Find new beer; remember your favorites
By Joe Allen-Black
Boston.com Staff
Reviewing: Untappd
Company: Untappd LLC
Price: Free
Platforms: Apple, Android, Blackberry, Palm Pre. Also a website
Should you get it? If you like beer and want to explore new ones -- definitely. If you drink the same thing all the time, it'll be dull.
I'm terrible at remembering what beers I like. I'll remember flavor and color (maybe a logo if I'm lucky), but an actual name? Well, that gets lost in my brain somewhere around calculus and all the state capitals in alphabetical order.
So when my brother introduced me to Untappd, I saw a chance to make my phone remember beer for me. It was Foursquare for beer drinking, which, in my mind, is taking two awesome things and combining them in the best kind of way.
Untappd lets you "check in" with a beer and location. So let's say you're at the Parish Cafe and you find you like a new beer; you can enter it into your phone along with your location.
The app then remembers what you put in, lets you comment on the beer, rate the beer, and then move onto the next one. You can also add friends to your list and see what they are drinking and commenting on. The app also shows what beers have been checked into the most -- so your fellow beer drinkers can help you figure out what to try next. Untappd uses Foursquare for locations. If you're a homebody, you can add your home as a location and check in there and avoid the bars.
So far this has let me avoid having to ask my brother for the 15th time, "Hey, what was the dark beer that was sweet that I liked?" (He has an appitude for remember these things). Now, I can just go through his page and find Samuel Adams Dunkelweizen.
Also, next time I go to Portland, Maine, for a weekend, I'll able to remember I adore Sea Dog's Wild Blueberry Wheat Ale, and that I need another pint of Vacationland Summer Ale by Gritty McDuff's Brewing Company.
Any other great beer, wine, or fun drinking apps that you can recommend? I'd love to find a few more to try out on the town.
