Cocktail apps can get tricky. Sure, it’s great to have 4,000 different recipes at your fingertips, but how is that practical when you’re at a bar looking for something new to drink (especially if you’ve already had a few)? It’s cool to know what a Fish House Punch is, but do you really want to be that guy at the bar, requesting something the bartender may not know how to make? No. No, you don’t.
The Liquor Cabinet, an app launched in 2015 by Patrick Janelle and his brothers Peter and Sean, is here to help. With 101 classic cocktails in an easy-to-navigate app (and you can’t forget the clean beautiful imagery that accompanies each cocktail and each bottle), there is literally no easier cocktail app to use.
To use the app, you simply begin by deciding whether to start with a recipe or a spirit. If you choose a recipe, you’re brought to a list of thumbnails that are easy-to-scroll through and, as we mentioned, damn gorgeous. Choosing to start with a spirit allows you to scroll through a variety of iterations on the basic six—agave, brandy, gin, rum, vodka, and miscellaneous. You can also filter your cocktail results by skill and, perhaps most useful, flavor profile.
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Starting with around 30 cocktails, Janelle said that they brought the number up to 101 with the help of their in-house cocktail expert Maxwell Britten so as to have something robust enough to be useful, but not so large as to be overwhelming.
“We started with the super classics—the Sidecar, the Manhattan, the Old-fashioned— and from there we added what we felt the game-changers and bartender favorites of the last decade. We also added the rediscovered classics that everyone has come to love and under-the-radar drinks that have been influential in the cocktail renaissance,” Janelle said.
Eventually, the goal is to add more, but not just to have content for content’s sake. Janelle added that they also hope at some point to add a feature that will allow users to see how families of cocktails are related or how a different brand of spirit (say, Maker’s Mark or Willet) would change the flavor of a cocktail.
In addition to everything else, each cocktail comes with a brief history, allowing for additional educational components. Not only can you learn to make the drinks, but you can then impress the people you’re making them for with your knowledge of said
Check out The Liquor Cabinet online, in the App Store, or on Instagram.
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