Death & Co: Modern Classic Cocktails

If I could only keep one cocktail book behind my bar, this would probably be it. *Death & Co* has become my primary cocktail reference because it strikes an excellent balance between being approachable for home bartenders and comprehensive enough to remain useful as your skills grow. What makes it stand out is the breadth of recipes. You'll find: * the essential classics * lesser-known historical cocktails * modern classics * original house creations Unlike some cocktail books that focus heavily on one style or era, this feels like a complete cocktail library in a single volume. The recipes are also consistently well developed. I've made a lot of drinks from this book over the years, and one of the things I appreciate most is that the authors clearly cared about balance and technique rather than simply collecting recipes for the sake of volume. For anyone interested in making seriously good cocktails at home, this is about as close to a "bible" as I've found. It's also a book that grows with you. Early on, it serves as a recipe source and educational tool. Later, it becomes a reference for refining technique, exploring unfamiliar drinks, and finding inspiration when you're looking to expand beyond the usual standards. Another thing I appreciate is the physical presentation. It sounds minor, but if a book is going to live on the bar rather than on a bookshelf, aesthetics matter. The binding and overall design are classy enough that it looks right at home as a permanent fixture instead of feeling like a textbook that accidentally wandered into the room. What separates this from many other cocktail books is that it doesn't just teach you how to make drinks—it teaches you how to think about cocktails. If you're building a home bar library, there are plenty of books worth owning. But if you're only going to buy one, this would be very high on my list of recommendations. It's one of the few cocktail books I still reach for regularly years after purchasing it.

Such a great and informative book. I thought I knew stuff about cocktails and making drinks, and them I read this book. Full pages just on ICE. The different types, the amounts, the use cases, etc. This book has great stories, recipes, and techniques that are a great for any bartender or someone interested in it.

This book is crazy - it's by far the best cocktail book I've ever seen and incredibly unique in its approach. For one, it's beautifully made with a linen binding and gorgeous full color photos and illustrations. But what I really love about this book is all the details on how the bar works - there's a script of the bar staff testing a drink, considering what it lacks, suggesting additions or substitute brands that would improve the drink. I've never really thought about how a bar works together to put a new drink on the menu, but this book exposes the process over a few pages that's totally fascinating. Other things like a chart of how Death & Co. approaches "bartender's choice" shows you the "how to" side that I've only seen here in this book. I also enjoyed the staff notes on why they select one brand of liquor over another - why use Beefeater gin vs. Hendrick's, as well as some of the inspiration behind certain drinks "it's a whiskey sour but made with tequila", will change the way you think about making drinks. The book has one page essays about certain regulars and what their drink of choice is that make this world class, destination bar seem more like your neighborhood tavern and bring a kind of familiarity to the book. Finally, and my favorite part is that the recipes are great and most are easy to make at home - this isn't just a coffee table book, it's practical and I find myself reaching for it on a regular basis to actually make something from my home bar. You don't have to make lots of custom ingredients, fat-wash a bottle of expensive spirits, or do too much that's a pain in the butt.

Really nice coffee table book , love the velvet feel of the cover !!!l excellent price

I bought this book on recommendation from a favorite bartender. It's one of the better-value kitchen books I own: long, super dense, and cloth-bound, with high-quality photos and drawings. It's part instructions (how to properly shake and stir, how to taste spirits, what types of ingredients go well together, how to form intuition for the right amount of sweet vs. sour), part recipes, and part memoir / vignettes from the NYC bar. It's pretty impressive how erudite these guys are; they write with convincing authority, and the kind of mastery that makes the book feel like an aspiration that you know you will never fully achieve, but that you can keep turning to again and again to learn more. It gets five stars because I use it all the time and find it a fount of random wisdom and interesting asides, but I should note a few things: - There are no vodka recipes...they think vodka is boring. - Many of the drink recipes require obscure ingredients or expensive liquors, so the actual number of recipes I've made from this book so far is kind of small (limited to their "classic cocktails" section). However, this gives one plenty of room to grow and makes it possible for the book to appeal to all kinds of mixologists, from casual to more serious. - I'm sometimes frustrated by the lack of an index to their recipes, e.g. say I want to find all the recipes that include white (blanc) vermouth, well that isn't possible. I have to page through the various sections (Classic Cocktails, Gin Stirred, Gin Shaken, etc.) hoping to stumble upon this ingredient.

