With the Beer Fest coming up tomorrow all the Providence beer drinkers are surly making a list, and checking it twice, of beers they want to try. But this is the 21st century and as with just about anything else, there’s an app for that. From iBeer an app that gives you a fake digital beer to “drink”, to the very useful Beer Cloud there are lots of apps to help beer drinkers this weekend and beyond.
Gallagher’s Beer Guide is an app that breaks beer down into 12 categories like IPAs or Amber Ales. It can even help you find beers by flavors you like to find the next great vanilla stout you might like or any beer for that matter. Maybe you just ordered a steak and don’t know what beer to order, Gallagher’s can help pair beers with most foods. It also has function that determines what type of beer you would like the most. For instance maybe currently consider yourself an IPA drinker but with Gallagher as a guide, you may learn that ambers are actually the beer you would enjoy the most.
Find a beer you like on Gallagher’s and you can even add notes about it and add a photo from you iPhone camera to help you find it again.
Overall a good app, and only $.99, but not the best of its kind, BeerCloud takes that crown.
BeerCloud 2.0, out now for Android and coming soon to the iPhone, is truly amazing. The app allows you to search for information on beers, or brewing companies by text, voice or even by scanning the barcode on a bottle or can. The ever growing database includes more than 3,600 beer descriptions and over 640 brewery bios.
“Version 2.0 of BeerCloud adds some powerful new functionality, including the ability to manage your favorite beers, brewers, and places* to buy beer, and to store tasting notes,” according to Great Brewers, the apps developer. “Comments can be instantly published to your Facebook or Twitter account, complete with a geotag. And everything you create with BeerCloud 2.0 is actively synced with your "BeerCloud" on GreatBrewers.com.”
You can flag your favorite beers, and even search for them stores and bars nearby using the built in GPS. You can then access all the information and edit it from your computer when you get home and save it back to your BeerCloud. Just a great app and what makes it even better in the price tag, it’s free.
Other great apps to check out include Beer Match a virtual sommelier that can not only pair your dinner with a beer, but give you some fancy “beer talk” reasons why you picked it to brag to your friends. Then there is Drink Fit. Ever wonder how you gained all those pounds, well I can tell ya how, the beer. Drink Fit can give you nutritional information on over 1,600 drinks, so for $1.99 if you’re watching your waist it’s a good buy.
So get out and drink your way through Down City this weekend, and keep that smart phone at your side well you do it.
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