The Ultimate Bar Book: The Comprehensive Guide to Over 1,000 Cocktails (Cocktail Book, Bartender Book, Mixology Book, Mixed Drinks Recipe Book)

I was going to send back simply because the print is small, but it is such a good book for information and so many cocktail recipes that I have decided need to keep it.

Great book and has every recipe you can think of and not ! It’s an awesome addition to add to your mixology collection!

Amazing, very detailed and the knowledge you get from it is very vivid and straight forward

Yep, microprint. The book puts a hotel bible to shame size-wise. It is positively TINY. I don't wear glasses and still need a magnifying glass to read some parts due to dark font on a dark page. That's my only gripe: they need to print this book about 15% bigger. When the author says "comprehensive" they are not kidding. From what you need in a dead-basic bar to mixology, glasses, tools, naming a drink, making syrups... everything is here in tiny tiny print. Likely the best one-stop bar book you'll ever need. The index pulls double-duty: you can look up drinks by name, or go a bit further back and look them up by spirit/liqueur. Remember though, you can sub certain liqueurs for others like Cointreau/Triple Sec so look em up both ways (and adjust the Simple; Triple Sec is sweeter than Cointreau.) Happy to recommend to anyone who wants to learn about bars or needing a good generic bar reference!

I’m starting to get more into bartending and saw the establishment I work at have this book behind the bar. I took a peek and I loved the idea of this little piece of inspirational work. It makes bartending more than just drinking. It goes into depth about how to drink and taste certain spirits, and ways to make all kinds of drinks from the array of spirits. It shows much of an art bartending is.

After setting up a home bar, I needed a reliable resource for drink recipes. Everything else was rather light on the overall coverage or just very restricted to one type of liquor or another and what I needed was more a standard reference for (almost) everything. True to its title, there are 1,000+ recipes in this, and it's organized in an easy to find manner. Moreover, there are two indexes: One accounts for the drink recipes by drink, the other is organized by major liquor ingredient (say, Bourbon), so finding what I might like to make is simple and quick. There is occasional background on liquor or drink types at the beginning of sections, but unlike other books it doesn't dwell on the history lessons and focuses more on "what will you need", "how to choose", "what should be in my standard bar stock", and other topics like that. The focus is more on providing the ready-reference and necessary background and taking you right into getting the ingredients, measurements, and activities aligned. I wanted just one book that would serve the purpose of "how do I make..." and this for me was it. I'd highly recommend this if that's also your goal in finding that single reference guide. My only complaint is that the actual book is on the small side with a lot of information in smaller type. Keep that in mind and for those needing reading glasses, break those out to review this one.

Bought as a gift for my son in law for his bar area. He loved it. It is a great buy for the price.

I love this book. I wanted to get into mixology, but I knew very little about not only cocktails, but also the difference in some drinks/alcohols and a bunch of other stuff that I didn't even realize I didn't know until reading this book. It has sections that talk about what kind of tools/utensils are needed or recommended, recommendations for small home bars or even full bars, and a whole chapter on what kind of glassware is used for different drinks (which I didn't even know was necessarily a thing). Then it discusses how each type of alcohol is made, a little history to it, details on variations of it, and how its predominantly used. Then of course it has a TON of mixes, cocktails, and so on. Once I finally got a grasp on the topics discussed in the book, I eventually switched over to a Bar app for my mixes/cocktails. Personally I use "My Bar", because I can select all the ingredients I have in my home bar, and then it populates a list of cocktails I can make with the ingredients I have. Also, if there's a drink I don't have the ingredients to, it will tell me what I'm missing and then let me add it to a shopping list to pick up at a later time. It even allows for custom drinks or variations to popular drinks. Of course I wouldn't have any idea on all the ingredients, glassware, mixes, and alcohols if it weren't for this book though.