Bartenders' Manual: And a guide for hotels and restaurants

About Harry Johnson. Harry Johnson was originally from Prussia and was born in Konigsberg in 1845. In 1861 he arrived in San Francisco as a young sailor, where his crew left him to heal a broken arm and hip. At the age of barely sixteen, Johnson then claims to have made his way as a kitchen boy and bartender at the Union Hotel, eventually managing to work his way up to bar manager. It was also in San Francisco that he first met Jerry Thomas, who was also in the city at the time and with whom he would share a lifelong rivalry.. In 1869, Johnson left the West Coast and moved to Chicago, where he opened his first bar in the same year. After the Great Chicago Fire just two years later, which destroyed large parts of the city, including Harry Johnson's bar, he left the metropolis and moved to New York City. There, in 1877, he acquired the "Little Jumbo" bar, where Jerry Thomas had previously worked - presumably a deliberate provocation. Three years later, the rivalry between the two reached its climax when Johnson entered Thomas' bar and insulted him as an amateur.. In 1890, Harry Johnson retired from the restaurant business and opened a consulting agency for bar management. He died in 1933 at the age of 87.. Harry Johnson's legacy. First published in the 1860s and revised several times, Harry Johnson's Bartenders' Manual is one of the classics of bar literature and one of the oldest books on the subject. The author was one of the first bartenders ever to not only think seriously and fundamentally about his profession, but also to put his experiences and views down on paper and write a form of professional textbook for beginners and professionals alike. He thus laid the foundation for many generations to come and stands alongside Jerry Thomas at the beginning of a long list of famous bartenders. However, his claim that he wrote the first version of his book in 1860 while Jerry Thomas was still alive must probably be relegated to the realm of legend.. In his work, Harry Johnson takes the reader back to a time when bartenders apparently still had to be admonished not to chew on a toothpick or a cigar, spit on the floor or indulge in other bad habits during a job interview. He gives advice on running a bar as well as dealing with staff and guests, how to handle kegs of beer and bottles of wine, how a bar should be equipped, how to keep the books, what inventory a bar should have and much more. The second half of the book is made up of recipes for cocktails, punches, punch and other drinks that were "in vogue" in Europe and the USA at the time. The presumably oldest written mention of the Martini cocktail can be found in it, as well as instructions for mixing absinthe and frapping champagne.. The Bartender's Handbook is not only a window into the past, it also shows how professional some bartenders were even back then - a fact that we all too often forget or ignore nowadays, associating the USA of the 19th century instead with dusty Western saloons and dirty beer glasses. While much of it may seem outdated due to its age - who still uses whole blocks of ice or keeps spittoons on hand for customers, for example - this book is nevertheless a must-read for professionals and enthusiastic hobbyists alike and provides valuable insights into the beginnings of modern bar culture.. About the present edition. Original editions of this remarkable work are naturally very difficult to obtain and expensive. Often, old editions were simply copied and sold for new editions, and the quality visibly suffered: individual pages were scanned crookedly, whole passages are only poorly legible or not legible at all. With this new publication of the 1934-edition, Harry Johnson's book finally receives a new, tidy robe that is as close as possible to the original edition.