Books
Drinkhacker’s books category covers everything from the history of drink to cocktail recipe collections and more. Books are rated using the same letter grade scale as our beverage reviews.
Top Book Posts:
The Waldorf Astoria Bar Book
Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol
Japanese Whisky
Cork Dork
If you’re ready to turn beets and honeydews into potent potables, have I got a book for you. Now in its second edition, Bridget Albert and Mary Barranco’s Market-Fresh Mixology (first published in 2008) take a seasonal approach to cocktailcrafting. Broken down into the four seasons, the duo emphasizes freshness in everything you’ll be whipping up. While…
This is the kind of cocktail book that’s fun for everyone. Novices can flip through and look at the pictures (nearly every drink is shown in full color), and pros can get inspiration from the largely unique concoctions on offer. In The Best Craft Cocktails, Jeremy LeBlanc and Christine Dionese offer 75 recipes. That’s not…
The Architecture of the Cocktail is a neat idea and an even neater-looking book. Using architectural blueprint-style diagrams, author Amy Zavatto and illustrator Melissa Wood take you through 75 drinks, largely classics with a few modern cocktails thrown in. But rather than include a pretty picture, each cocktail is “designed” in black and white, showing…
Novices will swoon over this handsome, lovingly photographed, generally quite beautiful guide to the basics of the wine world. As the name suggests, this is a first course in wine, and the book dutifully walks through some of the first questions a new wine consumer might have. What different grapes look like, where they’re grown, how…
Holy vermouth, Batman! This is one big ass book of cocktails! Simon Difford, with his 11th edition of this monstrous tome from diffordsguide, packs over 3000 cocktail recipes into some 500 pages of material. Hardbound, with a glossy cover, it feels like a textbook, and it practically is. Now there are many cocktail books that can…
Tired of cocktails that include rhubarb-bacon bitters or crystallized foie gras garnishes? Well have I got a book for you. The Signature Series isn’t really a book so much as a life experience. At least that’s the goal of New Jersey-based author Erik G. Ossimina (aka “EGO”), who has collected 100 of his own homegrown…
The Tiki drink revival may not have really taken off the way that rum nuts had hoped, but fanatics intent on making fruity, high-proof drinks in the comfort of their own homes and hula skirts can find solace in Liquid Vacation, a large-size recipe book from P Moss, who runs Frankie’s Tiki Room in Las Vegas…
After a certain age, the word “shot” becomes anathema, and when pressed, the “discriminating drinker” is likely to sip a shot of tequila or whiskey for a good 10 minutes instead of in one, grimace-faced gulp. However you take your shots, by the slug or by the sip, Andrew Bohrer wants to elevate the game.…
Sometimes you don’t want “something sweet.” Sometimes you want something, well, savory. Greg Henry’s book, Savory Cocktails, offers 100 recipes were sugar (in all its forms) is not the focus. Separated into various chapters such as Sour, Spicy, Smoky, and Strong, Henry walks you through some basic nonsweet stuff (Martini, Bloody Mary, Pickleback) but focuses on originals (most…
It only came out last year, but Amy Stewart’s incredibly obsessive-compulsive tome, The Drunken Botanist, has already become a staple of the spirits obsessed. The idea is deceptively simple. Whatever you drink — Scotch, rum, tequila, vodka — has its origins in the earth — barley, sugar cane, agave, potato (or whatnot). Where do these plants,…