I will continue to review iPhone cocktail apps as we move into 2010 and beyond. The application I’m reviewing in this edition is “Drink Genie,” an application developed by Synitech Studio whose 10,000+ recipes were entered “…individually, by a licensed bartender.” Given that simply paying my $60 to the Alcoholic Beverage Laws Enforcement commission of Oklahoma confers upon me the title “licensed bartender” you’ll understand why that claim doesn’t do much for me. But, as always, a preface in case this is your first time reading one of these reviews. I’m evaluating the applications in 5 areas:

• Usability: Intuitive search functions? Screen go dark too quickly? Conversion options? This will tell you.
• Quality and Depth: Does its Mai Tai call for Creme de Noyaux? Is it chock-full of 20 “Sex on the Beach” variations? If so, fail.
• Features: Is it feature-rich with background information on drinks? Does it allow favorites and ratings to be stored/sorted. If so, it should fare well.
• Likability: Subjective, but important. If the app is fun to use or gorgeously-designed or is simply a pleasure to use, it will gain high marks here.
• Value: Charging me $1.99 for an advertisement-addled flaky piece of crap? Screw you, buddy! Giving me 2,000 recipes with quality photos and background information on the drinks from trusted sources for $3.99? Not bad! You get the idea.

All of these factors, at a weighting of my own choosing at that particular moment, will go into a final overall rating. Today’s review is on Drink Genie:

Drink Genie
	Usability	Drink Genie opens to an odd screen that allows you change vibration/sound settings and then asks you for a “Bar Name” which leads one to think it is a Bar/Club search application. But no, it seems Drink Genie’s primary concern is that you personalize it with your home bar’s ingredients so it can whittle the enormity of its database to better suit your needs. This seems to me an admission that the scope of the database is too large to be useful and the designers maybe should have thought better of including that many recipes in the first place. There is a traditional search function (in which the “(S)limey Coconut” is listed first…yay!) and it is fairly intuitive and dynamic. The favorites is also straight-forward and will gently, and in a far too chipper tone, tell you if your favorites list is woefully lacking and has nothing in it. The “myBar” function where you add and manage your ingredients can be a tad cumbersome and quirky. The scroll bar where you sort through ingredients sometimes fails to detect your touch as it “locks in” the ingredient you’ve highlighted and you have to deliberately remove your finger from the touch screen and replace it to indicate you want to navigate further. A solution without a problem I’m afraid. The saved list of ingredients can be very counterintuitive to edit, add, and delete ingredients from. I’m sure you could become expert in managing the lists but the recipes had better be worth your while to put forth that much effort.
Price: $.99	Quality/Depth:	The depth of this library of drink can’t be denied. It can’t be admired either. I could forgive the inclusion of “Cream de Spooge” and the “Monkey Poop Shooter” if the quality of recipes for the classics weren’t atrocious and/or there were quality photographs or drawings of the drinks. Instead, the user is treated to the recipes for drinks like the Bronx and the Martinez being displayed with a shoddy graphic that shows a tall glass with a lime wheel garnish. Most of the classic recipes aren’t so far off-the-mark as to warrant a raiding of Synitech Studio’s corporate offices but they also aren’t the most accurate or even pleasant. The Martinez is of the dry vermouth/triple sec variety and the Mai Tai makes the usual sort of blunder by including amaretto and pineapple juice. The glossary’s “Techniques & Tools” section includes *some* valuable information but consists primarily of unhelpful lists. The “Drinking Games” reference section is amusing and grotesque in equal parts.
	Features:	The search function for Drink Genie only takes the drink name into account. And while it does allow you to choose a category of drink to use as a filter (though I’m not sure how helpful filtering by “Tabasco Shots” or “Mind Eraser Drinks” is), it doesn’t take into account searching by a base spirit or ingredient. Sure, you could enter all of your ingredients in the convoluted “myBar” feature and then filter by “Drinks I Can Make” but, seriously? Your “features” are turning into massive amounts of work for me, Genie. And here I thought the point of a genie was to grant me effortless wishes. The “Random” feature is cute with its genie lamp that you rub (complete with progress meter to indicate when you’ve rubbed hard and long enough!) though three random selections granted me the Pink Forest (gin, cream, triple sec, strawberry juice), Red Hurricane (limon rum, tequila, cranberry cocktail juice), and Three Stages of Friendship (shot of whiskey, tequila, 151-proof rum). In other words, this is one genie, like Robin Williams, that you wish would just leave you the hell alone. The Blood Alcohol Content calculator is fairly easy-to-use and well-designed. On its accuracy or reputation, I couldn’t say.
Producer: Synitech Studio, LLC	Likability/Value:	This app is attractively-built and there are a few style elements and functions I would consider including in my “dream cocktail app” but it doesn’t offer anything superior to stand apart from the crowd. It tries a bit too hard to be fun and in the process crams too many things into a small space and limits its usability in the process. Not as overtly annoying as iShot Machine, Dream Genie (even at $.99) has little to recommend it.
	Overall:	Rating: Dream Genie is no longer available to US customers through the iTunes store. I’m not sure why but it appears Synitech Studio may no longer be in operation. If it *is* available outside the US, avoid it. Rubbing the lamp will get you nothing but heartache, by all accounts the BAC in iDrinkSmart is a better tool, and drinking games it lists like “Suck & Chug” will only bring to mind how better your time could be spent. There are aesthetic elements it gets right, but like too much rouge on your newly-divorced aunt who’s on the prowl, it’s mostly saddening.

Read more on the Drink Genie app:

• Drink Genie’s Facebook page
• Overview of the application in AppAdvice

Read cocktailnerd’s other iPhone Cocktail App Reviews:

• Tiki+
• 101 Cocktails
• iShot Machine
• Pocket Cocktails

I will continue to review iPhone cocktail apps this month and, likely, well into 2010. The first application I’ll review in October is the progeny of one of the greats in the pantheon of cocktailians, Gary Regan, whose book “The Joy of Mixology,” was a prime motivator in convincing me to start a cocktail and spirits blog. Lucky you. But, as always, a preface in case this is your first time reading one of these reviews. I’m evaluating the applications in 5 areas:

• Usability: Intuitive search functions? Screen go dark too quickly? Conversion options? This will tell you.
• Quality and Depth: Does its Mai Tai call for Creme de Noyaux? Is it chock-full of 20 “Sex on the Beach” variations? If so, fail.
• Features: Is it feature-rich with background information on drinks? Does it allow favorites and ratings to be stored/sorted. If so, it should fare well.
• Likability: Subjective, but important. If the app is fun to use or gorgeously-designed or is simply a pleasure to use, it will gain high marks here.
• Value: Charging me $1.99 for an advertisement-addled flaky piece of crap? Screw you, buddy! Giving me 2,000 recipes with quality photos and background information on the drinks from trusted sources for $3.99? Not bad! You get the idea.

