The Essential Bartender's Guide

This is a great book to read for those who know little about the history of cocktails and how to make numerous cocktails using the correct ingredients. Most individuals just accept what a bartender provides you for your cocktail. Unfortunately most bartenders have had little or no formal training on making a cocktail correct. This book makes it easy and fun to learn about cocktails. I highly recommend this book to neophytes as well as those with limited knowledge on making cocktails.

This is not a compendium of a jillion drink recipes; there are other books that make that claim. But if I had to recomend one book for somebody to start out with it would be this book. It's priced reasonably and won't steer you wrong. I'd follow this book with Dale DeGroffs "The Essential Cocktail" 2008 and Ragen's "The Joy of Mixology". Then persue Wondrich and Embury to your hearts content. But start with this book.

Hess does a great job of presenting recipes for classic and common cocktails - everything from ingredients to mixing and garnishing procedures is clear and readable. He also presents a refreshing point of view for making cocktails, grounded in the history of mixology. The first half of the book lays out this groundwork well and interestingly, though there is some minor repetition. I also greatly appreciate that there is an index by liquor. Many a home bartender like myself doesn't necessarily know which recipes use Benedictine or Chartreuse, gin or applejack, for example. My only disappointment was that some of the recipes in the book do not match those in his Cocktail Spirit series (on the Small Screen Network) - for example, in the Aviation cocktail he gives the recipe sans the Creme de Violette, though he does mention this ingredient in the preface to the recipe. In his Cocktail Spirit show, he gives the recipe with Creme de Violette. I wish he had left it in the recipe in the book and mentioned that the common variant was to use all Maraschino because Creme de Violette was so hard to find until recently. To leave it out seems rather contrary to the spirit of the book. Also, I understand the author not wanting to recommend a basic bar set-up, suggesting instead that readers acquire spirits, bitters, and liqueurs based on the cocktails they like or want to try. It still would have been helpful to suggest some reasonable bottom and mid-shelf brand choices for at least the base spirits and often used liqueurs in his recipes. Obviously not necessary, but it may be helpful to folks who haven't got a bar stocked yet. Yeah, so someone wants to try some gin cocktails but doesn't really know anything about gin... maybe suggest Beefeater for a traditional gin with a strong jumiper bite to it that will hold up well against tonic and line, or Plymouth gin as a great cocktail gin that mixes well with other ingredients but can still hold its own, or Bombay London Dry as an econo gin that mixes well too. One assumes the author has a breadth of experience with different liquors that many of his readers will not have. In any case, a great bar book. It definitely has a place alongside Gary Regan's Joy of Mixology and Dale DeGroff's Craft of the Cocktail. You learn something a little different from each of these books and end up experimenting, comparing, and enjoying a little more. And please do catch Hess' Cocktail Spirit show on the net!

I've been following the author's sage instruction, advice, and information at the DrinkBoy website for years. It's nice to have all that great information in one place and be able to tote it around as needed. Excellent information on all the things you need and need to know for all the classic cocktails.

It's better than that. It's an education on the classic methods, using fresh ingredients. Not one recipe in the book calls for 'sour mix', and even has a section of juices to let us know which juices are OK to pour from a bottle and which should only be used fresh from the fruit. Robert goes over glassware, the basics of distillation, nuances of bitters varietals, and a host of other topics. Enough that you are on page 99 of this 224 page book before you see the first drink recipe. Each recipe tells you what type of glass, what garnish, and even what order to do things in to get a proper looking and tasting cocktail. Along with that you get a ton of history and quite a few excellent photographs of prepared drinks. One big bonus, the hardcover-over-spiral-binding lays flat on your counter while you read along and perfect your craft. Overall, an excellent beginner's book for the basics, and some classic's like Trader Vic's original Mai Tai recipe from 1944 that I simply must procure the ingredients for that are sure to get some experienced pros away from the 'mixers' and back to making things right.