12 Best Cocktail Recipe Books of 2024

We’re all for lining our bar cart with exclusive bottles, but when it comes to the huge number of additional ingredients many of the new wave cocktail recipes require, we’re more Marie Kondo. Aloe vera and sriracha bitters? Really?

In this neat edit, prolific drinks writer, Alice Lascelles, has created a capsule collection of 12 classic cocktails requiring just a few core ingredients, followed by six twists to try your hand at.

There’s so much inspiration to be found here, from insider trade secrets to tips to setting up your home bar, all partnered with stunning photography. Buy it, love it, and add it to your list of go-to gifts for the guy who has everything.

Fancy a glimpse behind the scenes at London’s legendary Connaught Bar? Located in the heart of Mayfair, The Connaught and its team of master mixologists are celebrated around the world for their creative cocktails, winning the title of World’s Best Bar not once but twice.

For the first time, this book gives readers the opportunity to recreate 100 signature serves from the famous bar, with stories and instructions on how to perfect each one. Whether you want to create the famous ambience at home, or simply shake (or stir) up your drinks repertoire, we think this may be the ultimate read for cocktail lovers.

Let’s face it, the thing that puts many of us off handcrafting a cocktail at home – as opposed to, say, cracking open a cold can come 5pm – is the effort of it all. But not anymore. This genius cocktail bible is divided into three chapters, all designed with one aim in mind: to create a top-tier tipple in minimal time, with maximum results.

The quickest of the lot are featured in the chapter, No Shake, Sherlock; these drinks require little to no prep and call for a quick combo of your classic spirits and mixers. Then there’s Shake It Up, which features slightly more complex concoctions requiring the Bond treatment (that’s a shake or a stir). For more special occasion serves, flick on through to Magnificent Mixes, which call for a little more prep and unusual ingredients.

If you're anything like us, by now you'll have amassed a pretty solid selection of gin. Give your bottles a new lease of life with this debut book from Hendrick's, written by global ambassador and award-winning gin specialist Ally Martin.

Naturally, it explains how to create the perfect G&T, but beyond the classics, you'll also find recipes for all seasons and occasions, using a wide variety of ingredients.

Saturday Kitchen regular, Olly Smith, promises the most stylish of booze cruises, all from the comfort of your own home.

Arranged by regions, this book will take you on a journey from the prohibition-inspired speakeasy drinks of the US to the art of the Japanese Izakaya. You'll rustle up Italian spritzes, Mexican margaritas, Korean soju sippers — and that's before you've even started on Brazil’s many caipirinha-based classics, Singapore's slings and West India's rum punches.

It's the perfect guide to every country's signature serves, for those with wanderlust.

Picking up tips and tricks from some of the best bartenders in the world, this book promises to have you making better cocktails by the time you turn the last page.

Taking you back to basics, you'll learn the fundamental principles of a great cocktail — balance, dilution — as well as nerdy facts that are sure to come in useful in a pub quiz at some point.

In order to learn how to make delicious drinks, you must first understand why they taste so, well, delicious. Burgess helps you do just that by exploring cocktail structure, flavour profiles and how the techniques used can impact the result. After a deep dive into cocktails at their most elemental, you can put your new-found knowledge into practice, with 80 recipes organised by type (stirred, bitter, sour, champagne-based...).

Rather than list the basic recipe and leave it at that, Burgess suggests different avenues – be that tweaking an ingredient or adopting an alternative technique – to ensure the journey to finding your new favourite is far from one-dimensional. You’ll have a lot of fun with this book.

Regarding Cocktails is the single opus from the late, great Sasha Petraske, who changed the landscape of mixology with his speakeasy-style bar, Milk & Honey.

Included are 85 cocktail recipes from his repertoire, alongside tales from the bartenders he personally trained and Sasha’s own advice for keeping a high-end home bar. It’s a classic for a reason.

Joy of Mixology quickly became a cult classic when it was first published in 2003, but the 15th anniversary edition boasts pages of new material, including more cocktail recipes and smart revisions to the long-loved originals.

Regan offers acute insight into the cocktail-making revival of the past two decades, which won’t fail to inspire both professionals and home mixologists for many more years to come.

The premise behind The Alcorithm may seem simple, but there’s far more at play. Using the algorithm “if you like this, you’ll love...”, Buckhaven introduces you to delicious drops you may be yet to discover.

Sure, some are a little more straight-forward, but who’d have thought that vintage champagne devotees should try drinking brown porter? Not us, that’s for sure. From floral to fruity, smoky to spicy, this invaluable tome will tell you how to hit every flavour high note.

With A Sense of Place, Glasgow-born Broom has written the definitive guide to Scotch whisky. Evocative and explorative, Broom lays bare the landscape of Scotland’s national drink, weaving in stories and photography of the people and distilleries behind each dram.

No self-confessed whisky connoisseur should be without a copy on their coffee table.

Ukrainian vodka Dima’s made it on to our best vodka for 2024 list, so we were excited to put it to work with this vodka recipe book (only when the diary for the following morning had been cleared, might we add). Curated by acclaimed mixologist, Tony Pescatori, the recipes cover both the classics and more daring concoctions, which handily come complete with a QR video code.

There’s insight into the Ukrainian bar scene as well as how to make pickles (the MVP of drinking snacks), but the best bit? £5 from every sale goes towards providing first aid kits in Ukraine.