As much as there's a wealth of cocktail information out there on the internet,
I still love to leaf through a good book for inspiration and it seems that you guys
feel the same way because we have had quite a few requests for some recommendations for some books.
So whether you want to dive down a historical rabbit hole, or learn some modern bartending
techniques, here are a few of my favorite cocktail books, and I'll break it down
into categories so that you can kind of decide where your interests lie and invest accordingly.
These are books which take kind of a holistic look at bartending so they do list recipes but they
also have things about, you know, your techniques, what kind of glassware you're going to need
and also what I love about these is that they have a really good focus on service as well.
So definitely, especially if you're looking at getting into this professionally,
then investing in one of these is I think some very well spent money.
Now my personal favorite, because it is the one that I learned to bartend from really,
is Dale DeGroff's Craft of the Cocktail.
Dale DeGroff is kind of credited with really spearheading the modern cocktail revolution that
we're still in just now. It goes through all of your basic spirits, lots of good techniques. It's
not necessarily the most complicated in terms of lots of homemade ingredients or anything
but for learning your classics and just sort of your your really solid bartending skills.
I don't think that you can really get much better.
And again, it's got a lot of his really kind of
warm anecdotes through it too and so you're almost learning how to be a good host
by reading it and sort of seeing how he would chat to people across the bar as well.
Another one which is kind of along a similar vein is Gaz Reagan's the Joy of Mixology.
There's actually a whole chapter which is called The Bartender: Do you have what it takes? Where
he really goes into, you know, the actual mentality and sort of the patience and all
you know those actual real life situations that you're gonna have to deal with behind the bar.
It's not all just glamorous putting down some kind of smoking cocktail or something
in front of someone, you're gonna have to cut people off, you're gonna have to
deal with people trying to not pay as much money as you know you need to get from them
and that sort of thing, so a really useful tool when you're starting out.
And then another one which does definitely have more of a historical aspect but still
super useful today is David Wondrich's Imbibe.
So this one is kind of an homage to Jerry Thomas, who wrote the first ever
bartender's manual and it does go back to those real kind of pre-prohibition drinks.
Everything's sort of chronological and grouped in families, so you can see how certain styles
of drinks developed from other ones, so obviously you know, one for the geeks among us, but I think
it's really important to have a pretty thorough grounding in your classics before you start sort
of wandering off and coming up with your own stuff so I would definitely recommend that one as well.
Now for the history buffs, you do have those kind of foundational texts where you,
you know, where a lot of our drinks recipes came from but
you wouldn't necessarily want to use the actual recipes that they have listed.
Something that was written in, you know, the early 1900s is not necessarily
going to transfer that well to your modern sort of spirits and
mixers and things like that, so I do see these as more of a historical interest.
So things like, as I mentioned, Jerry Thomas's Bartender's Guide,
or Embury's The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. And then the other one which I don't actually have
with me, it's gone missing from the bar so hopefully someone's having a bit of a
study while we're closed, but it's the Savoy Cocktail Book by Harry Craddock.
So you'll see um some really famous things in there like the White Lady and stuff,
but just remember these ones are, you know, probably going to take a little bit
of tweaking to bring up to sort of modern taste. I wouldn't use them as your set in stone recipes
but obviously really interesting from a historical perspective and I
think it is important to remember that some cocktails went out of fashion for a reason.
You sometimes see modern bartenders try and revive drinks that you're like,
"no that one can stay in the history books!"
Now looking for something a bit more specific.
No one ever likes to play favorites, but of course you're going to end up having
sort of your niches that you're more interested in. As I'm sure you can imagine
the Sherry book does get a pretty solid workout at Bomba and in my house as well. That has a
massive deep dive on the wines itself as well as sort of cocktails and food recipe ideas.
Something like the Atlas of Whiskey if you're trying to get your head around that kind of thing,
or you know, if you just really like all things tiki and tropical then of
course Jeff Beachbum Berry is kind of seen as the leading figure there,
so any of his books. Or I also really like this little Smuggler's Cove one as well.
I am looking for something good to read on tequila or agave spirit so if anyone has
recommend any recommendations then definitely let me know, or you know just any recommendations on
anything a bit more niche then please drop them in the comments, because I haven't honestly read
everything in every single category and always like to discover something new.
Now as I said I definitely think a really sorry grounding in the classics and you know just
keeping your drinks nice and simple definitely when you're getting started is 100% the way to go,
but once you have been bartending for a while you might want to start thinking about,
you know, why you use certain techniques and you know, just using that as a bit
of a basis for some experimentation, so these books will kind of help you do that.
So one of them which you can see is very well loved on the bar here is Liquid Intelligence
by Dave Arnold, so what that one gives you, he's actually a scientist, so not only does he kind of
explain the science behind some fundamentals of bartending, like you know, your ice and
carbonation and so on, he also looks at some more advanced techniques, so things like, you know,
your clarification, fat washing using a sous vide machine, all of that kind of thing and those are
generally quite clever ways to sort of build more flavor or texture or whatever into your drinks.
Another one that I really like and use a lot is the Drunken Botanist and I do have to say thank
you to Ricardo, who is one of our viewers who actually sent this over for me, which is lovely.
Every single thing that we use behind the bar, from you know,
whiskey to tequila to gin to your vermouth and you know everything like that
comes from plants, and it's plants that really have a massive impact on flavour.
Even something like bourbon, obviously being aged in American oak casks gets certain you know very
specific flavours and so on, and so when you're trying to think about kind of marrying and flavour
matches I really like that for kind of getting to the the root of it, if you excuse the pun.
And then another one, which is not actually technically a cocktail book,
it's more I guess, kind of for cooking, but you've got the Flavour Thesaurus,
so what you would do there is sort of pick out flavours that you want to match
with other ones and there's heaps of really interesting suggestions in here for that,
so again one that I use as a reference heaps when I'm actually coming up with new drinks.
And then last but not least, we've got All Day Cocktails, so this is actually by a couple of guys
from Melbourne, Nick Tezar and Shaun Byrne. It's no and low alcohol drinks, so I'm just like again
building in those kind of flavors without even necessarily having to rely on alcohol for it,
so loads of really good syrup and shrub recipes everything's about sort of seasonal fruit and how
best to preserve the flavours of that, but yeah, I refer to that heaps for techniques as well.
This is an episode that we've been wanting to do for a while. As I said, a few people have
definitely been asking for recommendations so I'm glad that we finally managed to get this covered.
I do also think it's quite funny because we're actually
looking at doing our own book hopefully relatively soon.
Knowing how much awesome literature is out there I would want to make sure that it's something which
is really needed, you know, kind of does something which is a bit of a gap that other books don't, so
obviously we've got a few ideas of our own, but if there is something that you feel is really missing
that you haven't come across, please let us know in the comments, we'd love your input on that.
If you do want to be kept updated on that and anything else sort of behind the bar related then
do head over to the website withcaradevine.com and you can sign up for our newsletter there,
but if me chattering on in more depth about this kind of thing is something which appeals to you,
then you can of course head over to Patreon and join us there. It's patreon.com/withcaradevine.
So thank you very much, and Cocktail Books, so now you know!