If you are like most of the lawyers that I know, then you enjoy a good cocktail. Granted, I do live in New Orleans so my perspective might be skewed, but hopefully you agree that it is a lot of fun to explore new drinks and enjoy the classic ones with friends, either when out at a bar or at your bar at home.
On July 11, 2008, I stood in line at my local AT&T store to buy an iPhone 3G on the release date. It was a long line, so there was ample time to talk to the other people, and behind me was Ted Haigh from Burbank, California. Ted does graphic design work for movies, but he is better known as Dr. Cocktail, one of America's foremost authorities on the history of the cocktail. He was in New Orleans for the opening of the new location of the Museum of the American Cocktail, a museum of which he is the Curator, and indeed, a good number of the items in the museum come from his personal collection.
Ted played a role in the creation of the iPhone app Cocktails+. The other person responsible for the content is Martin Doudoroff, a cocktail enthusiast and technology consultant in New York. The two of them also created a great online database for cocktails called CocktailDB. Ted and Martin recently agreed to divide and conquer; Ted is focusing on the online CocktailDB and Martin is focusing on further development of the iPhone app. And since then, Martin and programmer Ian Baird have added some fun new features, such as the ability to share a recipe from the app via Twitter or Facebook.
If you are looking for a good collection of cocktail recipes on your iPhone, Cocktails+ is a great choice. The problem with many cocktail collections is that some of the drinks sound like they were just made up yesterday. But Cocktails+ has great respect for the history of the cocktail. Each recipe in this app comes from a classic cocktail guide and includes a source and date. A lawyer's dream: cocktails plus citations!
Indeed, the older the recipe, the more dated the background in the app (as if you were looking at old paper) -- a fun detail. And for many cocktails, there are multiple versions from different sources over the decades. For the Sazerac, for example, there is a version from 2003 that uses Herbsaint, a version from the 1940s that uses Pernod, and a version from 1930 that uses absinthe.
It is easy to find a recipe from the over 2,000 available. You can browse by title, by flavor, by type, or by base ingredient, or you can use the search function to search by title or ingredient.
When you are looking at a recipe, if you want to learn more about any ingredient, just tap on it. This will bring you to a helpful screen describing the ingredient, including possible substitutes if you are missing something in your bar.
Although I love Cocktails+ for the classic recipes, the app also includes new recipes from three famous contemporary bartenders. Many of those, however, are a little over the top for me. For example, the recipe for a Brandy New Fashioned from famous Seattle bartender Jamie Boudreau includes only three ingredients, but one of those ingredients -- Bourdreau's Cherry Bitters -- itself is composed of almost two dozen ingredients and takes over four weeks to make. Sounds like a fun drink to order and appreciate at a bar, but I seriously doubt I would take the time to make one.
You can mark a recipe as a favorite, but I wish that the app offered the ability to add notes. Martin tells me that this is the #1 requested new feature for the app, so perhaps we will see this added in the future. It would also be nice to be able to add new recipes that you come across. But what Cocktails+ offers now is still a great app. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal reviewed several iPhone cocktail apps earlier this year, and Cocktails+ was one of its favorites. You can read the article here, although you may need to be a Wall Street Journal subscriber for that link to work.
If you want to see Cocktails+ in action, you can click here to see a video of the app provided by the developer.
But better, yet just download the app right now ... FOR FREE. I was ready to recommend Cocktails+ at its regular price of $9.99. But the developer is offering a special THIS WEEK ONLY -- you can currently download the Cocktails+ app for free as a part of a promotion of the new "Publish to Facebook" feature. This offer ends this Sunday, April 12, so be sure that you download the app now.
Cheers!