Cocktail Software, Apps, & Databases

[TallDrinkOfWater]

Has anyone found a really good solution to keeping track of cocktail recipes, notes, images, ingredients, and the like?

I've taken to simply storing things as text files, or appropriately-tagged photos, and letting my computer's desktop search find and sort for me, but that's not ideal. There are any number of recipe applications that I could probably use, but I wouldn't know where to start. I could also use one of several applications that allows for relatively free-form data entry (including multimedia), but those might be overkill and I'm not sure they're the best choice anyway.

A web-enabled system has some appeal -- cocktaildb.com is a good template for that -- but doesn't solve the problem of access when offline.

It would also be nice if I could keep recipes (from the same source) on my iPod or mobile phone too, without having to manually re-enter them.

There's alway the good old Moleskine approach too, which is both elegant and simple, but lacks a lot of modern electronic convenience.

Any good advice?

[Vesper Lynd]

Bols has a web based cocktail DB of sorts, it records what you have in your bar and then gives you a list of drink that you can make from it's DB. Unfortunately I don't think you can add additonal recipes or ingredients to the DB.

I have written an Access based DB, that allows you to add new recipes and ingredients as you come across them. It also has a couple of search and report functions. If you PM me I'd be more than happy to share it with you, providing you are willing to put up with it's "quirky" nature as I didn't really expect to share it with any one.

[Forest]

Hi Dayne!

You know I'm by means an expert on this, but I was thinking Access too. With something like recipes, you could do a pretty simple one table database with search functions on ingrediants, and other characteristics, insert photos, etc. You can export the data into text or spreadsheet format to store on your phone (don't know if your phone will store files like that?) Which of course won't be as nicely searchable as they are in the database, but they'd be there. I'll be curious to see the other suggestions and what you do!

Have a good weekend!

[Forest]

or you could get even more tricky (and, yeah, maybe this is starting to be overkill) but add a table for "friends" in the database and start matching up your visitors with the ingrediants they prefer/don't like, what cocktails they've really enjoyed at your place so when they come over next you can make them something different but that will really suit their tastes. (and just for future reference, I really like the sound of the Falling Leaves! )

[Vesper Lynd]

or you could get even more tricky (and, yeah, maybe this is starting to be overkill) but add a table for "friends" in the database and start matching up your visitors with the ingrediants they prefer/don't like, what cocktails they've really enjoyed at your place so when they come over next you can make them something different but that will really suit their tastes.  (and just for future reference, I really like the sound of the Falling Leaves!  )

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Good idea, and not really too hard once you've worked out the structure of the DB for your recipes. I'll have to have a look at adding that to my DB

[Chris Amirault]

Has anyone found a really good solution to keeping track of cocktail recipes, notes, images, ingredients, and the like?

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Surely I'm not the only one who has notes scribbled in the margins and frontispieces of their cocktail books!

[Vesper Lynd]

....and sticky tabs marking the favorites

[Nathan]

I simply typed and printed out two separate lists of about 500 cocktails segmented by their base liquor (as well as a separate list of my own creations). One list contains descriptions of the drinks and is intended for guests. The other contains the actual recipes and is for my use behind my home bar. Since both lists are organized identically..this works well for me.

[Chris Amirault]

I'd love a free copy of the database software cocktaildb.com uses, so you can search on ingredients and names. I wouldn't put an upper limit on hits, though.

[TallDrinkOfWater]

I think for the moment I'm leaning towards one of the various notetaking-style applications on different platforms. All of them seem to offer the ability to store loosely-structured notes (with web clippings, multimedia files, attachments, etc.) and do arbitrary, near-instant searches on any of the contents.

I'm going to have to experiment to see how flexible that is and if those notes can be easily tagged with various labels [e.g. "Forest's Favorite"]. Also, exportability is critical (and syncing the text portions to e.g. "Notes" on an iPod or PDA would be ideal).

