• Handwritten and self illustrated recipes
• Hand bound with top grain leather
• Smyth sewn binding
• Convenient 4-1/4" x 6" size
• Limited production

The Potation Handbook is a unique book of recipes based on the practice of professional bartenders where they would write the secrets of their trade into a notebook that they used behind the bar. These traditional books were kept close to their producers as they would outline every aspect of what made their bar and service. They would be handed down from senior bartenders to their apprentices. They were logs of the history and progression of the bar industry. This book is the intimate experiences of Steve Carrow. He has been bartending professionally for over two decades. He details in the introduction how he was inspired by his great grandfather, who was a prohibition era bartender. He describes through the book, the interacting of a hospitality driven industry. The perspective is from a bartender whose intention is to provide an exceptional service to each guest individually. While it is primarily a recipe book, it is not a book about mixology. It is about enjoying the art of potation.

173 Cocktail Recipes from before America's Prohibition Era including numerous absinthe, champagne cocktail, julep, pousse, cobbler, and punch recipes. Book includes a resource page for ordering ingredients, 20 fun facts and stories about drink in history (George Washington's favorite drink, why Ben Franklin "flipped," how Winston Churchill's mother inspired a New York bartender to create the Manhattan, a 1913 scandal of the "I didn't inhale" variety involving Teddy Roosevelt, and over 40 turn-of-the-20th-Century beverage-related advertisements, illustrations, railroad beverage menus, and quotes. Introduction by George Herbert Walker (grandfather of former President George Herbert Walker and great-grandfather of current President George Walker Bush).