All of these factors, at a weighting of my own choosing at that particular moment, will go into a final overall rating. Today’s review is on Flip ‘N Drink:

Flip ‘N Drink
	Usability	Flip ‘N Drink is no-nonsense. It drops you immediately to the picture of the first drink the first time it’s booted. It leaves a user left to wonder what to do next, but the quality of the photograph definitely inspires you to touch and interact with it. Once you realize you can tap the screen to get to the recipe (nicely presented in ml with oz conversions in parentheses), you find that a nicely displayed recipe is presented in a readable format that, thank goodness, doesn’t require you to flip back-and-forth between the ingredients and the method or to scroll around and gunk up your iPhone with having to touch it while handling sticky and disagreeable ingredients. One nice feature is the “Cocktailian COnversations” and “If you like this drink, try…” features at the bottom of each recipe. The “Cocktailian Conversations” are sometimes informative about the drink’s roots or construction and other times whimsical, cute, and, ultimately, unhelpful if entertaining. The “If you like this drink…” feature is easy to use and seems well cross-referenced as you’ll see below. This is a very lean but highly usable app. I *do* wish it allowed the user to tilt the screen and/or display the recipe on a full-black background as the image of the cocktail occasionally gets in the way of readability. I also wish the damned thing wouldn’t time out and go dark (again forcing the user to gum up the screen if using the app while making a drink). Otherwise, the app’s features are well-designed and intuitive.
Price: $3.99	Quality/Depth:	Flip ‘N Drink does an excellent job when it comes to a balance of depth and quality. I estimate that it has between 1,300-1,500 recipes and I found that almost every recipe I reviewed had at least one element to recommend it, whether it be the method, the style, or an intriguing blend or ingredients one usually doesn’t consider. As for the “baseline” cocktails I’m keeping an eye to when reviewing these iPhone apps, Flip ‘N Drink does itself proud. The Mai Tai actually quotes the infamous “17-year-old J. Wray Nephew Jamaican Rum” as its base spirit which manages to make it both historically accurate and nigh impossible to make all-at-once. In fact, I could almost count the lack of an alternate recipe as a mark against the application if it wasn’t so heart-warming and charming to see. The app is trustworthy where the other cocktails such as the Bronx, Margarita, and Mojito are concerned. All reliable recipes, all resulting in good classic drinks. The only irksome trend I saw amongst the recipes was a tendency to plug in variations that call for brand-specific ingredients. For example, instead of titling a margarita variation that incorporates amaretto as an “Italian Margarita,” it lists the recipe as the “Disaranno Margarita.” It’s like a brand’s press release has insidiously insinuated itself onto your phone. The recipes don’t seem terrible or shockingly out-of-place but they are a bit jolting.
	Features:	Flip ‘N Drink is very lean and no-nonsense in terms of features. The images are presented, you pick a drink, there is some additional information and cross-referencing of drinks, and you can choose to favorite it and build “Your Bar.” Outside of that, there’s not much else going on except for the search function. And, the search function poses some problems. When you access the search page the app displays the full list of recipes capped by a search field into which, after you press it, a keypad comes up and as you type the list of recipes decreases until your search has eliminated everything except what you’re potentially looking for. However, instead of being able to click on the recipe in the list you want which, again, has been dynamically changing in the background to meet your criteria, you *still* have to press “Search” to access the list of recipes. Perhaps it’s just me and this is a minor quibble, but these are the types of user-interface oversights that make me crazy. That, and the screen darkening too quickly to make it useful in real-time to mix a drink. The “Ingredient” search option also suffers for a mishmash and disorganized list of categories which funnel into sub-categories and ingredients. They aren’t well-constructed and lead to problems such as the “Champagne & Sparkling Wine” category including subcategories such as “GH Mumm Champagne,” “champagne,” “Moet & Chandon White Star,” etc. It makes navigating through categories of ingredients clumsy and nearly useless. This is a big area of opportunity for this application in future revisions.
Producer: Jolt OS & Ardent Spirits	Likability/Value:	This app is missing the sheer voluminous mass of Cocktails+, the deep and specific appreciation shown by Tiki+, and the finesse of 101 Cocktails but manages to carve its own worthy place in the field of available apps. The photography makes it very attractive, I like that it avoids Pocket Cocktails’ mistakes in managing instructions and ingredients, and the additional bits of humor and detail attached to the drinks give it a style that smacks with great gusto of Gary Regan himself. The search function detracts from its charms but for the most part it’s a friendly and very useful application that gives a respectable value at $3.99.
	Overall:	Rating: If you already have 101 Cocktails and Cocktail+ then this is likely to feel redundant to you. However, if I was to present a “Best Overall Cocktail Application” or “Best Cocktail Application for n00bs” this might be the one I’d choose at this point in my reviews. It’s not overburdened with ostentatious social media features or the gimmickry of shaking noises and bells and whistles and it strikes a very good balance of approachability in the difficulty and styles of recipes, quality of recipes and information, and educational value. There are some glitches and hiccups when it comes to the search functions and how the ingredients are organized but if you stick to basic browsing of recipes and as a way of expanding your threadbare repertoire it will take you some very good places. Worth having in your library as a starting point or if you don’t already have 20 other iPhone cocktail applications installed (ahem).

Read more on the Flip ‘N Drink app:

• Flip ‘N Drink’s official website
• Camper English writes up the application at Alcademics
• Style Gourmet writes up the Flip ‘N Drink application

Read cocktailnerd’s other iPhone Cocktail App Reviews:

• Tiki+
• 101 Cocktails
• iShot Machine
• Pocket Cocktails

The past couple of weeks (and, at this rate, for the rest of my natural-born life) I’ve been reviewing iPhone cocktail apps, and I’m continuing the stretch for a bit longer before taking a break. Today’s review is an extra-special edition and, I’ll wager at the end of it all, features one of the best of the lot (and the “lot” is large, upwards of 20 or so at last count). But, before we get to the nitty-gritty, you should know that I’m evaluating the applications in 5 areas:

• Usability: Intuitive search functions? Screen go dark too quickly? Conversion options? This will tell you.
• Quality and Depth: Does its Mai Tai call for Creme de Noyaux? Is it chock-full of 20 “Sex on the Beach” variations? If so, fail.
• Features: Is it feature-rich with background information on drinks? Does it allow favorites and ratings to be stored/sorted. If so, it should fare well.
• Likability: Subjective, but important. If the app is fun to use or gorgeously-designed or is simply a pleasure to use, it will gain high marks here.
• Value: Charging me $1.99 for an advertisement-addled flaky piece of crap? Screw you, buddy! Giving me 2,000 recipes with quality photos and background information on the drinks from trusted sources for $3.99? Not bad! You get the idea.

All of these factors, at a weighting of my own choosing at that particular moment, will go into a final overall rating. Today’s review is on Tiki+, a cocktail app designed around and inspired by Jeff “Beachbum” Berry’s books Intoxica, Grog Log, Sippin’ Safari, and Taboo Table:

