Making Cocktails The Smart Way with Perfect Drink

Before I gave the Perfect Drink app controlled bartending system a try, I made sure to stock up my bar. Or so I thought. After one liquor haul that ran around $50, I opened up the app and entered the contents of my liquor cabinet for drink suggestions based on the ingredients I had on hand. I found that I could just nearly make a Rainbow Dee-Lite. All I needed was some blue curacao and the rainbow-colored alcoholic beverage would be mine. It seemed easy enough, but let me tell you right now that blue curacao is hard to find. Four stores, an hour and a half later, and I finally had some blue curacao in my hands. But boy was it worth it.

Let me back up and clarify that when I say “stock my bar,” I mean create a bar by buying a bunch of liquor at random and placing it on my kitchen counter. Let me back up even further and actually explain Perfect Drink. The system is a smart scale that works with an app to provide hundreds of drink recipes, step by step instructions, and weigh out ingredients without measuring. The app can scale drinks so you can select any quantity to make, from one glass to a full pitcher. It will correct over-pours by adjusting the recipe automatically. You can enter the ingredients you have and get suggestions on what drinks to make listed by the level of completeness for your ingredients. If you decide to dream up your own concoction, you can immortalize it in the app to admire in the light of day – and actually remember it the next morning. Since the system is based on the app, it is able to receive continual updates to add new recipes and improve upon user-friendliness based on customer feedback.

So there I was, four stores later and I was ready to make a Rainbow Dee-Lite: orange juice, vodka, pineapple juice, grenadine and blue curacao. I had my iPad placed on the included stand and connected to the scale from the headset jack, ready to lead me on my rainbow drink journey. I changed the quantity from one to two so I could reward my friend who had accompanied me on Blue Curacao Hunt 2015. I poured my first ingredient, the vodka, into the included shaker and immediately poured too much. The virtual glass on the screen that was filling up as I poured turned red, and the app made a disapproving sound and then diligently adjusted the rest of my ingredients accordingly. Next up was the blue curacao. This time, I poured the right amount and the app let out a happy “ding!” I stirred these two together and then set them aside to begin layering the drink in a separate glass. After pouring in the grenadine, orange juice and pineapple juice into a glass with ice, it was time for the blue mixture as the final layer and I was done with my first Perfect Drink.

It was the most beautiful drink I have ever made. I was so proud of myself. I took pictures and showed them to anyone who would listen for the next week like a proud parent. However, I was a bit too excited in the moment and didn’t think through some elements that might have been helpful if I’d paid attention to them earlier. First, there were useful tips on assembling the drink on the left panel of the app screen. I completely missed those while I was so intent on getting the pour to weigh out perfectly. For the Rainbow Dee-Lite it suggested pouring the layers over the back of a spoon for smoother unmixed layers. Not a huge deal, but it’s probably a good idea to read through all of the steps of the recipe first if you’re easily distracted, like me. To do that, you have to tap ahead through all the drink steps and check the panel on the left each time.

My very first Perfect Drink, the Rainbow Dee-Lite. Not bad, right?

A Rainbow Dee-Lite as shown in the Perfect Drink App

Another aspect I didn’t think about was the fact that I had attempted to make two layered drinks at once but in the same glass. This amounted to a double portion drink because in order to split it I would ruin the presentation by stirring together the layered ingredients and then pouring them into two separate glasses. The rainbow absolutely had to stay intact. So instead I opted to be the bigger person by taking the doubled up drink for myself and making a single for my friend.

Next, my friend and I were feeling the need for a little pick-me-up and wanted a coffee drink. Fortunately, I had randomly picked up some coffee liqueur during Blue Curacao Hunt 2015. I didn’t quite have the ingredients on hand to match what the app was telling me I could make based on the ingredients I had entered earlier, so we decided to let the app guide us as far as measurements and let intuition take us the rest of the way. I had my friend take the lead as she has a natural knack for mixology, and Susie’s Red Eye was born: a mixture of coffee, vodka, coffee liqueur and half and half shaken up and then poured over ice.

My drink concoction, Susie’s Red Eye, officially saved in the app

Upon entering it into the app to save the recipe we decided that a finishing touch of a cinnamon stick would be perfect, if we had had a cinnamon stick, which we didn’t. So we added that to the recipe too. We weren’t very scientific about the shaking; we just decided it was fun to do and that it must be a step in the instructions. Within Perfect Drink, a programmed recipe that calls for shaking has a timer to let you know exactly how long to shake the drink so it’s mixed without being watered down.

Further ventures with Perfect Drink produced a Sex On The Beach that tasted so spot-on that it had us remembering times spent in Rocky Point, Mexico, spring break territory for University of Arizona students, where that drink is abundant: “It’s good! Tastes like a dirty bar in Mexico, brings back memories!”

Perfect Drink Appletini

I learned along the way that sometimes you just need to make substitutions for ingredients and call it close enough. The Sex On The Beach called for cranberry juice, but I only had cranberry pomegranate juice. It worked for me, although it didn’t look exactly like the picture. My friend wanted to recall her days of being 21 and asked for an Appletini. The recipe called for a cherry garnish, which I did not have, so instead I added some grenadine at the end. Again, it was close enough for me!

The Perfect Drink bartending system from Pure Imagination definitely lends itself to entertaining. With a suggested retail price of $49.99 it’s not too expensive to try out with a crowd and make it the highlight of your next party. Darin Barri, Partner at Pure Imagination, tells me that customers have been throwing Perfect Drink parties where guests bring a bottle of liquor or a mixer. All the ingredients are then entered into the app and folks make drinks from that. I will be trying this for sure because the worst thing about Perfect Drink is all the money you will end up spending on alcohol. It’s so much fun knowing you can make any drink under the sun that you can easily get carried away in the liquor store, so beware, gentle readers.

This story was originally published in the April 2015 issue of Kitchenware News, a publication of Oser Communications Group.