What is Cocktail Architect? The World's First Digital Sandbox and Physics Engine for Bartenders (Laboratory, Workshop, Pricing and Pour Cost in Shift)

Cocktail Architect · How it works

Cocktail Architect is a web app for bartenders that works a cocktail through before you pick up the shaker. You enter the drink's spec in the Laboratory, and the app's analyser shows its strength, sweetness, acidity, pH, bitterness, body and cost per serve, taking into account the ice and the method (shaken, built, stirred). Under the hood, Cocktail Architect runs a physics engine that "builds" cocktails, an AI bar master powered by Claude Sonnet 5.5, a database of 600+ ingredients, 100 classic cocktails and 66 preparations. We built the app at That Bartender Project. It works in English and Russian, in the browser on your phone and computer. We added a dedicated shortcut icon, so you can open the web app from the home screen of your phone or computer for quick access, like any other app.

Below we break down what exactly Cocktail Architect calculates, which models it uses and how it differs from other bar software.

Why we created Cocktail Architect

Sound familiar? You came up with a cocktail, inspired and in a good mood, mixed the drink... sour. You added syrup, and it turned cloying. The third attempt seems fine, but you will never repeat it exactly, because everything was done by feel. Every iteration means gin, vermouth, liqueur, whisky, cordials and preps poured down the sink, and hours of the shift wasted.

And preparations cost even more! A cordial, an infusion, a fat wash is already a small production run. A batch made "by instinct" comes out weak or bitter, and litres of produce go in the bin. As for the cost of a new cocktail, at best someone works it out in a spreadsheet after the shift.

Oleg, the project's co-founder, worked behind the bar exactly like this. Cocktail Architect came out of the need to see the result BEFORE product and time are wasted on many iterations of a single cocktail.

Before and after Cocktail Architect

Cocktail Architect in numbers

• 600+ ingredients, each with around 20 characteristics: strength, sugar, acids and pH, bitterness, umami, texture, aroma, price, behaviour in an infusion and at different temperatures, and more.
• 11 parameters for every drink: ABV, Brix, TA, pH, bitterness, umami, body, aeration, final volume, acid profile and cost. All of them are recalculated with every change to the spec.
• 100 classic cocktails in 10 families: Old Fashioned, Highball, Negroni, Sour, Sidecar, Last Word, Martini, Flip, Creamy Sour and Punch. The balance ranges the app uses to judge your recipe are derived from them.
• 66 preparations: cordials, syrups and premixes, each with its composition, method and steps.
• 9 techniques in the Workshop and 6 infusion methods, from cold maceration to N₂O.
• 2100+ flavour pairings in the flavour pairing graph across 141 ingredients.
• 7 food acids with their own chemistry: citric, malic, tartaric, lactic, acetic, ascorbic and phosphoric.
• Over 100 professional educational resources and books behind the AI bar master's knowledge base.
• 2 languages, millilitres or ounces, 20 currencies for costing.

The Cocktail Architect physics engine: what exactly it calculates

The physics engine is the foundation of Cocktail Architect. It is deterministic: the same spec always gives the same result, today, tomorrow and a year from now. AI does not replace it and does not guess the numbers. Every recipe, yours and the ones the bar master suggests, is calculated by the same core, so you can check them in the same way.

Dilution in Cocktail Architect

• The method sets the share of meltwater. Shaking adds 50% water to the drink's volume (ceiling 70%), throwing 40% (up to 60%), stirring 30% (up to 50%), building 15% (up to 25%). For drinks without ice there is the Neat method: there is no dilution, and the app simply hides the ice choice.
• Ice and ingredients shift that share. The type of ice changes dilution, and purée lowers it by 10% because the pulp holds on to water. The app calculates the same sour on different ice differently, just as it behaves in the shaker.
• Volume contracts. Alcohol and water together take up less space than their separate volumes, and chilling contracts the drink by a further 0.5% when shaken and 0.3% when stirred. So the glass holds not the simple sum of the millilitres in the recipe but the final volume, which the app shows separately. You need it when you choose the glass or work out how many serves a batch will give.
• The drink's window. The app shows how many minutes it takes for melting ice to add about 35% water to the volume and for the flavour to start drifting. You can see in advance which cocktail will sit happily on the guest's table and which is best drunk straight away.