Tiki+
	Usability	Tiki+ starts up with a splash screen featuring Jeff Berry in full-on Zombie mode and immediately drops you into the full list of drinks with a sensible row of buttons along the bottom and a search bar at the top. Simple, inviting, and intuitive. The recipe list gives a preview of the ingredients involved in the drink and includes icons indicating the type of preparation and glass required to serve it. Very handy given that tiki drinks can often lead you to the depressing dead-end of a road saying to yourself, “Wait, I can’t make this, I don’t have ‘Don’s Spices’ …what the crap?” So having a preview of what’s involved and the potential difficulty-rating is a big plus. Once you access a recipe it gives a very straight-foward display of the ingredients, the method of preparation, and then a picture or drawing of the drink along with background information on its origins. You also have options to make the drink a favorite of yours or forward it via email, twitter, or facebook. Berry has always done a great job of being explicit and detailed in his instructions and the proper methods for making the drinks, as Tiki drinks, by their nature, rely on specific combinations of rums, spirits, syrups, and juices to create their unique profiles. As far as other niceties, the app allows you to adjust its settings to provide measurements in “Imperial”, two styles of metric format, and, for heaven’s sake, gills. Tiki+ also offers a feature I greatly treasure in an iPhone app, the ability to remain lit while viewing a recipe. Sure, you have to be careful to not leave the recipe up and drain your phone, but it’s far superior to having to unlock the phone and access the app again each time it times-out. Big win, especially when the drinks are Tiki-style and require the sub-contracting of several architects, civic planners, and mechanical engineers to create precisely to spec.
Price: $3.99	Quality/Depth:	The quality of drinks and depth of information on them, and Tiki in general, is unsurpassed. Granted, there aren’t 1,500 recipes- I clock it in around 200- but I defy you to find another iPhone cocktail application, aside from 101 Cocktails, that is so reliable in its recipes and the quality of drinking you’ll experience in trying them (except that Fog Cutter, damn that version is tart). It should also be noted that almost every recipe found in this app is unique to it. You won’t find the Cobra’s Fang, Penang Afrididi, or the Jet Pilot in any other source. Or, if you do, caveat emptor. Granted, except for the Mai Tai, this application doesn’t score well on the Mojito, Old Fashioned, or Bronx cocktails, but that’s because those sorts of drinks aren’t its purpose. Its purpose is singular and, for what it’s attempting, it’s unparalleled in achieving it.
	Features:	Tiki+ has a fairly basic set of features and, in addition to the recipes, has very good information on tiki’s history and origins, the use of crushed ice in tiki drinks, and a decent amount of helpful information on using the app and its features. The social networking component feels a bit tacked-on and restricts you to using specific Twitter apps from the iPhone. The default drink-sorting option, “Base”, seems a bit needless since of the nearly 200 drinks, 120 or so fall under “Rum.” However, once you go deeper into the app the drinks can be sorted by “Type”, “Flavor”, and “Tag” (e.g. 1930s, 1940s, Breakfast drinks, etc.) which are infinitely useful and interesting to browse through. No, there’s not a feature to “find the nearest bar” but, if you’re making use of this app, chances are you have no interest in visiting said bar and the likelihood of its being able to make 1/4 of the drinks found here is roughly the equivalent of Danny Bonaduce not being creepy in the extreme at any given moment.
Producer: Skorpiostech	Likability/Value:	This app is very likable in its design and feel as the Tiki elements play a role throughout and you’re almost certain to glean a new piece of information on any recipe or page you view. At $3.99 it is on the high end of the price range for cocktail apps but its unique content, reliability, and quality make it worth the purchase. The fact that it also includes recipes for the ingredients that may be hard-to-find or that have to be made at home (see: Don’s Spices mentioned above) also increase its value and ensure you’ll get the most from the intricate, and sometimes frustrating, recipes it includes.
	Overall:	Rating: This is one of my “must have” apps for any cocktail enthusiast that has an iPhone. Eminently usable, reliable in its recipes, and considerate in its design, this is one that will not steer you wrong and you’ll find an endless stream of gems to explore and enjoy. Sure, it would be nice to be able to add your own recipes and the photos could, occasionally, have a higher level of production-value but, my god, the garnish and mugs alone are feasts for the eyes. Jeff Berry has done all the footwork for us in researching, uncovering, and cajoling these recipes from the depths of ancient bartender’s secret notebooks and scribbled-upon drink menus. That it all comes together at $3.99 ranks it among the top 20 wonders of the modern world. You may get frustrated at the demands tiki drinks make of you and the effort you find yourself putting forth, but that only lasts until you’re into your second one.

BONUS

Want a chance to talk to Jeff Berry online and celebrate a night of Tiki drinks? Join us this evening, September 3rd, for Thursday Drink Night’s 1st Anniversary party. The Mixoloseum will be all a-buzz and a-twitter about this special event. here’s the announcement:

A year ago, this week, the revelry began. And if my sundial displays truth, the Mixoloseum has hosted 50 Thursday Drink Nights since that first mixological day. In that time, cocktail enthusiasts, writers, and bartenders have created over 500 original cocktails using everything from Fernet Branca to buttermilk. Guests who once came in fear of all the homemade syrups and bitters being slung about like fool’s gold in the chat room now make their own cinnamon syrup, have two local sources for Ting (in case one runs out), and don’t bat an eye when someone calls yellow Chartreuse instead of green.

We’ll be celebrating with rum, rain gods, and back scratchers this week, and Jeff Berry will be making an appearance to sling potions and generally be jealous that we have more homemade syrups than he does. The prizes are profuse, and the last tiki torch won’t be doused until the first rays of light creep across my sundial.

The Prizes

• Best Original Tiki Drink – 50cm gold Japanese bar spoon (pictured at right)
• Best Gin Cocktail – Bottle of Port of Barcelona gin signed by the distiller.
• Best Absinthe Cocktail – Bottle of Obsello absinthe signed by the distiller.
• Best Spiced Rum Cocktail – Bottle of Old New Orleans Cajun spiced rum
• Last One Standing – If you close the doors on our party, you will get yourself a pick of one of Mud Puddle’s six new cocktail book releases.
• First two newcomers who submit a drink – More books! Pick from Mud Puddle’s line-up.

We’ll also be giving out Annual Awards throughout the night (e.g. Person who consistently submits the worst drinks).

Festivities start at 7pm Eastern, Join Us!

Read more on the Tiki+ app:

• Jeff Berry discusses Tiki+ on his blog
• Mixology Magazine covers the release of Tiki+
• MacWorld gives a glowing overview of the Tiki+ application

Read cocktailnerd’s other iPhone Cocktail App Reviews:

• 101 Cocktails
• iShot Machine
• Pocket Cocktails

As you’ve probably noticedby now, I’m taking a tour of the cocktail apps available in the iTunes App Store and evaluating which belong on your iPhone and which are total duds to be left in the dustbin to be ported to Android. If you haven’t read already, I am evaluating the applications in 5 areas:

• Usability: Intuitive search functions? Screen go dark too quickly? Conversion options? This will tell you.
• Quality and Depth: Does its Mai Tai call for Creme de Noyaux? Is it chock-full of 20 “Sex on the Beach” variations? If so, fail.
• Features: Is it feature-rich with background information on drinks? Does it allow favorites and ratings to be stored/sorted. If so, it should fare well.
• Likability: Subjective, but important. If the app is fun to use or gorgeously-designed or is simply a pleasure to use, it will gain high marks here.
• Value: Charging me $1.99 for an advertisement-addled flaky piece of crap? Screw you, buddy! Giving me 2,000 recipes with quality photos and background information on the drinks from trusted sources for $3.99? Not bad! You get the idea.

