Strain to chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with lime. Nice.

Here’s Kip with a look at a rather innovative text service launched recently:

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When Ewan asked me to review a SMS text based cocktail recipe service, I must admit to jumping at the chance. I love alcohol – the photos of me on Facebook minus eyebrows are a testament to this! So I pointed my browser to http://www.text4cocktails.co.uk/ and had a little look at how it works.

I must admit my designers eye was wincing at the website, but I wasn’t here to critique a website, I am to review the service that it offers. Put simply, you text an SMS shortcode number the word ‘cocktail’ and then the name of the cocktail you’d like to know how to make – then you will receive back the recipe all squeezed into a 160 character SMS. Sounds good – handy if you’re hosting a party and wanting to knock up a quick cocktail, or indeed you work in a bar and get an ‘interesting’ request.

After tracking down the number on the website I asked, for the recipe for a Cosmopolitan – pretty simple bog standard cocktail – pretty much seconds after the text left my outbox, I had the recipe back. This is what I got:

‘Shake 50ml vodka,12.5ml cointreau,100ml cranberry juice,Dash fresh lime juice,Ice,Strain to chilled cocktail glass,Garnish with a lime twist’

Hmm, not bad – a bit brief – but you get the idea. I thought i’d try something a little more complex, a personal favourite, a Mojito:

‘Muddle 10 mint sprigs,Dash of sugar add 25ml lime juice 50ml rum,Ice,Shake,Strain to tall glass,Cracked ice,Top soda water,garnish with mint sprig’

I’m not entirely sure how one would ‘muddle’, not a term I’ve heard before! Again, it shows the limitations of only having 160 characters.

Certainly a good little service that does exactly what it says on tin, the website could do with work, especially to make it more mobile friendly. Perhaps also they could look at longer messages, or perhaps a WAP link with the recipes? Still nice to see something a bit different and fun!

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Nice one Kip!