the 1980s—a simple cast-aluminum lever press that extracts a complete lemon or lime in two seconds with no seeds, no rind oil, and no juicer cleanup. Essential.
The Mexican Elbow is a hand-press citrus juicer that fits inside a fist, looks like a small lever-handled colander, and has remained essentially unchanged since the 1980s. The mechanism: a citrus half goes cut-side down inside a perforated cup; the lever handle closes on top, inverting the citrus and squeezing the juice through the perforations into the glass or shaker below. Two seconds per fruit. The half-fruit comes out as an inside-out hollow shell with no juice left.
For exotic cocktails, which average two to four citrus halves per drink, the Mexican Elbow is the difference between making cocktails and committing to the project. A traditional reamer takes thirty seconds per half and gets pulp in the drink. An electric juicer requires cleanup and counter space. The Mexican Elbow does it in two seconds, no cleanup, no pulp.
Two sizes matter: the Yellow (Lemon) Mexican Elbow is the larger size, fitting lemons and small oranges. The Green (Lime) Mexican Elbow is the smaller size, fitting limes. Don’t try to use the lemon size on a lime—the press won’t fully close and you’ll waste juice. A home bar that makes a mix of lemon- and lime-based drinks should own both ($15 each, $25 for the pair on Amazon).
Amco Houseworks owns the trademark and makes the canonical version. Knockoff Mexican Elbow-style citrus presses are common on Amazon and rarely worth saving the $5—the cheap castings have rough edges, less robust hinges, and worse perforation patterns. Buy the Amco.
For a home bar specifically, the Dreamfarm Fluicer is worth considering as an alternative—it folds flat for drawer storage, presses with less wrist torque, and drains cleaner. The Amco stays the bartender industry standard for absolute durability under commercial volume; the Fluicer is the ergonomically reconsidered home-bar version.