iPod Touch + Happy Hour = Life Is Good!

I’m in the mountains on vacation.  It’s 5pm, Monday, July 14th.  That means it’s cocktail hour and I’m jonesing for a margarita. 

I go to the cabinet and I pull out the Jose Cuervo margarita mix. (My brother-in-law brought it up with him during his most recent visit.) There’s a recipe on the back which calls for 1 part tequila, 3 parts margarita mix. Great… or maybe not.

Let’s look at the ingredients on the mix: first ingredient-water, second ingredient- high-fructose corn syrup.

That’s not a margarita, that’s a margarita-flavored slushie.  (He’ll be drinking the margarita mix all by his lonesome the next time he visits.)

I remember there are some cocktail cards I received as a gift a few years ago in the liquor cabinet.  I pull them out, and low and behold there’s a card for a straight up/classic margarita BUT…

the second ingredient is limeade and the main ingredient in the limeade is, that’s right, high-fructose corn syrup.  Let me repeat, I’m not looking for a tequila-flavored slushee, I’m looking for a margarita- tequila, triplesec and fresh lime juice.  It’s that simple. (Or at least it SHOULD BE.)

Problem is… It may only be three ingredients but I don’t remember the proportions. And by now I’m really thirsty.

It’s then that I remember seeing a little app on the App Store called "Cocktails".  At $9.99, it’s a little on the expensive side (in my opinion) but being as committed to the site as I am, I decide to take one for the team and purchase it. (And, by the way, did I happen to mention, I’m REALLY jonesing for a good margarita?)

I download the application (you gotta love "over the air" purchasing), fire up the app and I’m immediately impressed. It is simply organized, easy to use and powerful, not to mention chock full of recipes.

The first screen offers me a search field, allowing me to quickly pull up whatever drink I’m looking for.

The second screen consists of favorite recipes. At the moment it is blank but only because I’m only beginning to use the program. (Within a couple of weeks I suspect that I will have filled out the list substantially.  Yes, vacation is a wonderful thing.)

The next screen is the "base screen". It list the various drink bases and the recipes that fall under them.  The program has 168 rum recipes, 411 gin recipes, 217 liquor recipes and 15 tequila-recipes (I only need one.)

The final screen divides the drinks by type; there are apparently 781 cocktails, 40 fizz drinks, 11 juleps and 59 different punches in the database. You can even search by flavor and tag.

I immediately love the fact that the user interface is clean, making it easy to search for whatever drink your heart desires. Okay, time to get down to business.  After all, this entire thing starting because I’m searching for a particular drink.  It’s now well into cocktail hour and I want my margarita.  I type the word "margarita" in the search field; it immediately brings up 8 different margarita recipes.

There’s the "Sage Margarita", the "Millionaire’s Margarita", the "Frozen Margarita", and there’s the one that I’ve been looking for – "The Margarita”. 

I tap the screen and I am greeted by the recipe I’ve been looking for- "The" margarita- 1 1/2 oz. tequila, 1 oz. of triplesec, 1/2 an oz. of lime juice, shake with ice, pour into salt-rimmed glass, enjoy. 

And so, I take 1 1/2 oz. tequila, 1 oz. of triplesec, and I squeeze a 1/2 oz. of lime juice (or to be accurate, my ever-accommodating, amazing wife squeezes it for me). I shake them together, pour into a salt-rimmed margarita glass, break out a bag of tortilla chips . . . life is good.

We have friends coming this weekend. I have a feeling that I’ll be trying the other 7 recipes.

So what do I think about this program? It saved my afternoon so what do you think? If you have any interest in mixology, it’s most definitely worth a look.

If you are over 21, I rate it a 5.