This is a really handsome book - although with a few copy editing errors. It would make a nice gift for the intermediate to advanced home cocktail enthusiast. There's a lot of excellent advice on how to perfect techniques - and there's an awareness that the reader cannot duplicate everything that's done at a bar by professionals. And there's a certain amount of bragging about how wonderful this particular bar is - and I'm sure it is. The part you may find more inspirational than actually useful are the recipes. Making cocktails, like cooking, is partly about technique, but also about the ingredients. When high-end bars write guides like this they face a dilemma. They spend lots of time building cocktails with just the right ingredients - often difficult to source. And things that make sense at a busy bar - like preparing and maintaining a stock of infused simple syrups - really don't translate to the home environment where you are making a few cocktails a week. So they can dumb down the recipes - which means they aren't the *real* recipes... or they can present them as they are and risk frustrating the reader. This book takes the latter route - exotic ingredients are on full display, and the readers' first reaction is "there's not a single drink in this book that I have *all* the ingredients for - and some of this stuff I've never even heard of!" My approach to this is to rely on more basic books to figure out what you (and your frequent guests) like and then use books like this (or scanning the listed ingredients at top-flight bars) to take those drinks to the next level. To make *all* the drinks in this book, you'd need to open a bar. But to perfect your two or three favorites is quite doable.

If you're looking for a cocktail book to help you put together a great home bar and start mixing more advanced cocktails this is great but a large number of the recipes are impractical for most home bars. If you are a bartender or bar owner looking to up your skills or the level of complexity at your bar then this is really going to be helpful. What I like about the book: I like that this book covers everything: Bar equipment, ice, technique, history, tasting, some "story essays" about the bar, and very important for developing a home bar is that it goes through the different types of spirits and gives you explanations of the different types and specific recommendations for brands to buy. This is step one of what is needed to be a great home bartender. What I don't like about the book: The recipes are a reflection of the Death and Co bar, where expert mixologists are creating very interesting and complex drinks. However this just doesn't work very well for a home bar. A large percentage of the recipes require something such as "Grapefruit infused Punt E Mes." The book gives you instructions on how to make all of these complex ingredients, but they aren't practical for a home bar. Therefore almost 90% of the recipes are pretty useless for me. The index isn't great. An index is supposed to reference every instance of a word in the book. So you should be able to look up "St. Germain" and it should give you every page where there is a recipe including St. Germain, but the book doesn't have this. For example in the section of the book on Modifier Liquors it describes St. Germain as "bar tenders katsup" because it has been used so much in so many drinks. I went ahead and bought a bottle but I have yet to find a recipe in the book I can make. There is no way to look for recipes using it other than to go one by one through the whole book, and when I have found one that uses it, the recipe contains one or more other complex ingredients that I don't have. Definitely a very good book and I've learned very much from it, but it is far from an ideal resource for a home bar enthusiast.

Fantastic book that not only tells you how, but why! It came recommended by one of my favorite bartenders and now I’m a decent mixologist because of it!

Hard cover, the colours, the paper and most importantly the inside.

I don't normally give reviews. But I love a good book and being a bartender, I try to get as much knowledge about my product as possible. Its always a massive pleasure to get your hands on a good book of cocktails but this exceeded my expectations . This book is not just for cocktails. It's not just classic cocktails. It's not just bartending basics. It's a mentor for the novice and professional bartenders around. I recommend this book for any mixologist in the bartending scene who wants to upgrade or perfect their style. Cheers

Très bon bouquin pour découvrir de nouveaux cocktails, traités à part égale sur les différents alcools principaux. Attention, les recettes sont quasi full alcool (peu de jus), à consommer donc de façon responsable. Egalement, une section technique pointue très intéressante. A noter que les recettes (issues de la carte du célèbre bar) mentionnent des alcools très spécifiques qu'il est impossible de tous avoir, mais l'approximation fonctionne tout aussi bien.

La estética del libro es muy agradable, pasta dura forrada con textil, el contenido es muy interesante incluso para personas que no están tan involucradas o conocen del mundo de la coctelería.

This book is BEAUTIFUL, it looks stunning and is great quality, I mostly bought it because I loved the title and look of it but to be honest the content is equally great with many easy to follow recipes.