All of these factors, at a weighting of my own choosing at that particular moment, will go into a final overall rating. Ultimately, I will round-up the “Best of the Best” that belong on anyone’s iPhone who is serious about cocktails and/or needs a handy reference behind the stick from time-to-time. Up now, Pocket Cocktails:

Pocket Cocktails
	Usability	Pocket Cocktails starts up quickly and presents you with a list of drink categories and then a nicely laid-out set of buttons allowing you to browse drinks, search, or find a random libation. The set of “categories” is a nice touch but when your “Martinis” section includes the Lemon Drop, the Espresso Martini (sic), and the Jolly Rancher and your “Classics” section includes the Sex on the Beach and the Hummer, you’re daring people to take issue with you and it makes the categories, for my purposes, nearly meaningless. However, the biggest usability issue is, unfortunately, a big one. Once you select a recipe from the nicely laid-out list, it takes you to the full-size image which then has a small menu bar labeled |Picture|Recipe|Ingredients|Email| . Imagine you’re flipping through a cookbook and a tantalizing recipe for Pork Rillette catches your eye. “I’ll make this, right now!,” you think. Lo and behold, you look below the photo and the recipe starts like this: “1. Cut the pork into pieces, 2. Pour the water into a heavy cast-iron pot and bring to a boil. Add the lard and the cut-up meat. …” You would quickly ask yourself, “WHAT water? HOW MUCH pork?! LARD?! Curse you, tantalizing and obtuse non-sequitur of a recipe!!” And then, when it told you, “Refer to page 247 for the list and proportions of ingredients,” you would think it the strangest cookbook ever designed. And, it would be. The method for making a drink is separated from the ingredients in just this way in Pocket Cocktails. So, when it tells you, “Muddle the mint leaves in the simple syrup,” you have no context for how many mint leaves or how much simple syrup you’re being asked for. This means that you have to click back-and-forth between the “Ingredients” and the “Recipe” sub-menu unless you feel like writing one or the other down and just referring to one screen. And that’s if you can keep the screen from going dark on you. It’s a problem, and it makes this app unwieldy and unfriendly to use.
Price: $.99	Quality/Depth:	The recipes in Pocket Cocktails are very hit-and-miss with a slight edge to miss. While it’s certainly superior to iShot Machine, there are fundamental issues with a few of the “control” recipes I’ve set out to evaluate in these reviews. The Mai Tai, for example, lists pineapple juice and amaretto among its constituent parts, the Old Fashioned is of the “fruit cocktail + bourbon” persuasion, the Bronx goes disastrously heavy on the orange juice, and the Margarita calls for lime cordial and simple syrup. One or two of these malfeasant mishaps of mixology I could let slide, but butchering nearly all of them is simply careless. To be fair, the Mojito is well within tolerances. The depth of recipes is better than average and it has a good selection of classics and variations while not being overwhelming about it all.
	Features:	Pocket Cocktails has a good set of features though most of them show a flaw in one way or another. The randomizer has decent audio samples except for one dreadful female voice saying, “Shake it don’t break it!,” that alarms you into wanting to throw your ill-possessed phone the first time you hear it. There is a nice “Sommelier” section that covers wines and food pairings (though they do make an inexplicable appearance in the Random drink feature) and the management of categories, search tools, and drink lists and favorites is intuitive and easy-to-navigate. It’s not the most feature-rich cocktail app but of the features they’ve implemented they’ve done a good job.
Producer: Robert Maran	Likability/Value:	I like the retro feel of the application, the drink images are very well-done (though some of the drinks are ill-fitted to glassware in which they’re presented), and it performs solidly. Where it loses its value is in its ease of use for when you’re actually making a drink and in the quality and fidelity of some of the recipes. There are certainly enough elements here to warrant its $.99 price but there are other applications at the same price-point that will give you better drinks with better design and layout.
	Overall:	Rating: This app has some positive elements but is its own worst enemy. The usability issue involving the separation of the drinks’ methods and ingredients and the questionable quality of the majority of the recipes make it a non-starter from my viewpoint. Impractical for real-time use and not up-to-snuff as a reference tool, it is a model of mediocrity. The amount of time spent on the application’s design and content reassures me that this was a good faith effort to design a quality cocktail application, but it falls just short in enough ways to cause me to sigh and hope future updates resolve some of the usability and quality issues the application suffers. I’ll keep it on my phone, but it will likely sit untouched, unloved, and squawking occasionally, “Shake it don’t break it!,” into the sad dark.

Read more on the Pocket Cocktails app:

• Doug Winship’s more positive review of Pocket Cocktails
• Apppodcast’s overview of Pocket Cocktails

Read cocktailnerd’s other iPhone Cocktail App Reviews:

• 101 Cocktails
• iShot Machine

As you may have read in yesterday’s post, I’ll be ranging through the cocktail apps available on the iPhone and evaluating which belong in your suite of apps and which are total duds to be left in the dustbin to be ported to Android . As I mentioned, I will be evaluating the applications in 5 areas:

• Usability: Intuitive search functions? Screen go dark too quickly? Conversion options? This will tell you.
• Quality and Depth: Does its Mai Tai call for Creme de Noyaux? Is it chock-full of 20 “Sex on the Beach” variations? If so, fail.
• Features: Is it feature-rich with background information on drinks? Does it allow favorites and ratings to be stored/sorted. If so, it should fare well.
• Likability: Subjective, but important. If the app is fun to use or gorgeously-designed or is simply a pleasure to use, it will gain high marks here.
• Value: Charging me $1.99 for an advertisement-addled flaky piece of crap? Screw you, buddy! Giving me 2,000 recipes with quality photos and background information on the drinks from trusted sources for $3.99? Not bad! You get the idea.

All of these factors, at a weighting of my own choosing at that particular moment, will go into a final overall rating. Ultimately, I will round-up the “Best of the Best” that belong on anyone’s iPhone who is serious about cocktails and/or needs a handy reference behind the stick from time-to-time. Up now, iShot Machine:

iShot Machine
	Usability	iShot Machine starts up with music that had me ready to jump barrels being thrown by an angry gorilla that had just kidnapped my girlfriend. It then plops you immediately into “Shake It!” mode where one, presumably, should shake the iPhone to be handed a drink recipe. Scatter-shot, but easy peasy. It keeps the screen lit while shaking through recipes and browsing the search features, a feature I greatly appreciate. It also has several search functions that are fairly intuitive. One major irritation I had from a usability stand-point is that over half the screen’s footprint is committed to the “slot machine” component and the area to scroll through the index or a recipe was too small. This also makes scrolling difficult and I found myself accidentally selecting a recipe without meaning to because the controls are so tight. The instructions for using the app are easy to follow and a welcome touch.
Price: $.99	Quality/Depth:	By any respectable drinking standard, this thing is a mess. There are 7 variations on the “Gorilla Fart” and searching for “fart” graces the user with no fewer than 20 ill-begotten concoctions. I have a feeling 101 Cocktails or Cocktails+ will threaten to disable themselves permanently if you try such a stunt with them. Sure, there are something on the order of 3000+ drinks in the database and I’m sure there are some quality beverages buried somewhere, but abandon all hope ye who is assigned to find them. As for traditional and classic drinks that outline as my “baseline” drinks for measuring the quality of recipes in these applications, you’re kidding me, right?
	Features:	There are some thoughtful and well-designed features in this application including the ability to filter by spirit, mixer, or style (flamed, salted, etc.) and to share and view shared ratings. It also allows you to manage the app’s behavior in welcome ways, one of them being the ability to silence the dreadful 4-bit audio samples. The “Send” feature accesses your contact list so emailing recipes is only a few keypresses away; very well thought-out.
Producer: Oasys Mobile	Likability/Value:	This is app is approachable, but not very pretty, sort of like all those girls you practiced asking out in High School because you knew the likelihood of being rejected was very low . If it included traditional cocktail recipes on top of the gablillion shots it includes and pared down the number of shots and/or needless variations it lists, it would be a much-improved program. This is definitely trying to be a lifestyle application to give people who want to get inebriated quickly an ill-minded chance to abdicate their decision-making responsibilities to an application. Woe is to the bartender facing a crowd of people holding iPhones and bleating, “Make me *thithphbbt*!,” especially when one can’t clearly see the recipe in the first place.
	Overall:	Rating: At $.99, you’re getting what you pay for: no pictures, no frills, a little fun, some well-designed features (filtering, emailing recipes, staying lit), and some not-so-well-designed features (layout, dominance of “slot machine” components when viewing a recipe the “recipes” and others). I can’t recommend this to the folks I presume to be my readers as you’re, hopefully, looking for a higher-quality drinking experience in your life and not looking to scrape the bottom of the bibulous barrel with the dreck the vast majority of these drinks represent. Look elsewhere, please.

