Introduction - what is Premium?

We've packed Premium full of unique features designed to make Difford's Guide more useful and enjoyable.

Features include:

Advanced cocktail search - Search our enormous database of over 15,000 cocktail recipes by ingredient combinations with advanced criteria and filtering.
Early access to new cocktails - view them before they are widely published.
Copy, download and print recipes - copy & paste for your own notes and download recipes.
Specify the brands you want to see in individual recipes - personalise cocktails to the extent that you can have a different brand of vermouth in your Negroni to your Manhattan.
Add custom products and ingredients to the recipes you create - no longer having to wait for me to add an ingredient or new brand.
Add up to 300 of your own cocktail recipes - publish your own cocktails and share them with the community or opt to keep them private.
Create recipe collections - build your personal collections of cocktails for occasions, by style or as virtual menus.
Create multiple cabinets - a virtual representation of what's in your bar, superyacht and caravan.
Your personal cocktail dashboard - quick access to all your cocktail information.
A live stream of community comments - see at a glance from your dashboard what people are talking about.
Go ad free - view Difford's Guide without adverts.

All of this and more for less than £1 per week (US$1.04 / EUR€0.98 / AU$1.50). And we're not stopping there...we live and breathe cocktails and tech, and we have more features already lined up in the pipeline. Exclusive to Premium members!

Why have you done this?

During the Pandemic, we saw how many people were discovering the joy of cocktails and wanting to learn, engage and share. We responded by allowing you to personalise Difford's Guide and interrogate our databases to find your perfect cocktail and interact with our 40,000+ cocktails, brands and editorial pages.

Once we started down this path, we realised there is no end to the stuff we could build to make Difford's Guide even more useful and enjoyable. We're a small family business but with big ideas, so we've invested massively in IT development to enhance the experience we offer. Our quest is to make Difford's Guide the best and most interactive resource for the cocktail cognoscente and Discerning Drinkers in general, and with your support we can continue to improve, grow and thrive.

I'm already a community member, what are you taking away from me?

The short answer is...not much. We remain committed to being a free-to-use website and anyone can continue to visit Difford's Guide and view cocktail recipes, brands and editorials for free, "Just Visiting".

For those who have signed up to our community over the last couple of years, you can still access almost all the features you've enjoyed for free with our free "Basic Membership". However, to keep pace with the rising server and support costs of providing personalisation technology to many hundreds of thousands of people, some features such as personal notes and selecting preferred brands in cocktail recipes will be restricted to Premium Members, which we hope you'll understand.

Preferred brands in cocktail recipes

The brands we recommend in 'Difford's Guide cocktail recipes' are carefully selected and it's the support of these brands that keeps our website free-to-use. However, for a 'community recipe' you add, you're free to select brands of your choice.

Previously, the brands you placed in Your Ingredients would automatically be shown in 'Difford's Guide recipes'. This caused much confusion to those who had multiple brands in the same category and led to people changing brands in recipes without intending to.

Now, our recommended brand or generic ingredient will display in 'Difford's Guide recipes' and can only be changed by Premium members using our new preferred brand function. This allows Premium members to set a preferred brand across a generic category (e.g. Ketel One for vodka) &/or set preferred brands for individual recipes (e.g. a different brand of vermouth in your Negroni to your Manhattan).

In summary...

Rest assured; everyone can still view Difford's Guide for free without the need to join – Just visiting!

We'll also keep FREE Basic Membership allowing interactivity such as commenting and a level of customisation.

In addition, we now offer a third option Premium Membership which offers much more, and with even more coming in the months ahead. Your support will help us invest to ensure Difford's Guide continues to improve.

Whether you're a professional bartender seeking to build your career or a home cocktail enthusiast looking to discover and enjoy a pastime, I hope you'll consider becoming a Premium Member of our community.

Find out more and claim your 14-day free trial

For more information see Premium FAQs & How to use