The Essential Bartender's Guide [Spiral-bound]

Robert Hess (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 2008

Making great cocktails just got easier! Finally, home and professional bartenders have a manual that is truly essential! One of the founders of The Museum of the American Cocktail, Robert Hess distills a lifetime of passionate interest in classical mixology to peel away the mysteries of making perfect cocktails. For years he has worked with restaurants, bartenders and consumers to help raise their craft to art. Envisioning the cocktail as a cuisine made with equal artistry, craftsmanship and flavor potential as food prepared by any gourmet chef, he sees this artistry as being within the grasp of all. In clear, concise prose The Essential Bartender's Guide presents everything you'll need to know to open a world of infinite taste possibilities. Topics include bartending basics, stocking a bar and understanding drink construction. There are recipes and discussions of classic cocktails such as the Sidecar, Daiquiri, Margarita, Cosmopolitan, Old Fashioned, Martini, Manhattan, Bloody Mary and Mai Tai as well as a personal collection of several hundred recipes representing the best cocktails and mixed drinks.

Product Details

• Spiral-bound: 224 pages
• Publisher: Mud Puddle Books, Inc. (September 15, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1603111506
• ISBN-13: 978-1603111508
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #70,220 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you are looking for a book of 700 cocktail recipes, this is NOT it., January 2, 2009

By 

Mark (New England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Essential Bartender's Guide (Spiral-bound)

It's better than that. It's an education on the classic methods, using fresh ingredients. Not one recipe in the book calls for 'sour mix', and even has a section of juices to let us know which juices are OK to pour from a bottle and which should only be used fresh from the fruit. Robert goes over glassware, the basics of distillation, nuances of bitters varietals, and a host of other topics. Enough that you are on page 99 of this 224 page book before you see the first drink recipe. Each recipe tells you what type of glass, what garnish, and even what order to do things in to get a proper looking and tasting cocktail. Along with that you get a ton of history and quite a few excellent photographs of prepared drinks.

One big bonus, the hardcover-over-spiral-binding lays flat on your counter while you read along and perfect your craft.

Overall, an excellent beginner's book for the basics, and some classic's like Trader Vic's original Mai Tai recipe from 1944 that I simply must procure the ingredients for that are sure to get some experienced pros away from the 'mixers' and back to making things right.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hess delivers, March 9, 2009

By 

Robert Hearne (Denver, CO USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Essential Bartender's Guide (Spiral-bound)

I've been following the author's sage instruction, advice, and information at the DrinkBoy website for years. It's nice to have all that great information in one place and be able to tote it around as needed. Excellent information on all the things you need and need to know for all the classic cocktails.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent basic bar book with a refreshing point of view, October 7, 2009

By 

Lorelie (Oakland, CA, United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Essential Bartender's Guide (Spiral-bound)

Hess does a great job of presenting recipes for classic and common cocktails - everything from ingredients to mixing and garnishing procedures is clear and readable. He also presents a refreshing point of view for making cocktails, grounded in the history of mixology. The first half of the book lays out this groundwork well and interestingly, though there is some minor repetition. I also greatly appreciate that there is an index by liquor. Many a home bartender like myself doesn't necessarily know which recipes use Benedictine or Chartreuse, gin or applejack, for example.

My only disappointment was that some of the recipes in the book do not match those in his Cocktail Spirit series (on the Small Screen Network) - for example, in the Aviation cocktail he gives the recipe sans the Creme de Violette, though he does mention this ingredient in the preface to the recipe. In his Cocktail Spirit show, he gives the recipe with Creme de Violette. I wish he had left it in the recipe in the book and mentioned that the common variant was to use all Maraschino because Creme de Violette was so hard to find until recently. To leave it out seems rather contrary to the spirit of the book.

Also, I understand the author not wanting to recommend a basic bar set-up, suggesting instead that readers acquire spirits, bitters, and liqueurs based on the cocktails they like or want to try. It still would have been helpful to suggest some reasonable bottom and mid-shelf brand choices for at least the base spirits and often used liqueurs in his recipes. Obviously not necessary, but it may be helpful to folks who haven't got a bar stocked yet. Yeah, so someone wants to try some gin cocktails but doesn't really know anything about gin... maybe suggest Beefeater for a traditional gin with a strong jumiper bite to it that will hold up well against tonic and line, or Plymouth gin as a great cocktail gin that mixes well with other ingredients but can still hold its own, or Bombay London Dry as an econo gin that mixes well too. One assumes the author has a breadth of experience with different liquors that many of his readers will not have.

In any case, a great bar book. It definitely has a place alongside Gary Regan's Joy of Mixology and Dale DeGroff's Craft of the Cocktail. You learn something a little different from each of these books and end up experimenting, comparing, and enjoying a little more.

And please do catch Hess' Cocktail Spirit show on the net!