Raspberry liqueur isn't hard to find, but the bottles you can buy are all over the map. Some options are candy sweet, while others are cough syrup-strong. Making your own liqueur gives you control over how sweet and boozy the end result is—you're likely to end up with something that better suits your sugar tolerance. More

Rhubarb is one of my favorite cocktail ingredients. When rhubarb season arrived, I ran to buy as much as I could from the market that's usually first to get all the seasonal produce. When I couldn't find it, I went to the manager in a panic. "We used to stock that," he said. "But nobody likes it, so we stopped." I then dramatically flung myself onto the nearest support beam and screamed, "Noooooo!" as if I just found out Darth Vader was my father. (He is not.) Luckily, the next store had a whole display of rhubarb and promised me that they would keep stocking it throughout the season. More

Unless you were cooler than I was—which is a distinct possibility—your formative drinking years involved quite a few artificial ingredients and embarrassing choices. My early experiences with alcohol included a lot of fake fruit flavors and the occasional Zima. If peanut butter and jelly vodka had existed back then, I would have been all over it. 'm reminded of those days whenever I taste a mass-produced, flavored spirit. Even some of the high-end flavored liquors like candy and chemicals to me. If you want a flavored spirit that doesn't have a fake taste to it, you'll have a hard time finding it at the store. More

Celery bitters might sound like something that hipster mixologists invented while turning everything edible into a flavor of bitters, but cocktail curmudgeons can rest easy knowing that these bitters were actually around in the 1800s. Celery bitters went out of style around Prohibition and didn't come back until just a few years ago. A few drops of this savory and unusual concoction can completely change a classic cocktail—and inspire tons of new recipes. More

Grenadine is a pomegranate syrup—or that's what it's supposed to be. If you've ever seen a pomegranate, you know that it's not an easy fruit to juice. So somewhere along the way, grenadine makers strayed away from using real pomegranate juice and instead used corn syrup and red dye #40. That's why a lot of us think of grenadine as "that sweet stuff that turns drinks red" and avoid it like the technicolor plague. More

When I was a kid, I thought sugar cubes were a fancy sweetener reserved for British royalty and millionaires. Regular people spooned messy sugar granules out of bags or bowls, while the elite picked up chiseled blocks with tiny silver tongs (or their butlers did this for them). If you want to save a few bucks, making your own sugar cubes doesn't take much time or any fancy ingredients. But flavored sugar cubes are no harder—and they're kind of a game changer. More

I've heard some serious trash talking about amaretto—how it's too sweet or how it's for people who don't like the taste of alcohol. To those people I say: back up and leave my baby alone. Then, try a real Italian amaretto. If all you know are the sugary, bottom-shelf Amaretto Sours from bad nightclubs or your first time at a happy hour, you will revel in the beauty and balance that is quality amaretto. More

Coconut rum always makes me a little sad, because it never lives up to its promise. I want it to taste like a real coconut spiked with rum. But what you usually get is a syrupy mess. It smells good, so I psych myself up with visions of a big, fat coconut filled with rum—only to taste a viscous mouthful of sugar and artificial flavors. I had just about given up on coconut rum when I tried to make it myself. Yes! It turns out that it is possible to have a coconut rum that just tastes like rum and real coconut. More

I have to admit that the Pimm's Cup first got my attention because it's heavily garnished—sometimes with cucumbers or strawberries, other times with apples or orange slices. I'm a sucker for a cocktail that's also a snack. I take my Martinis with two olives when I am being polite in public and five when I make them at home. So it wasn't until my third Pimm's Cup that I bothered to ask the bartender what non-food items were in this magical drink. I was shocked that the answer was just "Pimm's and sparkling lemonade." More

Elderflower liqueur is a magical potion—a little bit will revive and brighten Champagne that's heading south or enhance the botanicals in a good gin. It perks up a drink by adding a little sweetness and a light floral touch. Though it was once hard to find in the states, elderflower liqueur is now such a common and essential mixing ingredient that it's called "bartender's ketchup" in cocktail circles. More