Beer & Wine | Ways to Become a Social Alcoholic

Tracy Wang 2015-6-1

Have you ever been in these scenarios as follows?

Stand in front of a super big freezer which filled up with hundreds or even thousands of beers/wines, but don’t know which one you are going to pick;

Drink tons of interesting beers/wines, but after you wake up with the hangover, you couldn’t name even one drink;

Want to learn more about the beverage in your hand, but don’t have the notebook to compare laterally or vertically; (say by varieties, or years)….

I’ve downloaded all of the apps below and also experienced a lot more crappy ones. There are several applications which can help you to be a better alcoholic, let’s drink socially, as Untapped says.

Beer Buddy- Barcode Scanner

This is the No.1 APP for many people, developed by RateBeer.com, and it has a lot of fans all over the world. With huge database of ratebeer.com and 300,000+ beers, and more than one million people’s comments, also has scoring mechanism of BJCP (Beer Judging Certificate Program), also a barcode scanner which makes it super easy for the shaky and drunk hands. You can check the beers you have before, the scores you give, also search for the bars or restaurants nearby.

It’s based on multiple languages, like English, Chinese, Japanese, French, German, Korean, and Viennese.

Price: RMB 25/$3.99

☆☆☆☆

RateBeer

It’s also developed by ratebeer.com, but in a more simple way. It shares the same databasewith Beer Buddy, information looks identical with Beer Buddy too. I still don’t get the reason they have two identical applications.

Price: RMB 25/$3.99

☆☆☆☆

Uh…Free ones…

BeerAdvocate

I like this one not just because it’s a free app, but it’s more like an extension of beeradvocate.com. With the white background (the Beer Buddy is brown), everything seems clean and easy. Even though it’s seamless to send the reviews of the forum to your phone, there’s a weakness—it’s impossible to upload the beer you just drink to the app. What a disaster for social hipsters!

Price: Free

☆☆☆

Untapped- Discover Beer

Whoa, this one is a supermodel among the rest of free apps. It has everything, to review, score, toast to others, search for bars or top beers, and even add the homebrew/microbrewery next door, say Boxing Cat Brewery, Slow Boat, The Great Leap, Jing A, Nbeer, Arrow Factory, Harvest, Mater Gao, Panda….you name it. And also check in with foursquare, share to twitter and Facebook. The most charming thing is that it will award you with badges, even though the last thing our drinkers need is stimulant. Once you start to use this app, upload the beer (filter the photo) and are ready to share it to all the platforms you use, under the peer pressure, your friend either join you or block you.

Btw, IOS version is way better and more user-friendly than the Android version, they look like different apps, and besides it always quits unexpectedly on Android phone….so the only way to deal with this would be…buy an iPhone just like my friend did.

Price: Free

☆☆☆

Next Glass

 

This just released program can demystify beer and wine. Build a taste profile by rating drinks you’ve tasted, just like other apps can do. Well, just by scanning the label, it will provide all the information of this drink. Better to use at a supermarket. After five times of scoring, it will predict how much you’ll like the next glass. But obviously people from this company are too snobby to think there’s no such demand and the beers and wines in the U.S. or Europe can’t be sent to Asia, so they block it in Asia.

Price: Free

☆☆ (boo, snobs)

Delectable

This is my favorite wine app. Even though it’s a little slow to “read” the photo you upload (within 15 minutes), but its identifying ability is superb. It happens to me often—wandering at the shelves and swinging chaotically between two terrific wines, it’s time to scan those wines and get the reviews and tasting notes. You’ll make the decision soon. It is the most popular app among the “wine celebrities”—top sommeliers, winemakers and wine pros. You can follow some of them, and make a wish list. Whenever the important day is coming, you know what to do (wink, wink.)

Price: Free

☆☆☆☆

Vivino

 

Now there comes to the app for wines. This one is the No. 1 wine app for now. It gathers 9 million wine lovers. You take a photo of the label, then it pops up, you can get the reviews, rankings and pricing. After you taste it, you can review and rate it, then share to Facebook. Besides it’s faster than Delectable. Sometimes it’s depressed to see the price is twice of the average here in China. Shoot, I have to drink anyways, maybe that’s the dedication I give to the whole industry. Their website is also interesting and smart with cool topics.

Price: Free

☆☆☆

So as a wrap, I have to repeat that don’t drink and drive, and drink moderately. Wish I knew the real tips to get over hangover. Cheers. 

This article was also released in Precis issue 8 in 2015.

http://issuu.com/istech24/docs/precis_issue_eight_8_2015