There's an app for pretty much everything ever at this point, so it's no wonder there is a multitude of apps dedicated to the most worthy of endeavors -- drinking, mixing, and discovering great cocktails. Whether your mission is to find the best bar in town, pull the trigger on drink indecision, or just geek out on cocktail porn, there's an app out there for you that won't take much, if any, money out of your strict imbibing budget. Though these apps might not be able to keep you from drunk-texting your boss on accident, they will keep you sipping and creating your own craft cocktails in style.
See Also: 5 Things Your Bartender Really Doesn't Want You to Do
What the Cocktail? Price: $1.99 You're next up in the bartender's queue and you are waffling between your favorite cocktails. Do you get a gin and tonic or a gin martini? Well, thanks to What the Cocktail?, you no longer have to decide. Just choose in your mood, be it joyous, brave, or tired, and then enter your location above or below the equator. This Russian Roulette of drinking incorporates fun, kind of psychedelic graphics to help you pick the drink that's best for you at the time. As far as we can tell, the drink options are pretty basic--think whiskey sour for "brave"--but it's still an enjoyable use of $2.
Liquor Cabinet Price: $1.99 This one goes out to all of the amateur mixologists mixing drinks at home. Liquor Cabinet allows you to catalog what you have in stock and then make drinks based off of your personal booze collection. It also has drinking occasion lists like "drinks for brunch" and "cocktails by the pool". Our main qualm with the app is the "drinks for a lady" list includes a chocolate martini, while the "drinks for a gentlemen" list includes gin and tonic and Negroni. If it's not ladylike to enjoy a good, strong gin cocktail, then we don't want to be ladies.
Lush Mixed Drinks Price: $1.99 Lush Mixed Drinks is the "Juno" of cocktail apps. The highly stylized app is ultra cutesy kitsch in that way we just cant resist. To be fair, it is much more than just little graphics of cocktails, it also uses cocktail history and a host of different possible ingredients, liquor-based and otherwise, to guide you through the wild world of drink making. The movie drink section is a particularly fun part of the app, with nods to "Casablanca," "The Big Lebowski," and "Tootsie."
The Photo Cookbook - Cocktails Price: $3.99 The Photo Cookbook for Cocktails is truly mixology porn at its finest. With stunning, high quality photos for every drink in its catalog, its worth it just to look. However, the app is actually very informative with step-by-step instructions and accompanying photos for any cocktail recipe you choose. The interface is easy to use and allows you to either search for something specific or browse based on spirit.
Drinks Advisor Price: Free As the only free app on the list, you might not expect much from Drink Advisor and that's where you'd be wrong. This app has a ton of information including spirit history, cocktail recipes, and local bar recommendations. We love learning about whisky [sic] and gin, but we were more than a little baffled when searching for bar ratings because somehow the popular Tempe dive bar Palo Verde Lounge ranked higher than Bar Crudo, which is at this point nationally known for being amazing. We love PV pickle shots as much as anyone, but that's just insane.