The One-Bottle Cocktail: More than 80 Recipes with Fresh Ingredients and a Single Spirit Hardcover – March 6, 2018

I bought this book after receiving a cocktail shaker for Christmas. One of the best cookbooks I’ve bought to date! It’s so much fun, the way the author writes and talks about these drinks is just a blast to read. The recipes themselves are easy and fun and make use of lots of fresh ingredients, which I love. Tons of fruit and herbs, all well worth the small amount of effort to prepare. I didn’t want to fill my “liquor cupboard” with lots of expensive ingredients that I’d only use a handful of times. I’d much rather buy a really good bottle of gin or tequila, a bag of lemons, and a bunch of fresh herbs! Our favorites have been My My My Tai, a very unique take on a Mai Tai that is so fun and less sweet, and Midnight in the Garden (strawberries and rum, plus some balsamic vinegar, such a unique combo!). One of my favorite things about the book is her suggestions for subs, swapping this alcohol for that one. A few recipes are for larger amounts (think a pitcher or a punch bowl), so those are on the menu for whenever we start entertaining again, but we’ve thoroughly enjoyed working our way one at a time through the single cocktail recipes! Buy this book, it will become a staple for your home bar!

Back in the late 90’s, I tumbled like Alice down down NYC’s emerging craft-cocktail underworld. The theatrics, the obsession with flavor “architecture” and seasonality, the explosion of new sensations—I was turned upside down. Since then, I estimate I’ve spent tens and tens of thousands of dollars in search of arcane bottles to replicate the experience at home…..And then my wife gets me this unsuspecting cocktail book a few months ago, and it changes the game. Since then, I’ve spent some $30ish bucks on fresh ingredients and my hobby has gained a whole new life. Thank you!A few things that have helped me as I interact with the book:-- The juicing is worth it. But to cut down on mid-week labor, I juice en masse on Sundays (or just buy fresh juice at my supermarket's juice bar) and then freeze it in silicon ice-cube trays; throughout the week, I thaw the one-ounce juice cubes and use as needed.-- Experimentation. I keep four different bottles of mezcal, each with contrasting flavor emphasis, so the same mezcal cocktail recipe has near-infinite variations as I mix-and-match mezcals. (I could say the same for olive oils I have here and the “Olivia Flip” recipe, etc.)-- A recipe calls for *smoked* Maldon salt, say, I only had the regular Maldon salt…..In moments like these, I’ve been rewarded when I’ve gone the extra mile to follow the mixologists’ careful arrangement of subtle, beautiful flavors.Thanks again for this gem!

Cocktails can be as much of an adventure as fine cooking but much of the time require a huge investment in bottles that might sit in your cabinet for many years barely used. This book is a perfect way around that. Every cocktail I've tried in this book has a phenomenal depth of flavor, even if the ingredients are simple. Not everything will necessarily be in your pantry, but anything you might buy for a cocktail--white miso, hibiscus tea, etc.--can also be used for cooking and is far cheaper than a $40 bottle of Benedicitine. My favorite so far is the Sassy Flower, with a hibiscus rosemary syrup complementing mezcal: smoky, floral, earthy, sweet, sour, and very easy to drink. Hoffman sometimes gives you alternative ingredients--fennel seed vs. pollen, cognac instead of aged rum--but, ideally, you don't want to do your own substituting. I used sugar syrup instead of agave in a strawberry-tequila-fennel drink and thought "This extremely tasty but a little cloying." That wouldn't have happened if I'd followed the directions, since agave is an invert sugar and less noticeably sweet. Bottom line: If you enjoy cocktails, buy this book. You will not be disappointed.

I'll admit that I have a bookshelf full of cookbooks and a decent section committed to alcoholic creations... The problem is that while I can easily use 90%+ of the recipes in the cookbooks, I've almost never found more than 1 or 2 cocktail recipes per book that I can make without a pilgrimage to the fancy hipster liquor store. That's why I can honestly say, THANK ALL THAT IS HOLY for this book. With a single bottle of booze and a few items from you pantry or the grocery store (where you're headed anyway for dinner ingredients), you can make a cocktail worthy of, well, a bar. Please don't take this as a knock on mixology or awesome bartenders - they're great! But just like I don't have a pizza oven, a salamander broiler, or a sous vide set up (fine...I do have a sous vide set up), I often find that I don't have some of the rare bitters and liqueurs called for in most of my cocktail books. OH! And as an added bonus, there are a bunch of large batch cocktails in this book that are fantastic for when you don't want to be stuck at the bar for your entire party. I. LOVE. THIS. BOOK. Buy it. You won't regret it.

I’ve been wanting to start making drinks for a while now and thought this book would be perfect. However, I was slightly disappointed that a lot of recipes call for a very random or hard to find ingredient. There’s a few recipes Im very excited to try but, have things I can’t just find around the house. I may just have to tweak some recipes. Excited to try some drinks!