The Spirit World

While sipping a sazerac one evening during this year’s Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans, I noticed a fellow patron conferring with the bartender over an iPhone. I guessed that this person must surely be using the new Cocktails iPhone application to share the recipe of a drink he wanted to order. Now that’s a good idea!Cocktails, developed by Skorpiostecch, and based on the excellent CocktailDB Web site includes thousands of classic cocktail recipes, many providing several variations on a single drink. (To use it, you’ll need an iPhone or iPod Touch running version 2.1 of the iPhone software. Cocktails is $4.99 from the iTunes App Store.

Each drink recipe occupies its own page, with ingredients, mixing instructions, and a citation of the drink’s source. Classic cocktail enthusiasts will love the detailed sourcing.

You can search by drink name, ingredients, or tag, and Cocktails provides the ability to mark drinks as favorites. If your search turns up a drink for which there is more than one recipe, you can reach the alternate versions with a simple tap. You can also quickly send recipe links via email, SMS, or Twitter (if you have the Twitterific iPhone app installed). Best of all for iPod Touch users, Cocktails doesn’t require an Internet connection: the database is stored on your device.

I’ve used Cocktails frequently in my home bar with great results. I reviewed it on the first episode of my iPhone application podcast, App Store Pundit (Web site, iTunes). Unfortunately, Cocktails does not contain the full contents of CocktailDB, but each version of the app has added more recipes. Upgrades have been free, by the way. It’s also important to note that the selection of recipes here leans strongly toward the classics, rather than more recent, and less eclectic offerings you might find in a college bar. If sheer volume, and newness are what you seek, there are several other iPhone drink recipe apps available.

I would love to see Cocktails add the ability to make notes and attach them to favored recipes. I don’t believe the iPhone app interface would allow the creation of one’s own recipes, but the ability to note a personal substitution or opinion would be welcome.

At $4.99, Cocktails is priced fairly, and the developer continues to make improvements in the app itself, along with additional recipes.