I loved sifting through this collection of tasty looking alcohol-free cocktails! Some of these recipes look so classy and bougie, and would be a blast to serve at baby showers or bridal showers for those who don't drink. A great addition to any home bar!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me a free digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Dry by Clare Liardet is full of flavorful but non-alcoholic drinks. When I first started reading through the cookbook, I found myself marking recipe after recipe to try. The recipes serve from one to four. They are perfect when you want a special drink for yourself. They could easily be multiplied for a larger group. A few of my favorites are the tropical morning smoothie, blueberry julep, roasted peach lemonade, and espresso mint martini. This is one cookbook that I will definitely be adding to my bookshelf!

This was a fun book. I was very interested because my husband doesn't drink alcohol due to his family's history. Usually he gets a soda or virgin Shirley Temple but I wanted to explore some variety so he wouldn't feel left out. I haven't tried all the recipes but have enjoyed the book and look forward to trying more of them. The pictures are stunning and organized well. I've learned so much on the different equipment and look forward to entertaining family and friends during the holiday season.

Fancy and creative way of making drinks without alcohol for those that still want something interesting.

Just because you don't want to drink alcohol, Claire Liadet shows us that you can have non-alcoholic drinks that are just as fancy and taste wonderful. Dry: Delicious Handcrafted Cocktails and Other Clever Concoctions―Seasonal, Refreshing, Alcohol-Free is an excellent primer on preparing beautiful, flavorful drinks, all alcohol free.

Liadet includes a chapter on equipment and also a chapter on ingredients; these chapters are helpful for anyone who is behind the bar mixing both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, and the information is timely and easy to understand. There are recipes for simple syrups and shrubs that can serve as a base for a variety of the drinks included. I especially liked the Still Rose Lemonade, as well as the similar Roasted Peach Lemonade. A delicious hot drink is the Warming Dark Berry Shrub. The book features an excellent Autumn Sangria with apple, pear, orange, cherry and ginger flavors, which would be a hit for any crowd.

The beautiful photographs make the drinks very tempting, and it's nice when entertaining to be able to mix for both adults and children. The book includes both hot and cold drinks, and some can be doubled or tripled so they can be served in a punchbowl or drink dispenser with garnishes like fruits, vegetables, and herbs. You'll never be short on ideas for flavorful beverages no matter what the occasion.

All told, if you're one who likes to experiment with fancy drinks, enjoys entertaining, and likes to sit back and enjoy a drink without alcohol, this is a valuable resource for you. It makes an excellent addition to a cookbook library.

Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this book.

I received an Advanced Reader Copy from The Experiment for my unbiased opinion of the book. What a refreshing change in a mixology book! I fell head over heels in love with this alcohol-free book. I tried blood orange sunrise, beet virgin mary, ginger fever, autumn sangria, and loved them all. It will part of my every day entertaining reference book!

I love mixology books, especially the simple ones that create interesting cocktails without a lot of time consuming homemade syrups, cordials, and juices. I don’t mind odd ingredients - I recently wrote a blog post solely about a new bergamot amaro - but I do mind special equipment (juicers!). So it was with a little trepidation that I requested Dry from NetGalley. Not because I fear the non-alcoholic cocktail, but rather because I suspected each recipe would require a specialty homemade syrup, cordial, and/or juice.

The book starts innocently enough with an illustrated overview of basic equipment - shaker, strainer, muddler, etc. However, the centrifugal juicer and the soda stream were listed as a basic pieces of equipment. That didn’t bode well for me. However, the list of staple ingredients reassured me: fruit, vegetables, bitters, celery salt, fresh ginger, jasmine tea flowers, kombucha, Himalayan salt, raw honey, rose water, tamarind, turmeric, mixers, Szechuan peppercorns. I actually could find all of that in my local grocery store. And then came the recipes for the syrups and shrubs. Each recipe was well written and easy to follow; unfortunately, the smallest yield was ten ounces and the recipes are used only teaspoons at a time in the drink recipes.

