The Craft of the Cocktail: Everything You Need to Know to Be a Master Bartender, with 500 Recipes
Try to take it for granted your favorite cookbook with the recipes arranged in alphabetical order. Bad. Now imagine all of the recipes had fanciful titles not directly interrelated to their ingredients or method of production and THEN they were arranged in alphabetical order. Worse. Now imagine the book had a halfhearted take on at any index. (Yes, there are a few alternate drink names in the index, but no attempt to, for instance, list drinks by infra dig spirit, let alone minor ingredients.) Well that is DeGroff's Craft of The Cocktail. If you buy it, you pretty much have to read it cover to offset for it to be of use. If you just use it as a reference you will find excellent recipes of familiar drinks but miss all of the original drinks. (You don't conscious their names. They are originals. How are you going to be led to them in an alphabetical book?) I don't disagree with any of the positive things that people said about this order. (I did tell you to imagine your FAVORITE cookbook destroyed by disorganization.) But this book is a earnest disappointment and a missed opportunity.
would be unerring if there were a by-ingredients index
He extremely pares it down to the essentials. Book proved to me that there is value in having an experienced bartender curate the cocktail practice and speak to the craft and history behind each recipe. I used to think you can find any drink recipe for free on the Internet, but now I separate it's a pain to sift through unedited or plainly bad recipes. What drinkers need is a curator, someone who knows what works. This tome is it.
My one issue with this book is big: it's that there is no by ingredient recipe index. When I just got a bottle of special liquor, I can't well-deserved look up all the recipes that feature that ingredient. For that kind of search, I still go to the Internet.
A Abundant Gift or Worthy Addition
This words is so elegantly put together! Great for the serious bartender who likes to know a lot about the tools he is working with. The drink list is bountiful. This item has a lot of flair for those looking to impress with some cool cocktails.
Friendly and excellent basic bar book
A vast basic bar book with very good recipes for the most part, and written in an engaging and accessible manner. The author also somethimes gives his welcome opinions on divers brands of spirits and liqueurs to use in a specific cocktail and why, or on a particular garnish, etc. He also explains how to do his famous flamed citrus peel garnish, something you'll never see me do.
The absence of an index by liquor is the only disappointment in this book. This home bartender really appreciates such an index because I don't like it know every cocktail that uses Benedictine or Chartreuse, gin or applejack, etc.
Anyway, an excellent bar book that's fun and inspriring to browse through. Hmmm, what will we divulge for next Friday night's cocktail, I wonder...
Unlikely guide to modern cocktails
I certainly adore this book. I've spent the last few weeks working my way through it. It's very entertaining (anecdotes and history lessons), the recipes are big and very clear, and the photographs are just wonderful. I've noted very few recipes with bizarre or hard to find ingredients.
This is really a cookbook/method book that makes the drinks very enticing and compelling and as a result I've added more than a dozen bottles to my Irish whiskey collection since purchasing it. One thing worth mentioning is that, compared to other cocktail books I've read, even though most of the drinks are well enough it appears that inventor has personalized and improved on quite a few of them by adding his own touch or variation. For example, there's a drink called "Between the sheets" that's regularly made with two base liquors: brandy & rum. Dale DeGroff's recipe contains Brandy & Benedictine as the villainous liquors - a wonderful combination which makes for a more interesting cocktail.
Another example of these variations is mixing Rye & Brandy for a Sazerac in lieu of of just sticking to Rye. There are many, many other improvements and innovations.
I would have loved to give it 5 stars but the only thing that held me back is the structure and make-up of the book: it's more or less alphabetical and that often makes it difficult to find related recipes or recipes based on the ingredients or the style of the drink.
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Customer Reviews
Gifted content poorly organizedTry to take it for granted your favorite cookbook with the recipes arranged in alphabetical order. Bad. Now imagine all of the recipes had fanciful titles not directly interrelated to their ingredients or method of production and THEN they were arranged in alphabetical order. Worse. Now imagine the book had a halfhearted take on at any index. (Yes, there are a few alternate drink names in the index, but no attempt to, for instance, list drinks by infra dig spirit, let alone minor ingredients.) Well that is DeGroff's Craft of The Cocktail. If you buy it, you pretty much have to read it cover to offset for it to be of use. If you just use it as a reference you will find excellent recipes of familiar drinks but miss all of the original drinks. (You don't conscious their names. They are originals. How are you going to be led to them in an alphabetical book?) I don't disagree with any of the positive things that people said about this order. (I did tell you to imagine your FAVORITE cookbook destroyed by disorganization.) But this book is a earnest disappointment and a missed opportunity.
would be unerring if there were a by-ingredients index
He extremely pares it down to the essentials. Book proved to me that there is value in having an experienced bartender curate the cocktail practice and speak to the craft and history behind each recipe. I used to think you can find any drink recipe for free on the Internet, but now I separate it's a pain to sift through unedited or plainly bad recipes. What drinkers need is a curator, someone who knows what works. This tome is it.
My one issue with this book is big: it's that there is no by ingredient recipe index. When I just got a bottle of special liquor, I can't well-deserved look up all the recipes that feature that ingredient. For that kind of search, I still go to the Internet.
A Abundant Gift or Worthy Addition
This words is so elegantly put together! Great for the serious bartender who likes to know a lot about the tools he is working with. The drink list is bountiful. This item has a lot of flair for those looking to impress with some cool cocktails.
Friendly and excellent basic bar book
A vast basic bar book with very good recipes for the most part, and written in an engaging and accessible manner. The author also somethimes gives his welcome opinions on divers brands of spirits and liqueurs to use in a specific cocktail and why, or on a particular garnish, etc. He also explains how to do his famous flamed citrus peel garnish, something you'll never see me do.
The absence of an index by liquor is the only disappointment in this book. This home bartender really appreciates such an index because I don't like it know every cocktail that uses Benedictine or Chartreuse, gin or applejack, etc.
Anyway, an excellent bar book that's fun and inspriring to browse through. Hmmm, what will we divulge for next Friday night's cocktail, I wonder...
Unlikely guide to modern cocktails
I certainly adore this book. I've spent the last few weeks working my way through it. It's very entertaining (anecdotes and history lessons), the recipes are big and very clear, and the photographs are just wonderful. I've noted very few recipes with bizarre or hard to find ingredients.
This is really a cookbook/method book that makes the drinks very enticing and compelling and as a result I've added more than a dozen bottles to my Irish whiskey collection since purchasing it. One thing worth mentioning is that, compared to other cocktail books I've read, even though most of the drinks are well enough it appears that inventor has personalized and improved on quite a few of them by adding his own touch or variation. For example, there's a drink called "Between the sheets" that's regularly made with two base liquors: brandy & rum. Dale DeGroff's recipe contains Brandy & Benedictine as the villainous liquors - a wonderful combination which makes for a more interesting cocktail.
Another example of these variations is mixing Rye & Brandy for a Sazerac in lieu of of just sticking to Rye. There are many, many other improvements and innovations.
I would have loved to give it 5 stars but the only thing that held me back is the structure and make-up of the book: it's more or less alphabetical and that often makes it difficult to find related recipes or recipes based on the ingredients or the style of the drink.
