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iPhone
Cocktails
Posted 07/24/2008 at 2:34:30pm | by Adam Berenstain

Cocktails screenshot
You'll feel special after one of these, all right.

Looking for the perfect drink to celebrate season two of Mad Men? Look no further: Cocktails puts more than 1000 high-quality drink recipes on your iPhone or iPod touch.

Browsing drinks is a lot like browsing your device’s contacts or music library. You can search by scrolling, by typing an ingredient or drink’s name, or by tapping a letter of the alphabet to jump to a particular spot in Cocktails’ catalog. You can also narrow searches by main ingredient, by favorites, and more. Each drink’s entry lists its name, ingredients, and even an icon showing the proper glass to use when serving. Tapping a drink brings up its recipe, and if variations exist, you can see each one with a flick of your finger.

Cocktails feels more like a mixologist’s labor of love than a mere database. Older recipes - and many of Cocktails' recipes date back as far as the 1880s - appear on age-yellowed “paper” while newer recipes sport off-white backgrounds. It’s a nice touch that tells you that much more about a drink at a glance. A tap lets you designate a recipe as a favorite, putting a faded star just behind the recipe’s text (the star appears in Cocktails’ main drink list, too). Cocktails lets you share recipes by email and Twitter (if the Twitterific application is installed on your device), and while it’s not an essential feature, it’s nice to be able to swap new discoveries easily. More useful is a setting that lets you switch from imperial to metric measurement in all recipes.

The only thing we were left thirsty for was more powerful features. For instance, we’d love to be able to find recipes by telling Cocktail what ingredients we have on hand instead of hunting to see what we can make. CocktailDB.com supplies Cocktails’ information, and the website offers archives of barware and ingredients and links to this information in its recipes. These features would be amazing on the go, but Cocktails doesn’t currently offer them.

THE BOTTOM LINE
Cocktails is easy to use and has more recipes than even Don Draper would know what to do with, but that’s the least we’d expect from an application like this. That Cocktails does its thing with style is a big plus, but we hope to see more features and options in future versions.

Cocktails
COMPANY: Skorpiostech, Inc.
CONTACT: www.cocktails.cocktaildb.com
PRICE: $9.99
REQUIREMENTS: iPhone or iPod touch with 2.0 Software Update

A wide range of great recipes. Solid search and browsing functions. Classy design.
Features and options feel a bit limited and basic.
3/5
COMMENTS
avatarThis is so useful to have

This is so useful to have drink recipes at a bar when a bar tender doesn't know how to make your drink they are always willing to make it if you tell them since they like knowing how to make more drinks. I have a random feature that lets me find say a random drink that includes vodka or some other liquor. I think sometimes i'm going to end up in alcohol rehab with the amount i drink. A lounge i started going to uses a different cranberry juice then every other place i haven't figured out what it is yet but it's so much better then the ocean spray garbage they use at every other bar.

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