After the introductory material, the book is divided into six chapters of eight drink recipes apiece. Each chapter has a particular time of day or season as its theme: new starts, Friday nights, lazy Sundays, long summers, wood smoke warmers, fireside glow. The drink recipes themselves were also well written and fairly easy to follow. The ingredients were listed down the left side of the page, with the numbered paragraph recipe steps written on the right. At times, the recipe steps did assume that the reader had some basic knowledge of mixology, as they combined activities without precise instructions. For example: “Stir well before pouring into your glass rimmed with lemon juice and Himalayan salt, and filled with ice cubes.” Rather than containing headnotes, the recipes contained additional notes afterward that focused on “Flavor,” “Adapt,” “Healthy,” “Inspiration,” and so on. The vast majority of the drink recipes were written to yield one or two servings, which was clearly indicated under the recipe title. The author stayed true to her dry theme, and never wrote a note after any recipe that recommended which alcohol to blend with the drink recipe. While I missed that extra guidance, I admired the author’s commitment to the theme.

The full color photography was striking. Each recipe was accompanied by at least one well styled full color photograph of the drink that illustrated what the final product looked like and how it should be served. I really appreciated seeing the final product because it gave me a sense of the color, viscosity, garnish, and glassware of the recipe. Interspersed throughout the book are full color photographs of the ingredients and other appropriate accent photographs.

I actually would buy this book for myself and for my friends who don’t drink alcohol. The dreaded juicer only appeared in less than five of the forty-eight recipes and, by the end of the book, I didn’t recall any recipes requiring the soda stream. The ingredients for each cocktail were reasonably obtainable. Although many of the recipes required a homemade syrup or shrub or other recipe, for some reason, it didn’t seem all the daunting. It could be because all the recipes in the introduction were extremely simple, or it could be that there just weren’t that many recipes requiring them. Either way, it seemed like there were more than a few recipes that I would like to try.

I have yet to prepare any of the drink recipes in this book. When I do, I will update this review.

Not a fan of the cover. While DRY is prominent on the cover, it also seems as though the front cover itself is "dry". My cover on the download is different, which I like, from this front cover though. Can't say there isn't much I don't like about the recipes. All are adaptable to make them "non-virgin" which is nice. There aren't too many recipes in which everyone can enjoy the layers of flavors and not have the alcohol. You don't feel segregated from everyone else. The Beet Virgin Mary, while I haven't tried, is not on my favorite list. I enjoyed the Wood Smoke warmers section the most and I like the section titles too! This is not your run-of-the miller as the ingredients are out there, or may be, to some. I cook with a lot of these flavors and enjoy them and some I wouldn't ever consider putting into a drink, such as tamarind or cardamom. I look forward to exploring and working my way up to try the more unexpected recipes with unexpected ingredients!

DRY is a luscious everything-you-need guide for the new mocktail mixologist. Offers 48 recipes for elegant handcrafted cocktails and other equally delicious concoctions — all alcohol-free. From Beet Virgin Marys to Chile and Lime Margaritas, Raspberry and Lavender Shrubs to Espresso Mint Martinis, this gift-worthy handbook has you covered, including info on equipment, ingredients and simple syrup recipes. 5/5

Pub Date 02 Oct 2018

Thanks to the The Experiment and NetGalley for the review copy. Opinions are fully mine.

#Dry #NetGalley

A delicious and thirst-inducing collection of alcohol-free cocktails (though if you were so inclined, you could add alcohol to any of these drinks). The recipes are all divided by seasons, with plenty of refreshing summer drinks, and nice warm wintery drinks (I especially like the sound of that espresso mint martini).

Definitely recommend if you're looking for a collection of drink recipes that will appeal to everyone at the party, or if you just don't want to have any alcohol.

As someone who doesn't drink a lot, and is often the designated driver for friends, I would be delighted to drink any number of these non-alcoholic cocktails. Creative flavor combinations, charming pen-and-ink illustrations, and full-color photos to accompany the recipes.

I thought this book was a great idea and I enjoyed it, but I have to say I had some issues with the nutritional claims made for some of the fruit employed in these drinks!

