Imbibe Magazine

Imbibe is your ultimate guide to drinks culture, from wine, spirits and beer to coffee, tea and everything in between. Every issue features the world’s top drink destinations, recipes, how-tos and in-depth stories covering the fascinating people, places and flavors of liquid culture.

Recipe Index

Cheers to Twenty

Imbibe Magazine • NUMBER 122 JULY/AUGUST 2026

imbibemagazine.com • @imbibe Still thirsty? Find us online for even more of the best of liquid culture.

What We're Drinking Now: Covalle Tomato-Water Gin

At the Market: Apricots

A Few of Our Favorite Things

Anatomy of a Drink: Bywater • As Imbibe celebrates its 20th anniversary, we’re looking back at some of the influential recipes that shaped the last two decades.

Three Ways: Bramble

Take 5: Drinks for Summer Adventuring • As the dog days of summer unfold, there’s no better time to load up your beach bag, picnic basket, or camping cooler with something refreshing to help you beat the heat. So we asked beverage pros across the country: WHAT’S YOUR GO-TO DRINK FOR SUMMER ADVENTURING?

Behind the Scenes: Honeysuckle • In a brick-walled space in North Philadelphia lies Honeysuckle, a fine dining restaurant from chefowners Omar Tate and Cybille St. Aude-Tate. Prior to its 2025 debut, Honeysuckle had been a pop-up, supper club, and grocery store–café named Honeysuckle Provisions (Omar calls the latter “a pandemic pivot”). In its latest iteration, Honeysuckle serves seasonal drinks and tasting menus that tell nuanced stories about Black cultures and traditions. It’s an ambitious operation with clamoring crowds that one critic recently crowned, “Philly’s most important restaurant.”

Q&A with Toby Maloney • Toby Maloney has been mixing drinks for more than 30 years. How many drinks? He estimates more than 500,000 but less than a million. “Let’s call it an Olympic swimming pool’s worth,” he says in his new book, The Classic Cocktail Sessions, written with Emma Janzen and published in June. Maloney has logged hours behind bars from New York to Nashville to Tokyo, and his James Beard Award–winning Chicago spot The Violet Hour was a craft cocktail institution. These days, Maloney is happy to play with the projects that appeal to him (like rehabbing a ’70s dive bar in Vancouver, Washington) and pass along as much of his knowledge as he can to the next generation. We sat down for a chat with Maloney about the scope of the new book, life post-Violet Hour, and lessons learned from the long arc of his career.

MIxopedia: Shelter From the Storm • By the late 20th century, tiki bars looked to be nearing the end of a seven-decade run. Donald Trump closed the Trader Vic’s shortly after he bought New York’s Plaza Hotel in 1988, claiming it had become “tacky.” The bars that survived were largely considered cheesy, serving overly sweet, neon-colored drinks with sad little umbrellas in settings fit only for Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Tiki appeared to be a relic destined for certain oblivion.

Taste Test: Root Beer • With literal roots in American history—indigenous tribes like the Choctaw and Cherokee would make infused beverages from sarsaparilla and sassafras plants, the flavors traditionally associated with root beer—the classic soda today inhabits a dual space of craft-maker-favorite and nostalgic darling. So whether you’re stocking the cooler for summer gatherings, whipping up root beer floats, or simply cracking a cold one on a hot day, delicious options abound.

Tech Sheet: Hops, from farm to glass • A key component in brewing for millennia, hops are little flowers that pack big flavor. The Humulus lupulus plant is a rhizome whose cone-shaped flowers are filled with lupulin—a powdery substance made of alpha acids and essential oils—that gives beer its signature bitter bite and aromatics, from pine tree to...