Spec Lab

Analyse your own spec

Write a cocktail or alcohol-free drink — or load a published recipe and change it — and see what it adds up to: how strong it is, what shape it has, how it compares with drinks like it, and what is likely to go wrong.

Start from a published recipe (optional)

Or start from a shape and explore its proportions

Shape

Spirit, citrus and sugar, shaken and served up. The citrus and the sugar balance each other; the spirit carries the flavour.

Built this way: Mojito, Virgin Mojito, Margarita, Sidecar.

Baseml

Sour element0.4 : 1 · 20ml

Most of the 62 recipes that use it here sit at 0.35–0.5 parts (middle 0.4). Yours is within the usual range.

Sweet element0.35 : 1 · 17.5ml

Most of the 38 recipes that use it here sit at 0.3–0.4 parts (middle 0.35). Yours is within the usual range.

Share of the drink before dilution, 88ml in all

Gin50ml
Lime Juice20ml
Simple Syrup17.5ml

A range is where recipes sit, not where a drink has to. Only tasting tells you whether yours works.

Ingredients

Measures in millilitres. A dash is about 1ml. Herbs, fruit and garnishes need no measure.

Ingredient 1
Millilitres of ingredient 1

0ml before ice

Method

Served

Your spec is kept on this device. The analysis is worked out and discarded — it is never stored, published or shared.

Write a spec — or load a published recipe and change it — then press Analyse. You'll get its strength and units, how the ingredients divide into jobs, how it compares with drinks of the same structure on CocktailHQ, the glass it suits, whether it can be batched, and anything likely to go wrong.

What a spec is compared against

The lab places your spec among published drinks of the same structure, never against an invented ideal. These are those groups: the middle half of each, worked out with the same arithmetic the lab applies to yours.

Catalogue benchmarks by drink structure
Structure	Recipes	Typical strength	Typical finished volume
Sour-structured	73	12–17% ABV	132–224ml
Long and lengthened	66	8–10% ABV	188–253ml
Spirit and modifier	29	15–28% ABV	94–122ml
Rich and creamy	12	7–14% ABV	129–345ml
Spirit and sugar	10	21–28% ABV	90–132ml
Bitter aperitif	3	Too few to say	106–212ml

A comparison is only made when at least eight published drinks share the structure. Strength ranges include alcoholic drinks only.

How the lab reads a spec

Strength. Each ingredient's measure is multiplied by its typical bottled strength. Ice adds water — for your method, the share of the finished drink that is meltwater is taken from the same ranges as the rest of the site — so strength and units are shown as a range. Fizzy ingredients are assumed to go in after shaking or stirring. A drink is flagged as strong above 2.8 UK units, the level only 1 in 10 published drinks exceeds.

Structure and roles. Each ingredient is given a job — base, sour element, sweet element, modifier, lengthener — by the rules the recipe pages use, and the combination decides the structure. Structure, not name, is what the comparisons are made within: a spec is sweet or dry for a sour, strong or light for a long drink.

Balance. Every ingredient carries an editor-assigned sweetness, acidity and bitterness. Weighted by measure, they give the drink's concentration of each — a relative reading, useful for comparison and not a laboratory figure, which is why the lab reports where your spec sits rather than a score.

Likely problems are technique facts — fizz in a shaker, egg white that is never shaken, citrus that is stirred — and ranges the catalogue itself defines. The lab does not tell you a drink is bad. It tells you what it will do. For a drink you have already made, use the Recipe Doctor; for the reasoning behind every figure, see how CocktailHQ works.

Your spec stays yours. It is kept in this browser so a refresh does not lose it. The analysis receives only catalogue ingredients and measures, answers, and keeps nothing. Nothing you write here is published.