Read more on the iShot Machine app:

• An iShot Machine “infomercial”
• General overview and screen shots

Read cocktailnerd’s other iPhone Cocktail App Reviews:

• 101 Cocktails

If you have an iPhone, and you’re on this site, you’ve probably thought about them; all those cocktail apps at your disposal. So have I. So much so, in fact, that I’ve found over 20 of them I’d like to sit and evaluate and share with you. From the dubious iShot Machine to the venerable Cocktails+ (from the folks who brought us cocktaildb.com), I’ll consider these alternately indispensable and dispensable gadgets of the iPhone-toting-cocktail-swilling class.

I will be evaluating the applications in 5 areas:

• Usability: Does it have 20,000 recipes but no search or sorting tool? Does the screen go dark every 60 seconds and you find yourself having to reactivate the screen as you’re trying to layer your Pousse Café? Does it convert your drinks from ml to oz to kokus and back to ml? I’ll answer that question in this area.
• Quality and Depth: Of those 20,000 recipes, are 8,000 of them variations on the Duck Fart, the Alien Secretion, and various nefarious and soul-shattering attempts to justify the use of Red Bull in a Drink? Are there only 25 drinks and the rest is nonsense involving a mess of social media “tools” and ways to find the nearest bar? Do the pictures look like they were taken with an iPhone by a drunken sailor in a galley at high seas? If so, fail. I will also be taking 5 “baseline” cocktails and evaluating the recipes against what are “acceptable” versions amongst the cocktail cognoscenti. They will be the Mai Tai, the Mojito, the Old Fashioned, the Margarita, and the Bronx. All should be included in any cocktail database and are fairly well-established in what should, and should not, be included in them and in what proportions.
• Features: Does the app allow you to enter your own recipes? Does it provide background information on the drinks? Does it have additional content such as bartending and glassware information that is accurate? This will separate the cocktails from the cock-ups in the field.
• Likability: A completely subjective look at how the application strikes me. If it’s garish and cluttered, booo hiss. If it’s elegant and fun to use to boot, then yaaay win! Also, I may take into consideration the producer of the tool. If the app is a Bacardi-marketing ploy, it’ll take some hits here.
• Value: Charging me $1.99 for an advertisement-addled flaky piece of crap? Screw you, buddy! Giving me 2,000 recipes with quality photos and background information on the drinks from trusted sources for $3.99? Not bad! You get the idea.

All of these factors, at a weighting of my own choosing at that particular moment, will go into a final overall rating. The ultimate goal will be to take this morass of cocktailian bits and bytes and assemble “Cocktailnerd’s Recommended Cocktail Suite for the iPhone” since, naturally, the odds of there being “One App to Rule Them All and in Your Liver Bind Them” is nearly nil. There will be winners, there will be huge losers, just so long as you’re not one of them when you decide to spring for a cocktail application for your iPhone, eh? Let’s start with a collection of 3 very different cocktail apps: 101 Cocktails by the Mixographer, Jimmy Patrick, and will look at iShot Machine tomorrow, two very different applications.

101 Cocktails
	Usability	101 Cocktails is simple and elegant. It drops you into the app the first time with a picture of an Americano (not a bad start by any means) and only a few indications of what to do next. But once you figure out that you can display the recipe by turning the phone to landscape, which display the picture alongside the recipe, or can press the “I” (info) button to overlay the recipe for the drink on top of the photo, it becomes simple. There are several keypresses to get to a search function but with a catalog of drinks this exclusive it’s a rarely-used feature and you don’t miss quick access to a search too much. The primary purpose of the app, to find quality recipes for an exclusive set of drinks, is well met by its interface.
Price: $1.99	Quality/Depth:	As Jimmy Patrick says, “The question I have when looking at these kitchen sink recipe collections is always, ’Do I really need 14,000 cocktail recipes?’ My answer is always no. Working in a bar, as a professional bartender, you probably need 50 drink recipes on the fly.” And 101 Cocktails bears this philosophy out. It has, you guessed it, 101 recipes so it doesn’t get mondo points on “depth,” however, in the quality department it’s almost unsurpassed. Though I prefer more lime and orgeat in my Mai Tai, Jimmy goes so far as to chastise the reader for thoughts of grenadine, pineapple, or orange juice and the rest of the “baseline” recipes are pitch perfect.
	Features:	This is a lean application, but it gets points for not requiring an Internet connection or pestering me for my location. The “Send Recipe” feature, which allows you to email any recipe in only two keypresses, works very well and formats the email beautifully. The ability to rate and sort drinks by rating is a welcome one. There is also a nifty “Shake for Random Drink” feature that allows you to shake the iPhone and a random recipe will appear. Fun, even if I did find it accidentally due to the lack of instructions or “About” information in the application.
Producer: Jimmy Patrick	Likability/Value:	The photos are gorgeous, the ability to landscape and keep the image in view is a nice touch, and what it does, it does very well. Is it the warmest or cuddliest of applications? No, it’s relatively dry. But, as a budding cocktailian or someone who needs a quick reference to the most common classic cocktails in a guide you can rely on, this can’t be beat. The idea of sitting down with this and working through all 101 drinks over a few months is an exciting one and I highly recommend you try, especially at $1.99.
	Overall:	Rating: Solid, reliable, and trustworthy. It could stand to keep the screen lit when you’re viewing the recipe, have more operating instructions, and make it easier access to the search function (I cringe every time I have to tap the entry field to bring up the keyboard) but this is one that one can easily use as a quick reference from behind the bar or to peruse casually to find something that grabs your eye and, either way, not lead you astray.

Read more on the 101 Cocktails app:

Doug Winship’s review of 101 Cocktails

Jimmy Patrick’s discussion on its development

The co-developer’s discussion of its features and operating instructions

Yes, it’s been awhile since I wrote on my stable of ginger beers I’ve had in the wings but, frankly, that’s primarily because there are only so many ways one can describe “ginger-y” and various levels of “gingeritude” before becoming that guy at the party that asks everyone about their mortgage refinancing rates. In other words, I grew bored of myself. But, with the advent of one particular product coming to market and seeking to maintain consistent posting around these parts I felt it was time to reopen the vault. In this installment I’ll be looking at Fever Tree Ginger Beer, AJ Stephan’s Ginger Beer, and Ginger People Ginger Beer. This was an interesting line-up with a couple of surprises. As always, I’ll be testing the products on their own and in the timeless Moscow Mule (See the original post to review my testing process).

I’ll start this round-up with a brand highly-regarded among cocktailians for its tonic water with all the best hopes and goodwill alongside me.