Brix and sweetness in Cocktail Architect

• Brix is calculated as the mass fraction of sugar. The app takes the density of a sugar solution from its relationship with Brix, rather than assuming a millilitre of syrup weighs exactly one gram. So the calculation holds for a 1:1 simple syrup and for a 2:1 rich syrup, where the difference is already noticeable.
• Citrus sugar comes from USDA data, not from a refractometer reading. In lime juice the instrument reads around 8 °Bx, but almost all of that is acid: there are 1.7 g of sugar per 100 g, and 2.5 g in lemon. Going by the refractometer, a lime juice cordial would get too little sugar.
• Cold changes sweetness. At −5 °C sucrose tastes about 20% less sweet, while fructose tastes sweeter. A fructose cordial in the shaker reads about 1.75 times sweeter than a sucrose one at the same Brix, and that difference carries through to the glass: perceived sweetness in the Laboratory shows the same figure as the cordial screen.

TA and pH in Cocktail Architect

• TA and pH are different things. TA shows how much acid is in the drink. pH shows how sharply it hits the tongue. Campari has a pH of about 3.0 with only 0.2% acid, so one cannot be derived from the other. The engine calculates both values with a single charge-balance model.
• The model accounts for buffering and alcohol. Acids and the buffer of juices add up by moles, ice only dilutes, and alcohol weakens acid dissociation: a sour at around 15% ABV gains roughly +0.2 pH (Bates, 1960; NIST data).
• The model is checked against pH meter readings. Daiquiri from 2.7 to 2.9, caipirinha 2.73. Sours in the app sit between 2.5 and 2.9, exactly where the meter puts them.
• The character of the acid shapes the advice. If a dry acid without a buffer hits harder than a juice with the same acidity, the app suggests a dose of sodium citrate in grams. The drink keeps the same amount of acid, but it hits softer, as it does in fresh juice.

Bitterness, body and umami in Cocktail Architect

• Bitterness follows Stevens' power law with an exponent of 0.6. Perceived bitterness rises steeply at low concentrations and levels off at high ones, so diluted bitters still taste bitter. A simple calculation by volume underestimated the bitterness of a Negroni, while the engine shows it the way you taste it in the glass.
• Body from glycerine also follows a power curve rather than a simple average. For non-alcoholic drinks this is the main tool: taking the alcohol out is not enough, the drink needs its body back.
• Salt works as a seasoning. A few drops of saline lift perceived sweetness by about 5% and suppress bitterness by about 15%, and the app accounts for this in the balance.

The balance analyser in Cocktail Architect

• The ranges of the 10 families are derived from 100 classic cocktails, not written by hand. You can recalibrate them for your bar if, for example, your Sour is traditionally drier than the classic one.
• Ratio indices (sugar to acid, bitterness to sweetness, alcohol to sweetness) catch an imbalance when every number is within range on its own, yet the drink still does not come together.
• Every piece of advice names a dose, chosen by the same calculation you see on screen. Apply it, and the advice disappears by itself. If the deviation is intentional, you can dismiss the advice: the app asks whether the cocktail is meant to be that way and will not raise it again for this recipe.
• A bartender's rulebook catches what the numbers cannot see: 60 ml of citrus in one serve, bitters in millilitres instead of dashes, freshly squeezed juice in an Old Fashioned, a highball in a shaker. The hints sound the way a senior bartender behind the bar would say them: what is wrong and why.

Brix and pH in the app are marked with "~". This is a precise calculated estimate rather than a laboratory measurement, and the app does not hide it. If you have a refractometer or a pH meter, enter your reading, and it overrides the calculation.

Cocktail Architect, Workshop: preparations, fat wash, milk wash and batches

The Workshop holds nine techniques, laid out in the order you work at the bar. First come raw materials and bases: super juice, syrups, cold brew. Then infusing and balancing: infusion, cordial, shrub. Finally, finishing: fat wash, milk wash, carbonation. Each technique turns a process into a finished ingredient with honest physics. That ingredient appears in the Laboratory straight away and can become the base of the next preparation: you can fat-wash an infusion, balance a milk punch into a cordial, and use your own syrup as the sweet part of a shrub.

