Cocktails Illustrated

About Cocktails Illustrated

Take a master class in bartending with this luxe cocktail cookbook featuring 400+ recipes covering 15 essential categories!

Cook’s Illustrated experts share all the hallmark techniques, formulas, science, and lore behind your favorite spirited and nonalcoholic libations.

Unleash your inner bartender with a demystifying dive into the world of classic and contemporary cocktail making. Cocktails Illustrated is that rare book: coffee-table gorgeous with hundreds of photographs and illustrations; comprehensive, instructive, and practical; and as fun and playful as a great cocktail should be. Organized around categories including martinis, Manhattans, highballs, bucks, nogs, tropical, and more, it’s the ultimate “how-to” cocktail cookbook.

• Shake up your repertoire: hundreds of creative kitchen-tested cocktails (and a few of our favorite bar snacks) and ways to customize them based on your preferences, from spirit-forward drinks to low-ABV and nonalcoholic cocktails.
• Distill professional secrets: Techniques, including aging and clarifying cocktails and fat-washing spirits, are made accessible through clear, engaging explanations and how-to photography. 
• Sip on some science: Learn from the Cook’s Illustrated experts, including why glassware shape matters, the chemistry of proper cocktail dilution, and when and how to use ingredients like salt or citric acid to enhance flavors.
• Belly up to the bar: Extensive introduction pours out no-nonsense advice on what bottles, tools, and glassware you really need, plus clearly teaches methods including shaking, muddling, citrus juicing, ice-making, and more.
• Peruse the back bar: Bonus section elevates cocktails with homemade infused liqueurs, bitters, syrups and shrubs, rim salts and sugars, and garnishes.