Over the past year, we’ve been quietly working on something special and today it’s finally live!
After I’d put out the Batch Cocktail Calculator and the Universal Syrup Calculator, my friend Chuck reached out to me and said “Why not make an iPhone and iPad app that can do all of that *and* store a database of cocktails as well? And after a lot of discussing, planning, coding, and testing we’re finally there.
I needed something practical, an app that I can use daily – behind the scenes as well as behind the bar. An app that can incorporate those calculators with the suite of bar management tools I’ve been using in a professional setting for the past thirty years, such as calculating ABV and pour cost on the fly. And, of course, my personal database of cocktail recipes – both personal and classic – that I’ve been tasting and tweaking nightly behind the bar for all these decades.
I’ve always been leery of a recipe app that would require me to enter all of my own custom recipes without the ability to get them out. So we built in the functionality to export everything to standard formats such as plain text and spreadsheet. And while we were doing that, we added the ability to share recipes with friends through the app as well as via text message or PDF.
In short, we built this app for folks like me: people that love making cocktails but also need some professional-grade tools that can help run a cocktail program. It’s built for you to enter your own black book of recipes, and I’ll be sharing all of mine with you through the app as well.
I’ve been using this thing for work for the past year and I love it. I hope you do too. It’s available now for iPhone and iPad (Android version is in the works!) for only $4.99 at the App Store. I really hope you enjoy it.
Similar to another comment, I noticed the Casino cocktail had 1 oz of orange bitters, presumably should be 1 dash. 🙂
(Would love to have a better place to give this feedback, so let me know if such exists.)
Ah good catch, thank you! As for where to share bugs, feel free to drop me a line through the contact form and I’ll reply with my email address if that’s better for you.
I’ve enjoyed browsing recipes (I’ve made a couple too) and entering a few. The interface is a little tricky but I rarely enter stuff so no biggie. However, I see the interface bit you too—the “Pendennis” sounds kind of expensive—it’s probably the 3 oz. Of Peychaud’s Bitters! I wasn’t sure how to report the typo—I assume “dashes” instead of “ozs” was intended.
Ooops!!! Thanks Mike. It should be fixed now. That’s a lot of bitters!
Hi. Thanks for the app. I think a helpful feature relates to collections. If I import a new collection and I skip duplicates when I sort by collections in recipes the collection is incomplete. For example there are 7 coffee cocktails but my collection appears to only have 1 as I skipped importing duplicates. So currently the only way to have a complete collection is to import the same recipe multiple times. I think it would be helpful to be able to download a recipe 1x and have it appear across the collections it is a part of when sorting by collection. Thanks!
Would love a filter/sort function. What do I make if I don’t want to juice? Filter for stirred drinks. Someone else is looking for lighter drink? Filter and sort by abv. Feeling like something new? Filter for recipes I’ve not tried.
Enjoying the app 2 days in. Abv and pricing functions are fascinating, love the batch calc integration and save functionality.
These are great suggestions, thank you! We are meeting here shortly (I just got back from a week of work travel) and I will get my business partner working on these ideas!
First cocktail app I’ve demo’d that actually meets muster. Some great features include all the built-in calculators, the ability to add a new ingredient to the database on the fly (ie as you are building a drink recipe), general ability to customize pre-existing data and add plenty of your own, great selection (currently growing) of established and modern classics plus JMs own drinks.
A few minor bugs such as issues with the garnishes sometimes doubling up the one selected or glitching when a custom one is added, when you then save and look at the recipe; editing a ingredient in a pre-existing recipe (imported or custom) deletes that ingredient and won’t autopopulate it with one from the database when you start typing it.
Would be great if the line view (not just the grid view) was added to the views when you open up a personal collection.
Thanks Jeff!
Thanks so much for the feedback, Randall, and I will pass all of this along to my partner here shortly – sorry for the late reply but I’ve been traveling for work all week!
Would absolutely love an Import function. I have so many cocktails in an Apple Note because cocktail apps kept failing me. Thank you!
After much testing today Chuck and I figured out the sync issue – You need to have “Drive” enabled in iCloud on each device you want to sync to. Once that is done it works great!
Will recipes be included in the $4.99 as they’re released?
Yes. The app install comes with three basic recipes so you can see how they are presented. In the ‘Collections’ tab, you’ll see additional themed recipe packs available for download. They are all completely free.
This is fantastic! Pretty much all the features I’ve wanted in a cocktail app for years, but none of them ever had them all. The sharing and library export options are especially exciting. It will be great to just easily share recipes with friends.
Question – What is the best way to submit bug notes/fix requests? I’m having trouble getting the iCloud syncing to work across my iPhone and iPad. The username is immediately populated which is great, but recipes and ingredients don’t seem to be syncing. I’m planning on using the ability of MacOS to run iPad apps to enter recipes on a laptop to make it easier. I’m assuming this will iCloud sync too? (The username immediately populated on MacOS just like iOS.)
Thanks again for developing this! I’m looking forward to finally not have to constantly look through PDF scans of paper cocktail recipe notebooks from the past 20 years.
Sometimes iCloud syncing can be a little slow, based on Apple’s servers. But if you give it a little time it should sync for you. I’ve also experienced some delays between my phone and computer, but eventually everything syncs perfectly.
If you have any further issues, just contact me through the form on this site and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Thank you for giving the app a shot!
Upvote KChambers comment wrt web version for faster entry.. and including some type of import path. I really like the app UI and calculators (thank you!). Importing 1000+ recipes one by one though, not sure I’ll fully make the switch from my other recipe app with that much manual data entry. Going to try entering several though this evening and give it a spin!
Yep, we’ve had a few people ask for this feature and we are looking into how to best implement it. Stay tuned!
Down the line, you gotta share a website version of this. It would make it a lot easier to import full cocktail libraries.
It’s been discussed and we’re looking into the best way to handle large recipe databases!
Lovely app!
A few bugs, among others not being able to enter decimal qty with Swedish keyboard. But those will probably be resolved soon.
The illustrations are lovely on your collections! A thought would be to add image generation as a feature. So you can prompt which style you want and then just take a photo of your cocktail and get nice unified images.
Thanks a lot for creating this!
Hey Martin! Thanks so much. We are working on that international keyboard issue and it should be fixed very soon. And we’re going to look into your image generation idea, thank you for that!
Hi,
Is the $4.99 one time fee or an ongoing subscription?
It’s a one-time purchase. No subscription features at this point.
Let me know when there’s an android version available!
Of course!
Fantastic! I’m really looking forward to checking it out. Please keep us updated on the Android app progress please.
Absolutely.