• Infusions. Six methods: cold, room temperature, sous vide, hot, N₂O and blender. Each ingredient gets a role (lead, support, accent), and the roles share one budget of the base: add a second and a third ingredient, and the app recalculates the weights for the whole batch so the infusion does not come out overloaded. The weights come from tested recipes in bar books: cinnamon 25 g per litre, coffee 200 g, lemon zest 80 g. The app warns you about overheating and over-extraction in advance: basil in a hot sous vide will give a "cooked" note and bitterness, and you will be offered cold maceration instead.
• Fruit in an infusion releases sugar, acid and water. That is why vodka with strawberries comes out at around 29% ABV rather than the 36% a simple calculation would give. These figures are checked against published maceration measurements.
• Yield losses. The pulp holds on to liquid, and the app calculates this by the form of the ingredient: dried spices and dried fruit absorb about 1 ml per gram, pieces and herbs 0.25 ml, purée and zest 0.1 ml. Clarifying with agar takes another 20% of the volume, a coffee filter about 5%. You know in advance how much infusion you will actually get.
• Cordial. The target is set by Brix and TA. The cordial preset is 27 °Bx and 1.8% acidity, the median of bar books. Sources of acid and sugar come from your own database, including your syrups, oleos and super juices.
• Fat wash. Fourteen fats: coconut, olive oil, bacon, ghee, duck fat, cocoa butter and more. You can wash a single spirit or a whole cocktail. Fat does not change acidity, so the pH and TA of the base carry into the finished ingredient unchanged, while body and umami increase.
• Milk wash. Without acid the milk will not curdle, so the check is mandatory: below 0.6% TA the app warns you and will not let you save the preparation. That way you do not spend a batch of milk and spirit on a clarification that will not work.
• Syrups, shrubs, carbonation. Eight syrup techniques, including oleo saccharum, and each gives its own result: a cold infusion keeps freshness, boiling opens up dense produce, caramelising brings burnt notes. Eleven vinegars for shrubs, each with its own sharpness. Carbonation is calculated from forced carbonation tables, in volumes of CO₂.
• Batches. The tech sheet shows how much of each ingredient to pour, how much water to add for dilution, how many serves the batch gives and what it costs. The sheet saves and prints for the shift.

Cocktail Architect, Shift: cost per serve and pour cost without the hassle of Excel spreadsheets

A cocktail can sell well and still make no money: the syrup got more expensive, the pours got more generous, the price was once set by eye. Shift shows what every serve costs you, what price to put on it and how much of everything to buy for the shift. All it needs from you is the prices on your invoices.

• Prices go in the way they appear on the invoice. You enter the pack size and its price, and the app works out the price per millilitre and per gram. Fresh juice has a yield field: how much juice the fruit you bought actually gives.
• Cost per serve accounts for the yield of the produce and a spillage allowance. The recommended price is rounded up, and for your own price the app shows pour cost and margin per serve.
• The cost of a preparation equals the cost of its ingredients divided by the actual yield. So the liquid the pulp absorbed is already in the cost of every serve, and a cordial in the calculation costs what it really costs.
• An incomplete calculation says so. If some items have no price, the app writes "calculated from 3 of 5 items" and gives no verdict while the figure is too low.
• The shopping list breaks preparations down to raw ingredients. 1000 ml of cordial from a 1269 ml batch becomes 236 g of sugar on the order, rather than a line saying "cordial" that nobody can buy. The list counts packs in your own pack sizes and prints as a separate sheet.

The AI bar master inside Cocktail Architect: Claude and a knowledge base built from 100+ professional bar resources and books

On the Pro AI and Premium AI plans, the app includes an AI bar master powered by Claude Sonnet 5.5 (Anthropic).

• It sees your screen. In the Laboratory that means the spec, the numbers and the analyser's verdict; in Shift, the active menu and pour cost; in the Workshop, the preparation you are working on. So the question "what should I fix here?" gets an answer about your cocktail rather than cocktails in general.
• It knows where you work. Set your country in the bar profile, and the bar master takes the season, climate and terroir into account: what grows nearby right now, which products you can actually buy locally and what will suit your menu at this time of year.
• Its own knowledge first, then the internet. The order of sources is: the app, the knowledge base, the model's general knowledge. The bar master only goes online when its own knowledge is not enough, for example for the label data of a specific bottle, and runs no more than three searches per answer.
• The knowledge base. We studied more than 100 professional bar resources and books and distilled the most important parts into 12 thematic modules, around 190,000 words. Among these books are Liquid Intelligence by Dave Arnold, Cocktail Codex (Alex Day, Nick Fauchald, David Kaplan), Imbibe! by David Wondrich, The Aviary Cocktail Book and The Noma Guide to Fermentation. The bar master picks passages by the meaning of your question, and an English question finds a Russian section.
• The engine checks the AI's recipe. A cocktail from the bar master goes through the same balance analysis as your own, and the verdict appears right on the card, next to the bar master's explanation. A preparation from the AI is also calculated by the Workshop's core rather than by the model, so honest Brix, TA and strength go into your database.
• The result lands in the app. Three scenarios: develop a cocktail, make a non-alcoholic version, add a product to the database. The finished recipe opens in the Laboratory with one tap, saves in both languages at once, and you can refine it by hand.

How Cocktail Architect differs from other bar software

We studied bar software in English and Russian, and tried a lot of it ourselves. There are many good tools, and each covers its own part of the job. But a bartender who creates the cocktails, runs the menu and keeps an eye on the money has to keep several programs open at once to use them.

