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
Camper English’s Doctors and Distillers can be construed as a history book. However, the problem with that designation is that it invokes imagery of starched-shirt history teachers hell-bent on the recitation of dates, names, endless quizzes, essays, and obscure characters on the peripherals of history. English does an excellent job diving deep into the symbiotic…
On one of my first press jaunts as a doe-eyed, aspiring whisky scribe, I sat on a bus next to Chuck Cowdery, someone whom I regard and respect as a true statesman of the profession to this day. We were discussing Kentucky (I was fairly new to the Commonwealth at the time), and he leaned…
Shelley Sackier isn’t your average whisky writer. In fact, after reading her book, I’m not sure she would claim that title at all, at least not without a healthy amount of humorous self-deprecation and wordy wit. And that’s what makes her book Make it a Double so engaging and, frankly, unique among so many other…
For his second book of 2022, Andre Darlington takes a detour from the pleasurable Booze & Vinyl series, taking the dominant focus off making cocktails for a few hundred pages, and examining the possibilities of how higher-end bar food can enhance a proper night in while mixing drinks. Obviously, a few cocktail recipes are included…
Aimed at the beginning or aspirational mixologist who can sort of craft an Old Fashioned or G&T, Zoe Burgess’ The Cocktail Cabinet offers up a comprehensive orientation to some of the most fundamental cocktails, plus with a few refreshing twists along the way. Burgess takes time, about a fourth of the book, to explain the…
The extent to which I actively participate in the fashion universe typically begins and ends with songs from David Bowie and the Kinks. So, while I am most certainly not the target audience for Dressed to Swill, author/editor Jennifer Croll and illustrator Daiana Ruiz do an excellent job inventing cocktail recipes inspired by fashion icons…
When photographer Charles Button named this book, he could not have been more literal. The Art of Whisky does not speak to the chemical construction and craft of spirits, nor does it consider bottles or label artwork, as each already enjoys numerous volumes of published commentary. Instead, it presents the patterns of various whiskies as…
What’s the difference between a batch cocktail and a punch? Nothing really, except perhaps for scale. In Maggie Hoffman’s slim but well-tuned Batch Cocktails, each recipe will net you about 8 to 12 servings from a 2-quart pitcher. Perfect for a sizable dinner party, but if you want to host a rager, you’ll need to triple…
Author and hospitality industry leader Tamika Hall partnered with Former Discovery Channel star and spirits expert Colin Asare-Appiah (The Cocktail Kings) for Black Mixcellence, a compendium of 70 recipes culled from Asare-Appiah’s own repertoire and contributions of African-American mixologists from across the nation. The recipes are reasonably straightforward and easy to follow, with Asare-Appiah’s rum-based…
Sequels are rarely as good as the first installment. However, leading your latest book off with quotes from legendary DJs Cosmo Murphy and John Peel provides a promising sign of good things ahead. Thankfully this is indeed the case with Tenaya and Andre Darlington’s follow-up to their most enjoyable Booze & Vinyl inaugural edition from…