By Dan Moren

January 21, 2016 8:31 AM PT

Old Sport helps you build cocktails with a missing ingredient

Note: This story has not been updated for several years.

If there’s one thing that I do really enjoy about the app economy, it’s that every once in a while I think to myself “Wouldn’t it be cool if there was an app that did X?” and sooner or later, I find one that does just that.

For example, I recently came across Old Sport, a free iOS app that does one thing, but does it well. Enter a list of common cocktail ingredients that you have on hand, and Old Sport will tell you which cocktails you can make. Great! There are definitely things I wouldn’t think to make with the items I have in my liquor cabinet.

But, my favorite feature is that it will also tell you what drinks you could make if you had one more thing. So I learned that if I had Honey Syrup on hand, I could add a Bee’s Knees (Honey Syrup, Lemon Juice, and Gin) to my repertoire. Some Simple Syrup–which, yes, is not terribly difficult to make–and I could concoct a Gin Fizz.

If you’re looking to extend your cocktail-making prowess, Old Sport seems like a handy way of doing just that. It won’t necessarily displace Highball, which made our favorite apps list of 2015, as my cocktail app of choice, but it will let me be a little more tactical about what I add to my bar.

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His latest novel, the supernatural detective story All Souls Lost, is out now.]

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