The Home Bar Guide to Tropical Cocktails: A Spirited Journey Through Suburbia’s Hidden Tiki Temples Hardcover – April 1, 2019

It teaches you how to make and use syrups which helps you be more creative, I appreciate this because setting up a bar can be expensive. The tiki home bar photos were beautiful.

I own a half-dozen books specializing in Tropical/Tiki cocktails, and rely on all of them for mixing up usually delicious cocktails. During the Pandemic, one of my hobbies became mixing a different cocktail each night for my fiancé and I to enjoy. We made it to about 150 consecutive unique recipes before remaking cocktails we had enjoyed before. Almost all of these cocktails (about 95% per my fiancé’s diary) were flagged as “make again” and only two were judged undrinkable.This book is unique among all my other volumes - all the recipes are original from the two authors, either working together or individually. When you serve one of their drinks, odds are very high the recipient has NEVER tasted it before. This is not a criticism of books that showcase the many classic tiki style drinks of yesteryear as well as modern classics being served (at least before Pandemic closures) in new or still operating Tiki bars. I love a good MaiTai, Zombie or Navy Grog and use those books as references on a weekly if not more frequent basis.So far, we’ve enjoyed every cocktail made from The Home Bar Guide to Tropical Cocktails. Fair disclosure - even if you’d made a lot of classic tiki cocktails as we did, you’ll find that the recipes in this book often require one or more ingredients you’ll have never used before. Many recipes require syrups not used in historical tiki so you’ll be busy in the kitchen if you want to try a wide cross section of the recipes. My only real criticism of this book comes from the included syrup recipes: Most make one to two QUARTS or more of syrup, and this is just crazy for a “home bar.” Unless you drink the same cocktail every single night, you’ll end up with a lot of waste unless you cut these to 1/4 or even 1/8 recipes.

Kelly and Tom have provided a peek inside the world of home tiki bars and the tropical cocktails that are created and served in that environment. They offer an inside look at bartending in home bars and how to apply what they've learned in your own bar. There are many many recipes in the book; enough to keep you mixing for years. Combined with the info needed to get started in your own home bar as well as recipes for unique syrups that will help you elevate tropical cocktails to restaurant and bar-level quality. Come for the recipes, stay for the writing and the gorgeous photography. You too can mix a Shaka Hula Bossa Nova, dim the lights, and transport yourself to the Rumpus Room and other home tiki bars. Cheers!

Beautifully put together and goregous images. The recipes are excellent and very well balanced drinks in addition to the wealth of information available in the indexes about making your own syrups, how to construct sweeter vs dry drinks. An absolute treasure! Thank you!

One of my favorite Tiki Books. The photography is beautiful, with pics of amazing cocktails, and Home Tiki Bars. It's easy to read, and includes lots of recipes, great info, and glossaries of ingredients and spirits. The photography and artwork is stellar. This book is a must for any Tiki Book Collection.

I love this book! The artwork is beautiful, a look inside the tiki underground with wonderful cocktail recipes to match. It’s not a wimpy book either! Page after page of exciting drinks. It’s perfect to display as a coffee table book, to use for parties or just a casual drink at home. Top notch!

I was excited to get this one, but you better like cracked black pepper syrup or ancho chili pepper syrup because at least half of the rum section recipes are made with these odd ingredients with a few others thrown in just rearranged different ways. The saving grace of this book is that it is well put together, designed well, and has other sections for other bases like gin and whiskey which other Tiki/tropical cocktail books usually don't have. Considering returning it since it's not exactly what I was looking for.

This book is amazing. I love the artwork as well as images of the bars and drinks. Compared to other Tiki books, this one is easy to understand and the font is amazing! It is also really down to earth in the sense of what you need to start your tiki bar.While I haven't tried any of the drinks, I am looking forward to trying them. Highly Recommended!