Fever Tree has yet to create a product I’ve disliked , and they maintain that streak with their ginger beer. The first thing you notice in the bottle is how quickly the solids (presumably ginger root extract) separate to the bottom of the bottle making this one you must up-end prior to serving. Once you do, the cloudy sediment permeates the bottle and builds your anticipation. As with all Fever Tree products, the first thing you notice is the quality of carbonation. This fizzes lightly in the bottle and then explodes into a champagne-like cream once it’s poured. Tasting it on its own its simplicity and direct approach come through. It strikes you with a gently balanced sweet and an almost ginger ale quality. I was prepared to be disappointed by its lack of punch. Then, as it settles in and proclaims its desire to be friends, it builds into a long-lasting, fresh, and quite welcome heat that is focused on ginger almost exclusively. This plays out in a Moscow Mule by letting the lime come very forward at the start (almost too much so) and then building into familiar ginger/spice territory. “Spring water, ginger extract, cane sugar, natural flavour , ascorbic acid,” proclaims the bottle, almost daring you to assume otherwise. The simplicity of that list plays out in the product. My only complaint, and it’s a minor one, is that the heat seems reminiscent of what you get from dried ground ginger instead of ginger root. Instead of the rounded-off and bright flavor that comes from fresh root this has a sharp bite capsicum-bite quality at the back of it that I associate with an inferior attempt at building heat. All in all a great ginger beer that does nothing flashy but executes wonderfully.

AJ Stephans hails from Boston, MA and lists its ingredients as “pure carbonated water, cane sugar, flavor, coloring, sodium benzoate (preservative),” and it’s that vague “flavor” item that always causes me pause. This ginger beer has two levels, the first is a mild version of what I’ve come to call “old bookstore” and the second a huge, and uncomplicated, blast of burn. The source of that burn, I can only assume, is the “flavor.” AJ Stephans also has a pronounced edge that using cane sugar brings. This isn’t a bad thing but it’s more pronounced in AJ Stephans than some others. This beer performs admirably in a Moscow Mule as the musty “old bookstore” flavor is muted and the bite comes in at the back in a clear, if uninteresting, way. It does seem to over sweeten the drink a bit so if you use this you might consider increasing the volume of the lime juice and vodka. AJ Stephans isn’t exactly bad, but it won’t be winning the hearts and minds of exploratory drinkers anytime soon. I put it squarely in the middle of the pack and, if you like the whole crusted paper/dusty bookstore thing, I present it as a superior alternative to Cock ‘n Bull.

Ginger People is best known for two things – 1: their unerring and slightly deranged commitment to ginger and all products that can possibly be conceived of possibly including ginger and 2: having a ginger-homunculus as a mascot that falls unnervingly into the “uncanny valley.” I had high hopes for their ginger beer. This will teach me. Attractive packaging boldly announcing “Made with natural ginger juice,” featuring the ginger-homunculus riding a tiger a ‘la Harold & Kumar, and a showing a visible amount of sediment and solids floating in the bottle all had me hoping for the best. These were dashed against the unforgiving rocks of reality upon the first taste. On its own Ginger People Ginger Beer is overly sweet and insipid and smacks of ginger ale wrongfully cut with limoncello. I was more realistic going into tasting it in a Moscow Mule. Vodka fixes everything, right? RIGHT?!! Not quite. As difficult as it is to kill something as simple as lime juice and vodka it manages to bludgeon it with a flabby ginger-man arm of lousy. Comprised of water, cane sugar, naturally pressed ginger juice, natural ginger extract, citric acid, and natural flavor, this tastes like a ginger beer designed by people who had ever tasted ginger beer and focused solely on wanting to make it a stand-alone, and unchallenging, drink to sip. They need to lay off on the citric acid and, based on this drink’s flaccidity, I recommend creepy ginger dude go see a urologist. Stat.

AJ Stephans Rating:

Ginger People Rating:

cocktailnerd’s Ginger Beer Extravaganza Part I, Part II, and Part III

From Eric Felten’s “How’s Your Drink?”

Serious Eats’ Ginger Beer Taste Test

SLOSHED!’s Sparkly Showdown

Wikipedia’s entry on Ginger Beer

Scottes’ Rum Rundown of Ginger Ales and Brews

A nice discussion at Ministry of Rum

After the infamy and fall-out from my last absinthe post vitriolic screed, I’ve taken a bit of a hiatus. I’ve been preparing to attend the American Distilling Institute’s Brandy Conference in early April (which I will be covering here), getting the Cocktail and Spirits Online Writers Guild’s Group’s web site set up and preparing for its conference in July, and generally preparing for Mixoloseum awesomeness such as this week’s Beefeater-sponsored Thursday Drink Night. And, my oldest daughter’s birthday is this month, so, I’ve been a busy monkey. As you can see above, I’ve collected a few absinthes and have been putting them through their paces the past few months. My evaluation process is outlined in the original post in the series, but suffice it to say that I’m allowing the absinthe to express its character in a very specific way – by mixing it with sugar and water in various forms . This, to me, is slightly more reliable than drinking it neat (though I’ve been known to do that) and a better measure of it’s quality than dousing it in something like a Corpse Reviver or Monkey Gland.

This line-up includes Kübler, St. George, and Marteau; three very different absinthes that unapologetically commit themselves to the flavor profile and style in which they are made.

Kübler is a traditional swiss absinthe that comes in a very untraditionally-sized 1L bottle. The swiss “blanche” style deviates from the more common verte style in two ways: 1. there is no additional infusion of herbs after the initial distillation and 2: it usually features a lower alcohol content. A lack of herbal infusion in the finishing stage doesn’t necessarily mean an absinthe blanche will be less complex than a verte, but in Kubler’s case, it tends that direction. However, we’ll see that that isn’t completely unwelcome. Drip: Kübler louches quickly with a beautiful pearlescent blue-tinged colour that isn’t found in the verte styles. As an absinthe drip, Kubler is solidly two-note. There is a prevalent high note in the Star Anise area, with some fennel tones, and a low note squarely reminiscent of cocoa. In other words, there’s not much going on here except those two things and there’s far less herbaceous quality to it than just about any other absinthe on my shelf. Kübler recommends using a 5:1 water-to-absinthe ratio in a drip and I have to disagree. A 3:1 ratio is the highest you should reach for to get the intensity to make Kübler properly sing. Frappe: I enjoy Kübler in a frappe as it is simple, laid-back, and friendly. Unlike absinthes that try to do too much, Kübler kicks back and asks only that you keep your feet off its furniture and the music turned to a nice playful jazz station. Again, it’s not the most complex absinthe by a damned sight but, sometimes, that’s a deficit – as we’ll see with St. George. Kübler is an absinthe I turn to in a frappe when I want to introduce someone else to absinthe and its general charms or I don’t feel like being challenged and want to enjoy the sparest of them all. Kübler is a wonderful product with which to introduce yourself to absinthe’s core characteristics and work your way outwards to more challenging and complex products. And, at $50/L, it’s one of the best buys available on the store shelf. I also find Kübler my absinthe-of-choice when developing mixed drinks. It represents the base nature of absinthe very clearly and others might muddle the profiles of other ingredients in my experiments. Plus, if when my drink ends up sucking, I haven’t wasted $1-3 in the .5oz I’ve used. Kübler has been, and will remain, a staple on my shelf for its dependability, simplicity, and sheer enjoyability.

