Cocktail Codex: Fundamentals, Formulas, Evolutions [A Cocktail Recipe Book]

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While pretentious at times --although clearly written for would-be bartenders-- it was a really helpful approach to understand basic cocktail formulas, and how changing the spirit or seasoning can create new cocktails. Day, Fauchald and Kaplan focus in on six major cocktail archetypes (the Martini, The Daiquiri, etc) and explore in excruciating detail what the core ratios are that define each drink and how bartenders have developed variants over the years (i. Alex, Dave, Nick, and Devon do an incredible job at teaching us the basic building blocks of modern cocktails. The book is also a nice size/weight, great for a coffee table or tofu press, with excellent crisp design and pretty high-contrast photographs. By understanding how elements like bright, tangy lemon juice balance a rich, heavy ingredient, you can then swap in other sources of acid — grapefruit juice, say, or yogurt — for infinite iterations.

Some of it I think it out of reach for the typical home bartender (carbonating rigs, centrifuges, immersion circulators to make infused syrups), but it's still interesting to me to see their creativity and artistry. Once you understand the hows and whys of each “family,” you’ll understand why some cocktails work and others don’t, when to shake and when to stir, what you can omit and what you can substitute when you’re missing ingredients, why you like the drinks you do, and what sorts of drinks you should turn to—or invent—if you want to try something new. For each cocktail "template", you'll get some discussion of its history, its constituent ingredients (i. In fact, I think it might be my favorite drink I’ve made from Cocktail Codex yet – which is saying something. if you can afford dozens of spirits and liqueurs (some of which are used in very few cocktails in the book), fine.And, unlike every other book you’ll read this year, Cocktail Codex is packed with actual knowledge you can use in the real world. It sounds good on paper, and it’s an interesting way to conceptualize ratios for beginners, but I’ve found it to be useless in more advanced practice. For instance, their house Dark and Stormy includes a custom ginger syrup and fresh lime, when you can just add ginger beer and squeeze two lime wedges.

The only thing really missing off the top of my head is a serious discussion of flavor affinities, adjusting to workflow, and consumer norms. Cocktail Codex gives the drink enthusiast a comprehensive, fun, and complete look into the fundamentals of cocktails and the illustrations, stories, and background information give the reader a look into the world of professional drink making at its best. Luckily, the majority of my clientele wanted tequila shots or (plastic) glasses of cheap wine, so I never had to make anything super complex. Fortunately, almost every "classic" cocktail is included in this book, though a couple are needlessly omitted. Replace the high-proof whiskey in an Old-Fashioned with a larger quantity of low-proof amontillado sherry, and swap muddled orange slices for the bitters, you have a Cobbler.templates that encompass all cocktails: the old-fashioned, martini, daiquiri, sidecar, whisky highball, and flip. By studying [these] classic cocktails and explaining how we and others have interpreted these forms, we're providing the foundational knowledge necessary for developing your own artful creations based upon studied skills and knowledge. What tips this over the edge is how NERDY this is getting into all sorts of esoteric techniques and minutiae you can either apply to your own craft or discard.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.I bartended on and off throughout university to make ends meet and mostly fumbled my way through various cocktails. He's also the publisher of Short Stack Editions, a series of small-format cookbooks about inspiring ingredients, which launched in 2013, and the founding publisher of Dovetail Press, a publishing company that pairs impactful books with original products. This book is perfect for someone who wants to learn how to mix drinks to their own accord and break some rules rather than just have a recipe to go by and nothing else. e. think of a Manhattan as a Martini with the gin swapped for whisky and the white vermouth for red, or a Margarita as a tequila Sidecar). The concept of the six root cocktails is so interesting and they explain each of these root cocktails so well and extensive.

The Smokescreen was smokey without being overpowering, and the mint and simple syrup played beautifully with just enough Chartreuse to balance out the scotches.

Once you understand the hows and whys of each root recipe you'll be able to invent entirely new cocktails. The authors argue that all cocktails come from just six route drinks— old fashioned, martini, daiquiri, sidecar, whisky highball, and flip. Whether it’s classics like the daiquiri or Aperol Spritz, or unique creations like today’s cocktail, the Smokescreen – I always know I can count on that book, regardless of what mood I’m in. This is stuff (aside from infusions) that you should honestly avoid until you know what you're doing, but it's all very cool and raises your horizons of what a cocktail can be. Since then, we have evolved and changed from an intimate bar in NYC to an ever-growing family of bars in NYC, Denver, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.