Cocktails

On my last birthday, my wife got me a nice bar cart from West Elm, and we had some cocktails at my birthday party.

While I've had my share of Gin and Tonics, Rum and Cokes and the occasional classic cocktail (Old Fashioned, Martini), I have never really explored the world of cocktails with any dedication.

Now that I have a bar cart, and with the supplies we purchased for the party, I've been learning about cocktails and trying some on a regular basis, and I've been having a good time with it.

Apps

I already had Mixology and Top Shelf, and I added Lush to my collection of cocktail apps. I don't love any of them, but none of them is terrible either.

Lush feels the best-built of the three, with a fairly nice design, but I feel like its selection of drinks is more limited than some of its alternatives. Still, if you have to live with one, I'd probably recommend Lush.

Mixology might have the largest database of drinks of the three, and a long feature list, but the drink recipes are of seemingly random caliber and the app isn't terribly well designed, in my opinion (which, I grant, is subjective).

Top Shelf hasn't been updated for the iPhone 5 form factor yet, which is an immediate strike, but it has a fairly large database of drinks and the recipe quality feels a little higher than Mixology's at times. The interface isn't as quirky as Mixology's, but it's very standard UIKit/iOS feeling, rather than something above that. Still, if they get around to updating it for iPhone 5+, it'd be a little more competitive.

Books

I've also been looking at some eBooks.

Inkling's Speakeasy Cocktails feels expensive when compared to an App, but at $10, is basically what you would expect to pay for a decent cocktail book. The videos and images are nice, and while I don't absolutely love Inkling's book reader application, it's also not terrible. I probably like this more than any of the applications above, just in terms of depth of content.

I've also been reading the Kindle edition of 100 Years of Cocktails, and I'm enjoying it well enough, and the price is good, but I'd probably recommend Speakeasy Cocktails over this for most people.

Drinks

It's still early days, and I'm still heavily constrained by my ingredient list. I've been making:

Collins: Tom and John. The Tom was pretty good, but the John is better. I'm curious to try replacing the simple syrup with honey syrup, since I like honey with lemon.
Manhattan: Dry, Sweet and 'Perfect'. With Bourbon and Canadian Whisky, because I don't have any real Rye. I tend to like the 'perfect'.
Martini: Gin, Stirred. I do actually put vermouth in. I get along well with the 3:1 gin/vermouth recommended by Speakeasy Cocktails, and neither the twist nor the olive makes a huge difference for me.
Cuba Libre: I made a couple of these at my birthday party, but none since. I like the lime, but it doesn't seem /that/ different from a Rum & Coke.
Negroni: I picked up some Campari. It's pretty sweet, even with Speakeasy's higher gin recommendation, so I'm letting the rocks mellow out my drink. I imagine a classic 1:1:1 Negroni would taste even sweeter?

I've got a long list of ingredients to buy to expand my options, but it's a start.