I was discussing this with @soveran earlier.
I thought this was only possible on RubyGems 2.0, but apparently it's always been there. The syntax did change for 2.0.
1.8.x:
$ gem install ohm -v 1.1.2 ohm-contrib -v 1.1.0
2.0:
$ gem install ohm:1.1.2 ohm-contrib:1.1.0
In my scientific benchmark, it's "a lot" faster.