St. George was one of the first U.S. absinthes on the market and I’d been wanting to try it since its release. Thanks to a good samaritan who knew of this series, and happened to live in San Francisco, I received a bottle. An arresting bottle and label, a gorgeous olive-green hue, and an appreciation of Hangar One and, by proxy, St. George Spirits, I was anxious to open and get to know this distinctive green fellow. Distinctive turned out to be the operative word. Drip: This is the first absinthe I’ve encountered where I would highly recommend using a 4:1 or 5:1 ratio in a drip. St. George absinthe presents an anise flavor in the front, subduing you with an, “Oh!, this is tasty,” lull of satisfaction, and everything that comes after is an assault of the senses and your better nature. From rosemary, to pepper, to camphor, St. George never settles and blends into anything coalescent…or completely pleasant in a Drip. There’s a lot going on, which I appreciate, but I prefer it have a central and consistent anchor around which everything else can orbit. Frappe: St. George performs much better in a frappe but still suffers from the lack of focus and a general busyness that fatigues the palate. The half-teaspoon of anisette serves to balance the frappe out a bit and, seemingly, help the absinthe stretch-out and relax without being so earnest in delivering its multitudes of flavors. It almost reads as an attempt to do Absinthe PLUS! and it just falls short of something glorious. The finish is still long, but not as excruciatingly so as in the drip. St. George famously slew the dragon and, in that vein, this absinthe is aptly-named. It is not for the weak, the timid, nor those for whom this would be their first absinthe. This is also the only absinthe I’ve seen, in my collection, to undergo the “feuille mort” transformation where it takes on the brownish hues of fallen leaves, likely indicating the quality and volume natural elements in the product, which should be applauded.

Marteau absinthe is produced by Gwydion Stone, a founder of the The Wormwood Society whose mission it is to provide consumer advocacy and, perhaps more important, historically accurate information and education regarding absinthe. Marteau de la Belle Epoque attempts to recreate a historically accurate portrayal of the absinthes tasted by our forebears. And, if this is what it was, it’s no wonder it became as popular as it did. Drip: Firstly, I’ve tried all of my absinthes neat. Marteau is the first I’ve come back to time-and-time again to do so. Sometimes it seems almost a shame to pollute it with other lesser elements, but only almost. Marteau louches almost instantly in a drip and I found a 3:1 ratio to be just about perfect and the sugar, in this one, is completely optional. The first thing I noticed about Marteau is its heavy committment to fennel for its anise character. This allows the anisette character to come through without the cheap candy-like tackiness that can sometimes occur when star anise is leaned on too heavily to provide the base flavor profile. Its emphasis on fennel and use of a Spanish aniseed allows an herbal quality to join in that isn’t harsh but still balances against the more bitter wormwood elements. There was also a relatively unusual floral character contrubiting to the balance that I later discovered to be Iris . Frappe: The frappe using Marteau was the best I’ve had. Joana, after being handed Kubler (”Nice, fun!”) and St. George (”Gods in Hell, I can’t feel my mouth!”) upon being handed the Marteau version said simply, “Oh, that’s delicious,” and then refused to give it back. This presents with a clean and clearly-focused front of licorice and then finishes with a disinct bitter and herbal quality that still carries the initial sweet anise-character along for the ride. It is nearly perfectly balanced throughout and, at the traditional 136-proof, is simply dangerous in how pleasing it is. While I’m certainly not qualified to judge Marteau against the classic and lost styles from the 19th century, I can confidently say it’s the best in class of those I have at my disposal. My only complaints with Marteau are its availability and its price point. And not because the price point seems out-of-whack with the quality of the product or artificially inflated for marketing purposes (hello there, vodka) but because it will keep people from experiencing a genuine absinthe that presents exactly what a buyer deserves: no gimmicks, no artificiality, and no short-cuts that I can see. This is what a person should be confronted with when experiencing absinthe for the first time, and it’s a shame so many won’t.

St. George Absinthe Rating:

Marteau Absinthe Rating:

Absinthe Event Announcement

Please join us on April 17th at 7:00pm in the Mixoloseum Bar for a chat with eminent cocktail writer and absinthe enthusiast Paul Clarke, Wormwood Society Founder and absinthe producer Gwydion Stone, and Wormwood Society Editor and Media Contact Brian Robinson will join us to discuss the history and tradition of absinthe and answer questions about present day absinthe production, tastes, and challenges.
Place and Time:

• When: April 14th, 7:00pm
• Where: The Mixoloseum Bar
• Bring: Questions, insights, and an open and inquisitive mind. And, hell, bring a bottle of absinthe along with you.

As you may have seen in my last post in this series of absinthe reviews, I’ve collected a few absinthes and will be giving them my due consideration over the next few months. You can read more about my tasting process in that post but suffice it to say that I’m allowing the absinthe to express its character in a very specific way, by mixing it with sugar and water in various forms . This, to me, is slightly more reliable than drinking it neat (though I’ve been known to do that) and a better measure of it’s quality than dousing it in something like a Corpse Reviver or Monkey Gland.

But, in this post, I’ll be doing something a bit different with one of them. You see, something has caught my attention, and my ire. Allow me my traditional reviews of Obsello and Pernod and then indulge me in a trip to cocktail-blogger-hell where we’ll discuss Le Tourment Vert and all its ignominious and ignoble qualities.

Obsello has only very recently come to the U.S. and was the first Spanish absinthe to visit our shores. Spanish absinthe originated after many distillers moved from France to Spain in the early 20th-century and is typically considered a sweeter form. The bottle is reminiscent of a champagne bottle and is mercifully free of anything mentioning artificial coloring, a common problem among many of these. It also comes with a harrying and large wax seal around the cap. Several crow-bars, near misses with knives, and chipped chisels later, I was ready to try it. Drip: Obsello recommends a 3:1 ratio of water-to-absinthe. I don’t. Back this down to 1.5-2oz water to an ounce of absinthe to make it really sing and have the “oomph” it deserves. This has a very strong anise front that, thankfully, dissipates quickly. It settles quickly into a woodsy and wormwood bitterness and slight vanilla hints with a long long finish. There’s still a bit of heat throughout the ordeal. Frappe: This is lovely in a frappe. The thinness it struggles with in the drip is completely gone and the concentration of the Obsello comes through in a fine way. The initial bite of anise in the drip is tamped-down but lingers longer and a new cocoa flavor comes along for the ride as it finishes. There’s less bitterness and, all in all, it makes for a more pleasant drink than the drip. This is a very nice traditional absinthe that, if you can find it for around $60, I highly recommend. It pours a beautiful, and natural-looking, pale green color and louches quickly and in fantastic fashion. This isn’t the most deep or complex absinthe in the group, but it’s very respectable and you could do worse. Much worse.

Pernod, of course, is known as the “original” absinthe having started production in the late 1700s. It’s only recently reached Oklahoma and I was glad to add it to the mix. It pours a slightly yellowish-green, belying its FD&C Yellow No. 5 roots, but isn’t horribly artificial in its appearance, unlike some. Drip: This takes longer to louche than the Obsello but, once it does, appears creamy and lush. Pernod stands up in a drip better than the Obsello and asserts itself nicely with a more dry and herbal profile. The anise flavors are present, but ultimately it rounds itself into more gentian/herbal tones with a lighter hint of wormwood than most. The anise is also more of the “star anise” quality than fennel which leads to a little less complexity than I’d like. Frappe: Surprisingly, this dries out even further in a frappe. It made me realize that the sweetness I experienced in the Obsello may be mostly due to its creamier feel, as the Pernod runs quickly across the tongue. The Obsello’s frappe beats this hands down in terms of both pleasantness and richness. Unfortunately, I would look to Pernod Absinthe for dry and minor complexity as an absinthe for use in mixed drinks rather than featuring it on its own. It’s not a depressingly horrid product but as I drank it in these two drinks and let it sit on the palate it devolved into a sort of chemical artificiality that was wholly unwelcome. On its own, it leaves something to be desired.

