Drinking By Numbers

Posted by Scott on Monday, January 9, 2006 at 6:45 pm.

Awhile ago, a site called Cooking By Numbers made the rounds. Basically, you tell it what you have in your kitchen, and it tells you what you can make for dinner. It’s a cool idea, and it was only a matter of time before someone thought to do the same thing for the liquor cabinet. Extra Tasty! lets you enter in all the various bottles of booze, mixers, and garnishes you have in the house, and it will return drink recipes you can make. It’s well-executed, and uses all sorts of modern AJAX-y goodness. The only downfall is that all the recipies are user-contributed. The only quality control comes in the form of grades on each drink recipe, which are obviously a bit subjective, and vulnerable to gaming. Still, once the site has been up for awhile and has a larger pool of recipes to pull from, it should be pretty cool - and it could be a lot of fun at a party, though maybe setting a computer up near the bar isn’t the best idea.

2 Comments on “Drinking By Numbers”

  1. Nimrod the Irritable says:

    The obvious answer is to search before the party, print out the top three recipes, and give guests a menu to pick from. Or use them in a drinking game designed to punish people you don’t like.

    The possibilities are endless. And cruel.

    January 10th, 2006 at 12:16 am

  2. SeanM says:

    Webtender has done that for years, though again like you say, most of their recipes are user-contributed, and you have the problem that there are ingredients like “bourbon” and “Four Roses” … I find it doubtful that anyone who’d put in a recipe that calls specifically for “Four Roses” couldn’t also be made to a usually satisfactory degree with another bourbon, so putting it in there by name really messes things up. Maybe the user ratings on this one you mention will help.

    January 10th, 2006 at 1:22 am

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