Marcia Simmons - DIY Cocktails : a simple guide to creating your own signature drinks

This book gives the home bartender all the tools necessary to create amazing cocktails.

Mitchell Rosenthal, Chef/Owner, Town Hall, Salt House and Anchor & Hope, San Francisco

A quite clever, simplified DIY book for making cocktail recipes, with excellent information and variations for same, no less flavor charts, easy reference boxes for recipes, fine photography, and gag reels. Buy it, look it up; it's well worth the price.

Brian Rea, Legendary Bartender, Author, and Former Bar Manager, 21 Club, NYC

This book makes creating and mixing top-notch cocktails a snap.

Daniel Yaffe, Publisher, Drink Me Magazine

Avon, Massachusetts

For home mixologists everywhere with special thanks to our respective cats, who have been very patient about receiving less attention as we worked on this book

RATIO: 9:1 Flagship: Old Fashioned

RATIOS: 2:1 AND 4:1 Flagships: Manhattan, Rob Roy, Martini, Gibson

RATIO: 2:1 Flagships: Gin & Tonic, Vodka & Tonic, Scotch & Soda

RATIO: 3:2:1 Flagships: Margarita, Sidecar, Cosmopolitan

RATIO: 4:3:1 Flagships: Mai Tai, Hurricane, Bahama Mama

RATIO: 1:1:2 Flagships: White Russian, Brandy Alexander, Grasshopper

RATIO: 2:1:1 Flagships: Daiquiri, Aviation, Jack Rose, Bee's Knees

RATIO: VARIES Flagships: Collins, Fizz, Mojito, Buck, Champagne Cocktail

RATIO: VARIES Flagships: Anything You Can Dream Up!

Welcome to DIY Cocktails.

Why cocktails? In addition to being incredibly tasty, cocktails almost instantly impart a sense of community and togetherness. For us at DrinkoftheWeek.com, there is no greater way of bringing all of your friends together than throwing a cocktail party. In fact, cocktail parties were the inspiration for starting DrinkoftheWeek.com!

American history and cocktails are intertwined. The first cocktails sprang up in the American Northeast around 1800 and have been evolving ever since. The cocktail moved west and then abroad. But regardless of where the cocktail was served in bars, saloons, lounges, clubs, pubs, and homes it became the icon of neighborhood gathering places and instant brotherhood.

Until Prohibition, the American saloon keeper was a prominent member of society, and bartending was an honorable profession. The bartender not only served up amazing drinks but also provided entertainment and facilitated friendships. Unfortunately, Prohibition forced the best and brightest bartenders to flee to Europe since they were now outlaws at home.

As America emerged from Prohibition, it entered into the dark ages of mixology (a fancier term for bartending). With the best and brightest bartenders gone and no new generation trained to replace them, the secrets of the trade were lost. A few stars like Trader Vic led the immediate post-Prohibition era, but the end of Prohibition was followed by a descent into a prepackaged, processed, instant, artificial culinary world. And cocktails were one of the first casualties.

The artisan cocktail was lost for an entire generation. Growing up, so many of us knew nothing of smashes, frappes, highballs, and punches. Our experience was restricted by overpriced, under-spirited tropical cocktails made only with prepackaged ingredients. Home bartending was limited to mixing soda with spirit and ice... or maybe some drink mix.

Luckily, cocktails have emerged from the darkness. Mixologists are taking their place next to the world's top chefs, and bars are taking reservations. Fresh ingredients rule. Who could have imagined that only a few years ago?

We at DrinkoftheWeek.com have focused on the home bar. Creating an online center for bartending started as a hobby and turned into an obsession. We have vintage barware and cocktail books, and we sell better stock than most bars. Above all, we love mixing drinks and serving them to old and new friends.

We wrote this book to bring mixology magic into your home. This book is different. Rather than gathering a collection of recipes, DrinkoftheWeek.com aims to give you the home mixologist the tools to take your craft to the next level. In these pages we will show you the basics you need to get you started and share tips to ignite your inner bartender.

Cheers!

O ur mission is to help you make cocktails that taste good to you. But we haven't met you, so we have no idea what you like. That's why instead of giving you a book full of recipes you may or may not like, we're going to give you knowledge you can use to create your own recipes. Oh, and we're also going to give you a lot of recipes.

DIY which stands for do it yourself means making your own handcrafted, high-quality goods. While (hopefully) you don't consume cocktails in the same quantities you consume food, it helps to think of them in the same way. You probably don't eat all your meals in restaurants, and when you do cook at home, you probably don't use a recipe for every dish you make. DIY cooking is just a part of life. After years of cooking and eating, you have your own custom recipes for everyday life that cover a variety of occasions, styles, and tastes. You probably aren't frightened by making your own food, but the thought of creating a cocktail can seem daunting. Our goal is to demystify home bartending so that mixing a drink becomes no more intimidating than making a sandwich.

We studied the classics and our own custom concoctions to find out what worked and what didn't and from that we created fundamental cocktail ratios and the you can use as the building blocks for hundreds, maybe even thousands, of your own inventions!

Creating a new recipe comes down to choosing the ingredients, determining how much of each one to use, and knowing how to combine them. The possibilities are indeed infinite. However, the possibilities also fit into categories and ratios that make for perfectly flavored, perfectly balanced drinks. The crucial factor that distinguishes a perfect cocktail from a muddy mixture is the ratio the simple proportions of one ingredient to another. The ratio of ingredients determines whether flavors that taste good together will mix harmoniously.

Instead of specific ingredients measured out in ounces, you'll see ingredient categories measured out in parts. A recipe tells you to mix two ounces of gin with one ounce of tonic; a ratio tells you to mix two parts of a strong ingredient with one part of a weak ingredient. (You'll learn about strong, weak, and the rest of the ingredient categories in a moment.)

Each part of a ratio represents a measurement. So a 3:2:1 ratio is simply telling you to put three measurements of one ingredient together with two measurements of another ingredient and one measurement of yet another ingredient. In you'll learn the mechanics of turning a ratio with parts into a cocktail. First, you need to know how the ingredients you want to use such as spirits, liqueurs, juices, and fruits will be represented in the cocktail ratios in this book.