In the Windows the choices seem to include EverNote, Treepad, GoBinder, and OneNote; on the Mac side of things there's NoteTaker, Yojimbo, Mori, DEVONthink, and OmniOutliner.

Of course, being unstructured, those [probably???] won't give the the ability to do some of the fun things that cocktaildb.com can, such as convert measurements between imperial/metric, and change quantities based on glass size, but all the other searching mechanisms seem to be in place.

Thanks for the offer, VL, but I'm not much of an Access person.

If I come across any one of these that's particularly good or bad for tracking cocktails, I'll be sure to post about it.

[Forest]

I'm going to have to experiment to see how flexible that is and if those notes can be easily tagged with various labels [e.g. "Forest's Favorite"].

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you make a an awfully good cocktail...you might have to tag a lot of them with "forest's favorite!"

Let me know how it works out...your post got me thinking though and I might give it a try myself in Access because it sounds like a fun project. (although considering my list of "fun projects" I'd like to embark on, we might not see it until 2008!) But, we'll still be drinking cocktails, then, right?

[LEdlund]

Has anyone found a really good solution to keeping track of cocktail recipes, notes, images, ingredients, and the like?

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Surely I'm not the only one who has notes scribbled in the margins and frontispieces of their cocktail books!

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And cocktail napkins and coasters with drinks written on them by our favorite bartender!

I think the Access database is a fab idea. I need to become more proficient in Access for my job and what better way to do that than by creating a cocktail database

[DCP]

I use both Recipezaar (w/ paid subscription, optional) and ExtraTasty! as drink databases. Neither fully meets the requested criteria, and I also find them lacking - but 'good enough.' A custom Access (or dare I say, FileMaker Pro?) solution is probably a better bet. Heck, even one of the free web database tools like Zoho Creator might help.

[lostmyshape]

Has anyone found a really good solution to keeping track of cocktail recipes, notes, images, ingredients, and the like?

A web-enabled system has some appeal -- cocktaildb.com is a good template for that -- but doesn't solve the problem of access when offline.

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i was thinking this same thing today and wanted to revive this thread. a database driven solution with indexed ingredients would be the best bet. a sort of home-version of the Internet Cocktail Database. you could easily implement this on a home webserver (OS platform-independent) with an apache/php/mysql stack -- all open-source, free (and excellent) software.

in fact, i wonder if Martin Doudoroff, who created cocktaildb.com, would allow us to use his code base to develop an open-source solution. i'm thinking a front-end very similar to the internet cocktaildb where you could search by name or by ingredient, with a backend very similar to blogging software, where you could add new ingredients and recipes with a form. installation would require a little know-how, but wouldn't be too difficult.

does Dr. Cocktail still post here from time to time? perhaps he could get us in touch with Mr. Doudoroff. any developers post in this section? maybe we could send out a request egullet-wide. i'm sure there are a few developers that post here from time to time. or maybe we could take this to the open-source community and see if anyone has an interest in it. i have rudimentary knowledge of php and mysql, but not enough to develop a program from the ground up.

any other interest in this? other comments on it?

[Ed Hamilton]

I'd love a free copy of the database software cocktaildb.com uses, so you can search on ingredients and names. I wouldn't put an upper limit on hits, though. 

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Martin has spent a lot of time writing all the software for his site so I'd forget about getting a free copy of the software.

[lostmyshape]

Martin has spent a lot of time writing all the software for his site so I'd forget about getting a free copy of the software.

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ed... i totally agree. i'm not looking for a free copy from Martin (that wouldn't exactly work anyway), but rather the possibility of using a bit of his code base or, at the very least, his advice on developing a community driven and supported home-use cocktaildb. there's quite a bit of open source, community software out there (linux, etc). i'm interested in getting together a group of people who could develop a workable solution.

if Martin thinks he can sell his code and would rather do that, i completely support him. however, i'd love to have him aboard a project like this, as i think he'd have a lot to offer.

don't worry. none of us have any interest in "stealing" his code. in fact, cocktaildb.com is free already, isn't it? there is no subscription fee to use the service! i'm already super appriciative that he has developed this for free and (along with the museum of the american cocktail) made it free for any of us to use!

of course, we haven't had Martin's input on this. i'll send him an email and see what he thinks.

