iPhone Applications for the Serious Drinker

There really is an iPhone app for everything. And here is a quick and dirty list of those that cocktail fans and boozers will love. These make it easy to locate the best local drink specials, search for your favorite cocktail recipes and keep track of your liquor cabinet's inventory.

DrinkTracker ($1.99):This little app is a handy way to keep track of how many drinks you've had and how long it'll take to reach legal BAC. Only thing is that the more you drink the harder it is to remember to input your cocktails. Also there is no database for cocktails. You can add a new drink to the list but you’d have to know how many ounces it has as well as what percent alcohol.

Flip N Drink ($1.99): This special cocktail application features recipes from renowned mixologists, like Ryan Magarian (who created Westside Tavern’s cocktail menu). It also offers some cocktail history, drool-inducing cocktail photos and suggestions of other cocktails you might like.

Happy Houred (Free): This app is easy to use and finds some of the best drinking specials in cities across the U.S., L.A. included. What’s not to love? You can search by location, type of bar, type of drink, day and even time of day in addition to name.

iWhiskey ($10.99): This is great for when you’re at a cool bar that has a huge variety of whiskey or if you’re lost in the whiskey aisle at Wally’s Wine & Spirits. This app features 600 reviews by Paul Pacult (founder of Beverage Alcohol Resource) on different brands of the brown spirit — from American, Irish, etc. to most expensive and five stars. It has purty pictures of cocktails which you can tap once to flip over and get the recipe of.

Miss Trivia! Miss Charming's iPhone Drink Trivia ($2.99): This little iPhone game app teaches you about the wonderful world of drinking via a fun trivia game. You can play this alone or pass it around to two to three of your friends at a bar or party. The player with the highest bar tab wins. Sample question: Who supposedly filled a tub with Champagne and took a bath in the 1950s? Answer below.*

Mixologist ($0.99): Beginner drinkers will appreciate this app which not only has a searchable drink database of over 7,900 different drinks where you can look them up by name, category or ingredient but you can find the nearest liquor store and you can use the Cabinet feature to keep track of what you have at home. There's even a randomizer feature where you can select a spirit and/or a mixer and/or a glass type, click the "Mix it up" button and the app will come up with a cocktail meeting those factors.

By Vesper aka Caroline on Crack


Name: Caroline on Crack
Cocktail alias: Vesper
Where I live: Westchester, California
Hometown: Sacramento
Day job: L.A. lifestyle blogger
Favorite "go-to" cocktail: Manhattan or bourbon with ginger beer/ginger ale
Favorite spirit: Macallan 12
First drink I ever had: White Russian

*Answer to trivia game: Marilyn Monroe

dark & stormy

Name: Kylee Van Dillen

Cocktail Alias: Dark and Stormy

Where I live: Los Angeles, CA

Hometown: A quaint little suburb in northern NJ

Day Job(s): Professional procrastinator. Writer/comedienne/actor/ bartender/mixologist/person you call when you need a ride to the airport

Favorite "go-to" drink: A simple pleasure.  You take 3 oz. of the best single malt Scotch you can get your hands on (Highland/Speyside) and add a handful of ice, and serve in a sturdy glass. It can be in a rocks glass, a wine glass or a sippy cup—it tastes delightful when drank from any vessel  (I know this both from experience as well as optimistic speculation)

Favorite Spirit: Scotch!

First drink I ever had: My mother swears she let me have Heineken when I was two years old, but from my own memory....Goldschlager. Age 14. Left home alone. My best friend and I were being rebellious and decided we should “learn” how to drink alcohol. I gagged, she spit hers out, and we spent the rest of the afternoon scrubbing gold leaf that got conspicuously stuck in the grout of my kitchen counter.

First cocktail I made, first bartending shift: I want to say a cosmopolitan. Roses lime, triple sec, cranberry from a gun and way to much vodka.

My "coming to Jesus" cocktail: Manhattan made with Basil Hayden Bourbon. I drank 2, because that’s what I thought Jesus would do.

Childhood Memories: Pink wine, hot buttered rum, gluwein, zima (and all the caps I saved for a reason that escapes my memory) peppermint schnapps smuggled in a water bottle, and jagermeister. Ooh and the worst hangover to date, white wine at my godmother’s wedding in germany. The germans like the never-ending glass which looks like you’ve only been sipping the same first glass, but in reality they’ve refilled it 8 times without you noticing.  

Cocktail POV: Make it delicious. Use fresh ingredients, quality spirits, and experiment. Don’t hold back when trying new flavor pairings, one mistake might lead to something delicious and at the end of the day—that’s what its all about. Creating memorable and yummy drinks that you (or your audience) enjoys.

Most stressful moment behind the bar: Just one? All the new years’ eves I’ve worked would be the obvious answer—guests antsy, horny, drunk, belligerent and loud as all hell….but sometimes the true stress shows up on an arbitrary Wednesday with a few difficult guests, glass broken in a well needing to be burned, wine foils leaving thin cuts on hands that are quickly using lemons again, and 500 mojitos with 400 modifications can all make things seem overwhelming…but sometimes the stressful moments are best remedied with a personal shot of tequila and smiling through the pain.  

Best Moment behind the bar: not sure, was probably too tipsy to remember! J