The Home Bartender: The Third Edition: 200+ Cocktails Made with Four Ingredients or Less

by Shane Carley

The third edition of Shane Carley’s hugely popular The Home Bartender features over 200 easy, delicious, and affordable recipes to elevate your home bar. You don’t need expensive liquor or exotic and obscure ingredients to make a craft cocktail. With every drink featuring four ingredients or less, making drinks at home has never been easier for the busy mixologist. This book contains perfect, classic, and budget versions of old favorites—such as the Martini, Old Fashioned, Manhattan, Cosmopolitan, Margarita, and Gin and Tonic—as well as new drinks that will keep you coming back for more. Inside you’ll Spend less time mixing and more time hosting with The Home The Third Edition. Shane Carley was born in New Hampshire, and, after almost a decade in Washington, DC, he has triumphantly returned to the beautiful Granite State. A longtime aficionado of all types of alcohol, Carley jumped at the opportunity to launch a series of cocktail companion books. His love of the written word transcends formal publication, and he currently works as a content developer for award-winning PR agency Matter Communications. Carley is a science fiction enthusiast who hopes someday to make the jump into fiction writing. He once met Warren Ellis and it was the greatest moment of his life.

Genres: Cookbooks, Nonfiction, Cooking

464 pages, Hardcover

First published April 5, 2016

Reviews

[Lola · Rating 4 out of 5]

Often times, when browsing through a cocktail recipe book, no matter how beautiful the drinks sound or look, I ultimately have to stop and ask the question, "are these financially reasonable to make?" Who has multiple flavored liquors, a full bar of every spirit, and every mixer and garnish in the world... Not me! I keep a very simple home bar with just the bare minimum.

And the Home Bartender is the perfect cocktail recipe book for people like me. People who don't want to spend a bunch of money just to make a couple drinks a month. People who don't want to overcomplicate their home drinks. And people who don't want to sacrifice flavor but still want simplicity.

All the cocktails in this book require four ingredients or less (if excluding optional garnishes). And most of the ingredients in each drink are either home bar staples or if "rare," are used multiple times throughout various recipes. The author also picks a few popular cocktails and gives you three variations of the recipe: budget, classic, and perfect (i.e., cheap, mid-level, and expensive).

I also enjoyed that the book included over 20 mocktail virgin recipes for you or guests to enjoy.

I read the recipe book cover-to-cover. I loved the sprinkling of mixology tips and the insightful knowledge on why certain flavor combos work (giving me my own ideas of recipes I can create myself). Highly recommend!

[Taylor Jennings · Rating 2 out of 5]

A lot of duplicate recipes. Three different ways to make the same drink? That could’ve been condensed into one recipe with some notes on what can be substituted.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is best when it steers away from the perfectly fine classic recipes. I like the approachable, simple, often trashy, kinda homebrewed recipes. So many are now bookmarked…

[Marijka · Rating 1 out of 5]

One of the worst cocktail books I’ve ever seen. The pictures don’t match half the drinks, the recipes are wrong, procedures are wrong. Additionally it seems like the took ‘short cuts’ on their ingredient list so they could claim “drinks with only 4 ingredients”. Why skimp on one or two ingredients to make a far inferior drink?? Additionally they claim fewer bottles yet they want you to have a ton of different flavors of vodka?? How does that make any sense? I would definitely skip this book!

[Meg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great drink recipes. Perfect for anyone wanting to become a better mixologist. I saved a ton of these for later.

[Mandi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this

[Terri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Random pick up from the library. Nice color photos, simple recipes with not too many ingredients or hard-to-find ingredients, but some of the recipes are a bit wacky for my tastes. A "Wakeup Martini" that includes a splash of maple syrup? The "Cidermeister" used Jagermeister along with fresh apple cider and coconut rum? Maybe I shouldn't knock it until I try it, but I'll pass.

[DJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good information to set up and deliver from your home bar.

[Daysha Cunningham · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s very helpful when wanting to make a new drink!