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THE DISTILLED MAN COCKTAIL GUIDE

A Simple Introduction to Classic Drink Recipes and Techniques

KYLE INGHAM

Copyright © 2017, The Distilled Man, LLC. All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning,

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like to use material from the book, prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at info (at) thedistilledman.com.

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You are reading a sample excerpt of The Distilled Man Cocktail Guide. To Purchase the full Guide, visit

www.thedistilledman.com/cocktail-guide

Introduction 5 My Favorite Cocktail Memory 5 Cocktails are About Connection 7 How to Use This Book 9

Chapter 1: Instant Cocktail Gratification 12 One Recipe to Get You Excited About Cocktails 12

Chapter 2: Essential Concepts for Making Great Cocktails 17 If You Learn Nothing Else: It’s All About Balance 18 See Ratios, Not Recipes 21 Think “Farm to Glass” 24 Give Your Drink a Pocket Square 26 Become an Expert Ice Wrangler 27

Chapter 3: Stocking Your Home Bar 31 Gear 33 Glassware 37 Liquor 40 Mixers, etc 41 A Word on Prioritization 43 How to Store Your Bar Ingredients 44

CONTENTS

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Chapter 4: Core Techniques and Tips for Success 48 Core Mixing Techniques 49 Six Simple Garnishes 56 Non-obvious Tips for Success 63 A Few Key Drink Ratios 65

Chapter 5: Classic Cocktails Every Gentleman Should Know 67 Recipe Index 69 Recipes 70

Chapter 6: The Joy of Improvising Cocktails 97

Chapter 7: How to Plan the Perfect Cocktail Party 105

Appendix 117 Key Terms 117 Link to Further Resources 119 About the Author 120

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My Favorite Cocktail Memory I don’t remember when my love of mixology first began. But one of my favorite memories of cocktails involves my grandfather.

In our family, Grandpa Al was lovingly nicknamed “Grumpy” because of his crotchety disposition.

Like many men who lived through the Great Depression and both world wars, he was gruff, no-nonsense, and had zero tolerance for bullshit.

He had just a few interests: even when I was little, I remember him talking about specific poker hands in detail. “So I had pocket aces, and then the flop came…”

His other love was bowling. His ability to relive the minute-by-minute of a game was amazing. We would be deep into a story in the tenth frame, with only one pin left, and my grandmother would yell from the kitchen: “Al, are you bowling again?”

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We drink to connect. The connection is made not only with our fellows—be on our side of the bar or serving us across it—but with our senses and sense of self. To drink a cocktail properly is to say,

“We are here now, together, you and I.” Such a simple thing, but so vital when our attention is often elsewhere.

–Dinah Sanders, The Art of the Shim

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He’d snap out of it, remembering he was talking to his seven-year-old grandson, not a buddy at the lanes.

As a kid, I enjoyed listening to his stories, but I was just an audience. We didn’t have a bad relationship, though I wouldn’t say we were close.

But once I reached college, we found something we could bond over: cocktails.

For the last few years of his life, my grandfather would make a point to teach me how to make an Old Fashioned every time I visited.

It became our special time. While we were mixing the drink, he lit up. I don’t know if he was just warming up in his old age, but suddenly we had a shared passion.

He must have taught me the recipe no less than 20 times. Even though it was always the same, it was less about ingredients than the ritual of showing me how to make it.

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Each time, he delivered the same lesson with a sense of grave importance, as though mastering this recipe might one day help me

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Each time, he delivered the same lesson with a sense of grave importance, as though mastering this recipe might one day help me save the planet.

Through this simple lesson, I think he felt he was teaching me about bigger, more important ideas. And deep down, I knew it was him reaching out to me in his own way.

Cocktails Are About Connection Ever since then, I’ve always felt like cocktails were more than just about alcohol and random ingredients. Cocktails are not about getting drunk. If that’s all you’re after, there are faster and easier ways to do that than spending ten minutes squeezing the perfect amount of citrus, precisely measuring out your liquor, and painstakingly selecting the perfect garnish.

Cocktails are about the journey, not the destination.

