Books
"The Bar Book" by Jeffrey Morgenthaler
$28
Why Al Buys This
“Because understanding why produces better results than following instructions. In cocktails and in life.”
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Al's Full Endorsement
Jeffrey Morgenthaler's "The Bar Book" is the most useful cocktail book written in the last twenty years, and I include books by people considerably more famous than Morgenthaler in that assessment. It's not a recipe collection — it's a technique manual. Ice. Dilution. Citrus. Carbonation. Syrups. The fundamentals, explained clearly, with the kind of precision that makes you understand why your drinks taste different from the ones in restaurants.
The recipes that are included are there to illustrate technique. This is the correct approach. Anyone can Google a recipe. Understanding why the recipe works the way it works is the actual skill.
If you're setting up a home bar and you buy one book, this is the book. If you already have many cocktail books, this is the one that makes the others make more sense.
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