Before he became a criminal,” Steve Carrow writes in the introduction to his self-published Potation Handbook, “my great-grandfather was the most highly respected man in town.” That’s because he was a Prohibition-era bartender who refused to stop in compliance with the law. Carrow, a bartender for more than 20 years who’s currently at Naha, grew up enthralled with his great-grandfather’s stories—and with a book in which he logged and illustrated the tools of his trade. Now, with Potation Handbook, Carrow’s followed suit. A leather-bound limited edition, it contains Carrow’s hand-lettered recipes for original cocktails and his versions of classics, plus a guide to ingredients and techniques.
The Potation Handbook is available at amazon.com or by e-mailing cotb5@yahoo.com; it’s $55.