Like any other subject worth mastering, learning to make cocktails teaches you important lessons that transcend the craft itself: how to be disciplined, how to be present in the moment, how to care about what you’re doing, and how to take raw ingredients and make them into something beautiful.

But most of all, cocktails are about connecting with other people.

Enjoying a cocktail with someone is about being present and enjoying their company. To say, “We are here now, together, you and I.”

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It is precisely for these reasons that every aspiring gentleman needs to know about cocktails.

Enjoying cocktails becomes a social bridge—a tool that is not only useful for connecting with others, but is also infinitely pleasurable.

In my own life, I have used cocktails—sometimes unwittingly—to:

• forge deeper professional relationships • charm the opposite sex • enrich existing friendships and connect with other fellow

“appreciators” • create an atmosphere of fun with my family, especially

around the holidays • relieve stress and spark creativity in other areas of my life • help bring stability to the world after a global financial

crisis (ok, maybe this is one of those “correlation not causation” things, but still…)

In short, cocktails have enriched my life, and I think they’ll enrich yours too.

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How to Use This Book This is not your typical cocktail book. In essence, it is a crash course in classic cocktails.

Rather than a compendium of hundreds of recipes, this is a tightly curated selection of only the essential recipes every man should know.

You may not realize it, but most of the new drinks you see on artisanal cocktail menus are simply tweaks to these core recipes.

That’s not a bad thing. I actually appreciate that there is a “cocktail canon” that we can all use as a base. It’s a bit like how Western music, even across generations, can continually refresh the same seven-note scale and fundamental chords.

This isn’t a reference book to keep on your proverbial shelf. This book is meant to be a hands-on manual for learning.

But more than recipes, this book is meant to teach you a few fundamental concepts about cocktails that will give you continued enjoyment of the craft.

As the saying goes, “Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime.” I want to give you the tools that help you keep exploring, creating, and appreciating cocktails even after you’ve exhausted the hand-picked recipes in this book.

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Below is a quick preview of what we’ll cover in the coming chapters:

Chapter 1: Instant Cocktail Gratification Naturally, I’d love for you to read this book cover to cover. But I also know some of you are impatient. So in this short chapter, we jump right into making a cocktail. Think of this as a mini-course on cocktail craft that will give you a “taste” for what’s to come.

Chapter 2: Essential Concepts for Making Great Cocktails After you’ve gotten your immediate fix, now it’s time to start from the start. In this chapter, I cover some core concepts and ways of thinking about cocktails that will lay the foundation for making great drinks later on.

Chapter 3: Stocking Your Home Bar Having all the gear and a huge selection of alcohol and mixers is wonderful. But where do you start? In this chapter, I walk through the essential tools and supplies you need for a basic bar, including equipment, glassware, core liquors, mixers and garnishes.

Chapter 4: Core Techniques and Tips for Success Before you jump into the recipes, this chapter will cover some of the basic techniques and tips of mixology that will help improve your cocktail-making success later on.

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Chapter 5: Classic Cocktails Every Man Should Know Now for the recipes! In this chapter, I introduce the 25 essential cocktail recipes that every man should know how to make. We start in order of priority, and along the way I share a little trivia about some of the classic drinks.

Chapter 6: The Joy of Improvising Cocktails Once you have a good grasp on a few fundamental recipes, there is almost no end to the flavor combinations you can explore. In this chapter, I share a handful of tips that can make your mixology exploration even more fun and fruitful.

Chapter 7: How to Plan the Perfect Cocktail Party With your new appreciation for cocktail craft, you may suddenly feel the need to share the love with your friends. In this chapter, we cover the critical steps you need to take to plan a flawless cocktail party.

Appendix At the end of the book, I’ve provided a short list of cocktail terms you should know, along with some additional resources for further study and enjoyment of the cocktail craft.

Alright, I don’t know about you, but I’m getting pretty thirsty. Let’s get started, shall we?

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EXCERPT

You are reading a sample excerpt of The Distilled Man Cocktail Guide. To Purchase the full Guide, visit

www.thedistilledman.com/cocktail-guide