The Disaster With Many Parts
The hunt for a "trademark" cocktail
Ok, so first off, if you were expecting another world building chapter this week, I apologize. There’s more coming, but ADHD had other plans, and I had a new idea that I needed to run with for a minute. Don’t look at me like that. I told you this thing runs on pure chaos. Just roll with it.
Anyway—as you may have seen, I’ve been playing with Chat GPT and its ability to create cocktails given a list of ingredients. I’ve tried a number of different formats for the prompt to see if I can get it to play along, but haven’t been able to get it quite right.
Initially, I tried giving it a theme, or a style. “Can you create an original margarita recipe?” “Can you create an original summer cocktail with bourbon?”
That second one turned out pretty good. Muddled raspberry, mint, hibiscus syrup and sprite. I’ll share that one another time.
Reeling it In
After the first couple of passes at giving the algorithm (mostly) free reign, I tried enforcing some more rules on the selection. I asked the bot to choose up to two spirits, up to five mixers, and up to two garnishes, and then I gave it a list for each category. I got a few interesting ideas back, but I also learned two important things from this format.
First: Chat GPT loves rum for some reason. It didn’t matter how many times I asked it to re-roll, it always chose rum. Second: If you give it a number range, it always takes the highest number. When I asked for “up to five” mixers, I got five every single time.
The Apple Fiasco
So, this brings us to the apple fiasco. A few nights ago, I was in the mood for a cocktail, and I wanted to try something new, but I didn’t want to have to run out to the store and pick up anything, so I gave Chat GPT a list of the things I had on hand—which (at the time) was tequila, apples, sour mix, and an assortment of different bitters.
The sadistic robot told me to muddle some apples, pour in 2oz of tequila, 1oz of sour mix, and then just throw in a dash of every single bitters variety on the list1. I garnished it with some apple peel (because I like to pretend that I’m fancy), and took a sip that was. Unpleasant? Maybe not bad? Kind of good?
I don’t know how I felt, honestly. It was drinkable, and I didn’t hate it, but something about it was wrong. Like I was constantly talking myself out of it just on principle because it shouldn’t have tasted that way.
You got a little tart punch up front with the initial sip, and then on the way down, the thing just cycles through all the different bitters like some funky slideshow until it finally settles on a chocolatey finish.
It was a mildly uncomfortable experience.
Let's. Get. Weird.
This got me thinking, though. This blogletter2 is chaos. I post a bunch of recipes, and then suddenly detour for a few weeks to write stories until the next ADHD derailment takes me back to the kitchen.
So where does that leave us? What fever dream dismantled the world building? Honestly, it’s in the title of the post, so I’m not sure why you’re asking. I want to create a signature cocktail.
I want to create something that represents all the weird as heck twists and turns this journey is going to take. Something wild. Something that goes against every rule in the book.
Well, maybe not every rule, but enough of them to make people nervous. You know, that excited kind of nervous where your brain says “don’t you dare,” but there’s that small, unhinged part of your caveman brain that just…
It’s going to take time to get this thing right, and I’ll probably hit pause at a key moment to work on chapter four of the world building, but that’s fine. Go with the flow—no. Strike that. It’s more like a small child getting whiplash when the dog yanks them in another direction because it saw a squirrel. You’ll need a minute to get your bearings, but it’ll be fine in the end.
All I know for sure is that whatever madness crawls out of this nightmare needs to be absolutely off the wall crazy.
Cherry, chocolate, orange, and toasted almond, to be exact.
This is a technical term that I am coining right now for this insane “newsletter” masquerading as a blog. Or is it a blog masquerading as a newsletter? Both? Neither? Does it even matter?