Cocktail Codex: Fundamentals, Formulas, Evolutions

A James Beard Award winner (Best New Cocktail or Bartending Book) and named one of the best books of the year, Cocktail Codex is a comprehensive primer on the craft of mixing drinks that employs the authors’ unique “root cocktails” approach to give drink-makers of every level the tools to understand, execute, and improvise both classic and original cocktails.

Authors Alex Day, Nick Fauchald, and David Kaplan, reveal for the first time their surprisingly simple approach to mastering cocktails: the “root recipes,” six easily identifiable (and memorizable!) templates that encompass all cocktails: the old-fashioned, martini, daiquiri, sidecar, whisky highball, and flip. 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.
 
Praise for Cocktail Codex
 
“Learn the template, and any cocktail you can think of is within reach.”—Food & Wine

“Too bad all college textbooks weren’t this much fun.”—Garden & Gun

“A must for amateur and pro mixologists alike.”—Chicago Tribune