What! No Gin?

April 25, 2023 3:36 PM

Tempting as it is to see the subject matter of the Cocktail Oracle—ornamented by Luhn’s bon vivant wordplay—as just a diversion, his choice of the cocktail as an experimental problem was not frivolous. Because of the formality of its conventions, the cocktail has offered all through its history a neat articulation of a combinatorial—or mixological—information system. from INGESTION / A MANHATTAN PROJECT by Daniel Rosenberg
posted by chavenet (13 comments total)

I came here, indignant, preparing a flaming riposte.

But then I RTFA and saw the article is NOT, in fact, recommending making a Manhattan with gin.

And my fury was quenched.
posted by hippybear at 4:37 PM on April 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

I llove this sort of analog tool. Can it be done more thoroughly via digital methods? Sure, but you won’t be more stylish.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:43 PM on April 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

hippybear, you should consider trying a Martinez.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 5:02 PM on April 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

Never heard of Luhn's Moiré pattern thread counter, but it's very clever, and it's also interesting that he got his start in textiles, considering that card controlled looms are the ancestors of computer controlled machinery, not to mention their resemblance to Hollerith cards.
posted by jamjam at 5:04 PM on April 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Also see McBee system cards: https://hackaday.com/2019/06/18/before-computers-notched-card-databases/
posted by foonly at 6:33 PM on April 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

And my fury was quenched.

In gin, or rye?
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:19 PM on April 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

preparing a flaming riposte

Is that like a Flaming Moe?
posted by chavenet at 12:30 AM on April 26, 2023

1933, ey? New York, you say? That might explain why it doesn't have Ramos Gin Fizz. Huey Long had to come to town in 1935 to show the locals how it's done in New Orleans.
posted by BWA at 5:44 AM on April 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

(A little more on the Long incident.)
posted by BWA at 5:56 AM on April 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

1933, ey? New York, you say?

TIL that there was no such thing as Vodka in the US until 1934. I mean. Wow. I knew things were bad, but . . . wow.

Sometimes I wake up and look around at this country and think: "we are living in the worst possible moment in US history."

But there was no such thing as Vodka in the US until 1934.
posted by The Bellman at 7:01 AM on April 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

@hippybear

Scroll down far enough and you will find exactly that:

> Byron’s instructions specifically state, “Same as Manhattan, only you substitute gin for whisky.”
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 7:11 AM on April 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

I found the tool kind of useless and annoying.

You have to click all of the ingredients before any recipe cards appear. Which is ass-backwards (basically you're only being shown things that you already know). When you click "Rye," all of the Rye cocktails should be optioned, and clicking successive ingredients should prune the list.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 7:18 AM on April 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

Aardvark Cheeselog, I've seen tools like that one before (frex, the index page of my 'cocktails 101' book) and it's nice and all, but what I really want in a cocktail oracle is something that tells me what respectable drinks I can make using only the ingredients I tell it I have. Nobody wants to get all excited about a drink only to discover it needs two dashes of a specific type of bitters you can only buy in a tiny bar in New Jersey that shut down in 2005.

I'm using this mainly as a 'I am tired of drinking Southsides and don't want to go any further than the end of the terrace where the herbs are growing or, at a stretch, the other end of the terrace where the lemon tree is, what can I make with what's in the cupboard', and for that it's delightful.
posted by ngaiotonga at 1:34 PM on April 26, 2023 [1 favorite]