The idea behind this, which I think is great, is to supply recipes for an assortment of alcohol-free, fruit and vegetable drinks, and while some were not to my personal taste, most of them sounded delicious and I plan on trying some of them out. I think the best way to enjoy these is to forget about any nutritional benefits and simply enjoy a good drink made with fresh fruit, which is plenty good enough for me!

Fresh fruit is good for you, better than store-bought, processed fruit juice, because it contains fiber in a natural whole fruit. It also contains vitamins and minerals, but we need to be careful about what claims we make for what a given fruit contains. For example, pineapple is a good source for manganese and vitamin C, but it has no other significant value nutritionally and it's misleading to suggest that it does.

While grapefruit does have vitamin C it has less than half the potassium that a banana does. Pink grapefruit does have lycopene which is an antioxidant, but note that some fruits such as grapefruit can interfere with drug absorption, so if you plan on enjoying a lot of fruit and fruit drinks, be sure to run your plan by your doctor for advice on whether your drug regimen is going to be adversely affected by it - just to be safe!

Note also that rhubarb leaves are toxic, but the stems have a wide variety of vitamins (at low levels), a decent amount of vitamin k, and low levels of an assortment of minerals. The claim that ginger root has antibacterial, ani-inflammatory, or antiviral properties needs to be taken with a pinch of that Himalayan salt. Ginger can cause problems too, including allergic reactions, and there’s no medical evidence that it has any ability to control nausea.

There’s also no evidence that Himalayan salt is any better for you than regular salt either, and raw Himalayan salt can contain lead if it’s not purified. The pink color is from dead microorganisms that lived in the ocean where this was formed. Himalayan salt is really just sea salt that's over a hundred million years old so you could argue that it's not exactly fresh!

Since raw honey is a potential source of botulism, it’s not recommended for very young children. It does contain more nutrients than processed honey, but it also contains a lot of calories. In my non-medical opinion, if you’re eating a healthy diet anyway, raw honey isn’t going to contribute anything you’ll miss, so you may as well use the processed kind. Also, while turmeric is related to the ginger plant, there’s no medical evidence that this has any health properties either.

The blood orange on the other hand is indeed colored red by anthocyanins and may - possibly, it’s too early to call - have some value in aiding weight loss. But there isn't just one kind of blood orange. They come in quite a variety and some varieties are sweeter than others.

So like I said, setting the nutrition claims to one side and enjoying the drinks simply for the fun and the fresh fruit and veggies seems to me to be a winning plan. That's what I plan on doing. On that basis I recommend this book as a worthy read.

Everyone should have this book on their cookbook shelf. Or shelves. I have to admit, I have a whole bookcase of tombs that made the cut over four decades of moves, and shifts in my tastes. But the best have survived, and this book, "Dry," deserves its place on my shelf. The pictures of the cocktails are gorgeous. The choice of ingredients in the many drinks are trendy, but in a good way. I'm old enough to look at a recipe and know what it will taste like before I even shop for the ingredients. That's what this book is like. Scrolling from page to page, my mouth waters and I taste the drink without even lifting a finger. But then I did. I tested my favorites and yum. Some were complicated flavors, some familiar, but all were remarkable.

I intend to use this book as my canon of cocktails. "Mr. Boston's Bartender" seems out of date next to "Dry." Yes, no alcohol is required, or notated in the tomb, but if you're like me, you'll read the recipes and think, "hmm, I know the exact vodka, or gin, or tequila, or rum that will go perfect with this!" hahahahahaha FIVE STARS This book will stay on my shelf till the day I die.

"Dry" is filled with drinkable and sipable recipes for any time of day and any time of year. The book starts with a good reference for stocking your kitchen with ingredients and supplies to be able to create all sorts of tasty beverages that provide a cocktail or other experience without including any alcohol. So many great flavor pairings are included through the recipes and so many different ways of serving up a tasty concoction. I anticipate the Blueberry Julep is going to be a favorite summer sipper as I utilize a locally made ginger beer and blueberries from the local farmers market. The Ginger, Tumeric & Chile Tea looks like just the warming toddy to ward of the feeling of cold/flu approaching.

Free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Book is available October 2nd.

I love that this book has some great recipes that are non-alcoholic drinks. I can't wait to try several of them.