Reddit mentions of Artisanal Cocktails: Drinks Inspired by the Seasons from the Bar at Cyrus

Hah! Thanks, that made my day. I'm mostly self-taught though I have taken a handful of craft cocktail classes.

I've always liked the idea of spiciness with tequila but hadn't had much luck. The secret turned out to be only using a small amount. Another interesting point is that this recipe almost exactly as it is, just did not work with the Soda Stream-carbonated filtered tap water I was using. I used canned soda water and it immediately fixed the taste.

Being an OK cook helps if you're going to play around with custom syrups and infusions to have a sense of what non-traditional cocktail ingredients work together, but it mostly comes down to experimentation. When I really want to hone a recipe, I set aside an hour or more, write down a base recipe, try it, take notes, adjust proportions, then play with adding or removing more ingredients. I think it took me a couple hours to make this recipe. Part of the difficulty is you're doing a lot of tasting rapidly, so it can get hard to keep the tastes different. And the alcohol you consume in the process doesn't make it any easier either (writing things down is important). Keeping sips small helps.

If you want to play around with fancier drinks, I recommend trying out as many different cocktails from craft bars as you can, reading books like Artisinal Cocktails, Imbibe!, getting really familiar with the different varieties of each type of spirit, checking out r/cocktails, learning to cook (mostly for flavor combinations), experimenting, and always sticking with fresh ingredients because nothing that includes sour mix from a bottle is going to taste fantastic.

this is the bartender who made the vanilla-citrus bourbon:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1580089216/ref=rdr_ext_tmb

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFyr4DPbio0

http://www.scottbeattiecocktails.com/