Death & Co Welcome Home: [A Cocktail Recipe Book] Review (2026)

Who this cocktail book is for

Welcome Home is aimed squarely at home bartenders rather than working bar staff, which sets it apart from the original Death & Co book that documented the bar's professional repertoire. The authors, the same team behind the Death & Co hospitality group along with Devon Tarby and Tyson Buhler, built this collection specifically around recipes that work with a home kitchen's tools and a realistically stocked home bar rather than commercial bar equipment. Anyone who already enjoys Death & Co's cocktail style but has struggled to recreate bar quality drinks at home, or who wants explicit guidance on what to stock and how to build a home bar from scratch, is the core audience here more than someone shopping for a first ever cocktail book.

What is inside the book

The hardcover runs 320 pages, published by Ten Speed Press in November 2021, and contains more than 600 recipes drawn from classics, low alcohol and nonalcoholic drinks, plus signature creations from Death & Co's New York, Los Angeles and Denver locations. That range means the book covers more than just spirit forward cocktails, with dedicated space for lower proof and alcohol free options that a lot of single style recipe books skip entirely. The recipes are organized with home preparation in mind, and the book includes guidance on stocking a home bar incrementally rather than assuming a fully built out liquor cabinet from page one, which is a meaningfully different approach from a straight recipe index.

Using it to build a home bar

Because the book explicitly walks through stocking a home bar, it works well as a starting reference rather than something you need a fully equipped bar to use on day one, with recipes that scale in complexity as your ingredient collection grows. The mix of classics, low ABV and nonalcoholic recipes alongside Death & Co's own creations means there is something usable on a random Tuesday night as well as for a dedicated cocktail party, rather than every recipe requiring a trip to a specialty liquor store. With 600 plus recipes across 320 pages, it functions well as a long term reference to return to as your bar grows, rather than a book you work through once and set aside.

How it compares with other Death & Co and cocktail books

Compared with the original Death & Co: Modern Classic Cocktails, which documents the bar's professional menu and technique in more bartender focused detail, Welcome Home leans further toward home practicality, and readers who already own the original book may notice some conceptual overlap between the two, since both come from the same team and cocktail philosophy. Against Cocktail Codex, also written by Day, Fauchald and Kaplan, this book favors concrete named recipes over the template based teaching approach Codex uses, so readers who want to understand cocktail structure deeply may prefer Codex, while readers who want a large, ready to use recipe collection will likely prefer Welcome Home. Cocktails Illustrated from America's Test Kitchen scores slightly higher in our guide, generally for its more rigorously tested, beginner friendly format.

Verdict and who might want a different book

For a home bartender who wants Death & Co quality recipes built specifically for a home kitchen, including low ABV and nonalcoholic options, this book matches our score of 8.9 out of 10 and is one of the stronger recipe focused picks in this guide. It rewards readers who want a large, varied recipe collection they can grow into over time. Anyone who already owns the original Death & Co book should expect some overlap in style and philosophy, and readers who want to learn cocktail theory and build their own drinks from scratch, rather than follow named recipes, will likely get more out of Cocktail Codex instead.

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