Edited February 7, 2008 by lostmyshape (log)

[syoung68]

Not sure if any of you have seen this but it may meet all of your needs and is relatively cheap...

http://www.pracx.com/bargenie/

[The Drinkist]

I have, of course, been very happy with the "Cocktails" app for the iPhone -- great stuff there. I'm wondering, though, if anybody has tried the iDrink app? I'm skeptical, but would love to hear if others have found it at all worthwhile?

[Chris Amirault]

Not sure if any of you have seen this but it may meet all of your needs and is relatively cheap...

http://www.pracx.com/bargenie/

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Thanks for the suggestion. I downloaded it to play with the 15 day trial. While it has a lot of annoying recipes (seemingly hundreds that include the word "orgasm"), it has one fatal flaw. When you enter in a new recipe -- a necessity for anyone reading this post -- you have to accept the set list of ingredients from the database. There's no way to add an ingredient to that list, and the database is heavy on branded, flavored vodka but missing a slew of crucial ingredients.

Too bad.

[Chris Amirault]

Bar Drinks Wizard is also not worth downloading. It's got a hideous user interface, lots of useless extra crap, and lacks some basics.

[dbrady]

I bought the iDrink iPhone application and the interface for adding your own cocktails is pretty good. You can add your own or edit the existing ones. The quality of the recipes is not as good as the CocktailDB app though (imho).

Worth the $4.99.

[Marlene]

I use the Bartenders Companion which is not web based and is a companion to the Living Cookbook software that I use. I find it adequate for my needs, but then, I'm not a cocktail geek.

[syoung68]

I bought the iDrink iPhone application and the interface for adding your own cocktails is pretty good.  You can add your own or edit the existing ones. The quality of the recipes is not as good as the CocktailDB app though (imho).

Worth the $4.99.

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iDrink has been around in one form or another for a long time. It was (may still be) written in an early cold fusion competitor called iHTML to show off the language.

I think the site (I have not downloaded the iPhone variant) is a fantastic program, but I agree that the cocktails in it are not as good as CocktailDB. There are plenty of bad cocktails as well as duplicates. This is partially b/c anyone could add anything in the early days.

I also think the site has warped into a bad design that is all about presenting Ads.

**Edited to add

So I just looked up the iDrink iPhone app and it has nothing to do with iDrink.com as far as I can tell. I may be wrong.

Edited September 9, 2008 by syoung68 (log)

[The Drinkist]

**Edited to add

So I just looked up the iDrink iPhone app and it has nothing to do with iDrink.com as far as I can tell. I may be wrong.

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I think that may be correct. I went ahead and got the app after posting earlier and the latest update changes, among other things, the name from iDrink to Drinks. That would make most sense if the app isn't connected with the iDrink website.

That being said, I'll concur that the Cocktails app is a better reference but the (now) Drinks app is useful for storing your own notes, etc. I'm happy to have both on the phone.

[Dangermonkey]

I collected a lot of links to any number of different databases and software approaches and really none of them seem to beat writing them down myself.I may however start using the google note app (forgot the name of it) just so I don't have to look at every scrap of paper and try to decipher my own handwriting.

What I think we really need along with some decent software as you were saying, is a drinkproof/spill proof laptop we can use in the bar area or kitchen so we can get the ideas down the first time in electronic form.

I finally got a drinkproof keyboard for my PC but that is do far from where I am doing my recipes. If you check military and police catalogs you can find waterproof/run proof writing supplies (notebooks, pens, etc,)but then of course you lose the quaint patinas and glass rings...