• Calculators and professional toolkits. Jeffrey Morgenthaler's free calculators work out batches, syrups and strength. His app Bevnap puts costing, batching, syrups, carbonation, strength with dilution and a slushy calculator around a recipe database. It is a strong working set, but every number in it lives in its own calculator. In Cocktail Architect all the calculations meet in a single model of the drink: change the spec, and the balance, pH, cost and the analyser's verdict change at once.
• VESP. A small balance lab: ABV, Brix, acidity, dilution by method and a flavour radar for classic cocktails. We tried it. On many cocktails its numbers differed from bar practice, costing comes down to two input fields, and there are no preparations, AI, menus or shopping lists. It was made by an independent developer from outside the bar industry.
• Mixora. An AI menu consultant: from your ingredients, budget and bar concept it puts together a cocktail idea, a recipe, a preparation and pour cost. The bar master in Cocktail Architect does the same job, but its recipe is then checked by the physics engine, the preparation is calculated by the Workshop's core, and the result opens straight in the Laboratory.
• MyDrinkCreation and Cocktail Universe. Great educational projects: courses, lessons, video tutorials, technique guides and a few calculators. People go there to learn how to clarify, ferment or make a cordial. Cocktail Architect has no courses or video lessons at the moment, and that is a deliberate choice. We plan to add learning materials in the future, but today Cocktail Architect is a sandbox: a Workshop with a Laboratory, the place where drinks are invented, created and composed. Everything works as it does behind a real bar, only in digital form, and you see the result in numbers straight away.
• Inventory systems: WISK, BevSpot, Partender. They count the bottles in the stockroom, connect to invoices and the till, and show where the whole bar's money goes. Cocktail Architect does not do stocktaking and does not connect to the till. It works one step earlier, while the drink is still being developed, and sees flavour and balance in a recipe, not only items to write off.
• AI apps: OpenBar, Mixel, BartenderBot. They suggest a cocktail from the bottles you have and help you find a recipe in a large library. The bar master in Cocktail Architect also builds a recipe from your shelf, but its answer is checked by the physics engine, and preparation doses are calculated by the same core as in the Workshop.

None of these products brings everything together. According to our market review in autumn 2026, there is no other system, in English or in Russian, where a sandbox for developing cocktails, a physics engine, a Workshop for preparations, an ingredient and recipe database, cost and shopping calculations and an AI bar master all work in one place, with a clean professional interface. One app instead of five turns out both cheaper and simpler.

Who it is for: at home and behind the bar

In a bar, the app covers seasonal menu development, shift prep, one standard for every recipe and training new staff. It helps most in a small bar where one person is the owner, the bartender and the bar manager at once: they create the cocktails, build the menu, keep track of the money and buy the produce. That person gets one place where everything can be built online before spending product, money and hours behind the bar. Two bartenders arguing about how the bar's Negroni should taste? They load the classic recipe, look at the radar and the bitterness, save their version as the standard and print a card for every shift.

At home, the app adapts to you. In the bar profile you set where you make drinks, which country you live in, what equipment you have and what you never use. Equipment is set with a ready-made kit in one tap: home kitchen, standard bar, bar with preps, lab. You can mark your shelf with a starter set, and the home set adds ten items at once. From then on, the Workshop shows the techniques available to you first, and the bar master answers a home enthusiast differently from a bartender in the middle of a busy shift. The profile never blocks anything: every technique stays in place, and only the order of suggestions changes. You can view volumes in ounces, just like on a jigger.

Pricing

• 7 days free. The full Basic plan: use it on preps and real shifts, and if you cancel before the trial ends, you are not charged.
• Basic, €12 a month or €120 a year. Laboratory, Recipes, Workshop, Shift, Library, recipe card printing and cloud sync. These are all the manual tools: you build, the app calculates and advises.
• Pro AI, €20 a month. Everything in Basic, plus the bar master, AI Studio, the knowledge base and web search. An AI budget of around €5 a month.
• Premium AI, €50 a month. The same as Pro AI with three times the AI budget, around €15 a month, for those who work with AI every day.

The app runs in the browser, installs as a shortcut on your phone's home screen and keeps working if the connection drops. Recipes, preparations and the database sync between devices with your key: start on the laptop, carry on from your phone behind the bar.

Frequently asked questions

To sum up

• Cocktail Architect calculates a cocktail before you mix it: dilution, Brix, TA and pH, bitterness, body and cost, and gives the correction in millilitres.
• Preparations from the Workshop become ingredients with physics and a price, including yield losses, and go straight into the Laboratory.
• The AI, powered by Claude Sonnet 5.5, draws on our research of 100+ professional bar resources and books, and its recipes are checked by the same physics engine in the Laboratory.
• One app for the bar and for home, in English and Russian, instead of five different programs.