I’m going to save you $60. Right now. Call your dad. Don’t worry, he’ll take your call . Ask your dad for two things, his Aqua Velva (Old Spice will do in a pinch) and a bottle of cheap tequila. If he doesn’t have tequila then Everclear will do. Or, barring that, a gun. Once acquired, set them side-by-side. Pour 1oz of your father’s aftershave of preference in a glass…down it. There, you’ve now tasted Le Tourment Vert at 1/30th the price. Your problem now? How to forget. You have two options, down the tequila or Everclear in one great Herculean swig and hope that the resulting brain damage erases the memory of having tasted Le Tourment . Or, you can make damned sure you forget with a bullet. Whatever’s on the other side is preferable, I assure you. Unnaturally blue, uninspiringly flaccid, astoundingly nasty, unfathomably thin, unsparingly acrid, and unrepentently synthetic it’s everything bad sex is, and more, and is probably the second-worst booze I’ve ever tasted. Thanks, Le Tourment, the torment is all mine. To add insult to injury? They’re fucking spammers. And I have something I’d like to say about that, meet me under the fold, please.

Pernod Absinthe Rating:

Le Tourment Vert Rating:

Slowly, but surely, I’ve been collecting absinthes. Not always the most obscure of brands or styles , but certainly a fair representation of what’s found it’s way on the market since early last year when it became legal it was realized the 10ppm thujone restriction actually allowed for sale of many European products in the US. Contrary to popular belief, it was never specifically banned. But, I come here to praise absinthe, not to bury educate on it. If you have questions on absinthe’s production , hallucinogenic qualities , or deleterious effects I highly recommend the Wormwood Society’s FAQ section and forums, but watch your step in there, the world can be a harsh place.

The only things I really want to touch on, since most of these things are covered exhaustively elsewhere, are the traditional styles of absinthe and what I’ll be looking for in them in going through the tasting process. There are three primary styles of absinthe; blanche (white), verte (da green), and Czech. There is only one Czech-style absinthe that will be covered in this series, Mata Hari. The remainder will fall squarely in the blanche or verte categories with the primary difference being that a verte-style absinthe has an additional step after its distillation (when it’s a blanche) whereby an additional set of herbs are infused and, usually, end up being the source of coloration (i.e. green). This typically leads blanche absinthes to be more whole-heartedly committed to anise/wormwood flavor profiles and the vertes to have more herbaceous and “woodsy” elements vying for attention. These, of course, are broad generalizations that have, for the most part, held true in my tastings thus far. For more information on styles you can visit Chuck Taggart’s background piece on absinthe and New Orleans, this WIRED article on Absinthe’s resurgence, or this look at basic absinthe production at the Wormwood Society. Then, read on.

Tasting Process: I will be evaluating each of the absinthes in two ways, by making a traditional absinthe drip (3:1) and frappe’.

The Absinthe Drip gives the absinthe a way of explaining itself and revealing its inner nature. The absinthe drip, for me, is the therapist’s couch of drinks for absinthe whereby it reveals its deepest secrets and tells me what’s on its ever-cantankerous mind.

Absinthe Drip

• 1oz absinthe
• 1 lump of sugar
• 2-3oz chilled water

Place the absinthe in an old-fashioned or absinthe drip glass and a tea strainer or absinthe spoon on top of the glass. Place the sugar cube on the spoon or in the strainer and slowly drip 2-3oz of water over the cube and into the absinthe until, hopefully, most of the sugar is dissolved.

The Absinthe Frappe, on the other hand, occludes the absinthe’s inner child and looks to find out how well it plays with others. Yes, its constiuent parts are nearly identical to the Drip but the Anisette and shaking cause the absinthe to behave much differently and, essentially, reveal its mixability and complexity. Or, in the case of some, it’s insipidity .

Absinthe Frappe

• 1.5oz absinthe
• .5oz simple syrup
• 1t anisette

Place all ingredients in a mixing glass and shake heartily for 15 seconds. Pour all ingredients into an old-fashioned glass. I skip the water many recipes call for.

Now, what you likely came here for. Our first looks will be at La Fee Parisienne, Lucid, and Apsinthion, a Polish absinthe of neon sex.

La Fee Parisienne is one of the two neon-green absinthes in this round-up that hearken to when not-so-savory producers were putting out product that seemed to exist for the sole purpose of contributing to absinthe’s illicit appeal and the ill-founded prospect of its hallucinogenic qualities. Fortunately, despite this artificial coloring, La Fee does much better than all that. Drip: In an Absinthe Drip this comes across with much less anise than most and presents a lot of herbaceous qualities and, of the three, comes across more complex. This is certainly the most vegetal and “woodsy” of the three and is pleasantly sippable. It louches very nicely and at 136-proof has a very light body. With this one, I definitely think upping the ratio of water-to-absinthe couldn’t hurt. Frappe: Somehow, in the frappe, the herbal qualities are amplified (the word “nettles” kept coming to mind) but are still not as complex or playful as the Lucid. In both, La Fee comes across as fairly dry but not so much that the sugar or anisette need to be bumped up in any way. Ultimately, I have to recommend this as a sipping absinthe that performs best when left to its own devices. The bitterness of the wormwood comes through and, for mixing, makes it limited in its application. It’s a pleasant surprise in a drip and a bit of an underperformer in the frappe. The labeling is lovely but, at the end of the day, it is not the best bargain for its quality. It’s not abysmal, by any means, but it’s also not bowl-me-over-wonderful.

Apsinthion is one of those neon beasts that promotes itself as a high-thujone absinthe and seems to start at the point of wanting to attract exactly the wrong sort of drinker. It’s produced in Poland and there’s some dispute as to whether it’s actually distilled or an amalgamation of oils, neutral spirit, and other chemicals. Either way, I was curious how it would perform against the new vanguard of European absinthe products making their way into the U.S. market. Drip: There is a lot of heat in a drip made with Apsinthion and it has a strong Good n’ Plenty character. This, essentially, is not a good thing. It’s mint-heavy, wormwood-weak, and overly-simple. It seems sugared and has an undefinable saccharin character that makes one want to move on, and quickly. Frappe: In a frappe, the Apsinthion just makes you appreciate how much a quality absinthe brings tot he table. Apsinthion comes across as dry, unmelded, and with a certain uncomplicated toothpaste quality. If you accidentally stumble on this product, skip it entirely. If you’re striving for a simple licorice flavor with little complexity, look for a pastis such as Pernod or Ricard and you’ll be much happier for it. If you’re looking for a simpler absinthe, well, you could still do better.

Lucid, as you probably know, was one of the first true absinthes to bring absinthe back-to-market in the U.S. in 2008. It’s eye-catching bottle (har har) has turned some off as it doesn’t speak to the quality of the product or its origins. However, Lucid is distilled in France and seemingly tries to capture the traditional style of an absinthe verte. How well it actually performs, though, is another matter. Drip: The first thing I notice about Lucid is how easily it louches and the oils precipitate once water is added. It has a lovely milky, almost violet, color that is mesmerizing and a joy to watch. However, once hitting the palate it has a heavily-bodied coating effect that produces a sort of numbing quality. This leaves the impression that the only thing Lucid has to offer is a black licorice character that leaves you wanting more…of….something more. Frappe: However, in a frappe, Lucid practically sings. It was nearly impossible for me to pick apart all of the flavors dancing around but nearly all of them were pleasant. Joana and I both described this as “playful” with thoughts of tinkling piano keys invading our thoughts. The flavors that came to bear had more ruddish complexity than what it presented in the Drip, a most welcome development. I highly recommend this as an absinthe to be used for mixing. it relies heavily on an broad anise flavor but still has something to bring to the party with a nice balance of dry and sweet. However, at the price, Kubler may be a better option if you’re buying an absinthe almost strictly for mixing. However, you could do far worse either way, just ask the Poles.

Lucid Rating: