For all of you nerds with your smart phones, myself included, we’re going to attempt to get back into the Beer Tech series. For today’s installment we bring you the Portland based collective Taplister, a useful tool for finding out what your local beer bars are serving up.

Taplister relies on user generated data to provide an up to date list of what is on tap at bars and restaurants around your city. So, say you find yourself out at Draught House and you notice that they’ve recently tapped a keg of the Lost Gold IPA. Being the good Taplister that you are, you pull out your phone, fire up the Beer Signal App, locate the Draught House’s beer listing, click the add a new beer “+” sign and finally type out Real Ale Lost Gold IPA. Hit the Done button and you’re back to your beer. A tweet is sent out that informs your followers and the Taplister database what your favorite bar is carrying.

Typing out the process makes it sound like much more work than it truly is. Trust me. Last week I visited Whip-In for lunch and managed to update every one of their 25 beers on tap before my panini was served up. But for those of you weary of Apps or simply too lame to own an iPhone, kidding, you can also add beers simply by tweeting with the appropriate #hastags. Taplister uses Twitter & #hashtags to gather their information. Depending on what city you’re in there is a variation of #ontap___ for you. In the same situation above you could simply tweet the following:

“Real Ale Lost Gold IPA at Draught House Pub & Brewery #ontapatx”

Tweeting a Beer

So easy that the moron who writes those awful Geiko commercials could do it. Another feature of Taplister is the ability to search their database for a specific beer. For some reason this is not built into the App, but it is available through their website. Taplister is available through a number of US cities, so next time your on vacation and looking for a certain beer it might just be the tool you’re looking for.

There are a few details about Taplister that bugged me when I initially started. One being that every time you add a beer through the Beer Signal App it sends out a tweet. So that afternoon while I was waiting on my lunch I sent out 25 tweets about the beers at Whip-In. Easy solution, create a secondary twitter account for your #ontap tweets. I mean, they’re free, so why not create five or six. Go Crazy.

The problem I have with avoiding the Beer Signal App is the specifics that come into play. Some people may call it Flying Saucer. Others call it The Saucer. The official name is Flying Saucer Draught Emporium. Who wants to type that out in a tweet? Nobody. That’s who. But if you don’t type out the exact name in the Taplister database of bars you end up adding new bars to the overall list. When I first started using Taplister there were three Flying Saucer listings, two Draught Houses and I believe four different Ginger Mans. To me that is annoying and a flaw with the service. I’m sure it’s just my OCD shining through so feel free to consider me crazy.

Searching for Live Oak Hefeweizen

Now that I’ve dropped some knowledge on you about the ways of Taplister I hope we can see some growth in the site’s usage for Austin. Why would you NOT want to have a better idea of exactly what beers are being served around town? This certainly would have helped when people were seeking out the (512) Whiskey Barrel Aged Double Pecan Porter. Amiright?

You can read more about Taplister at their site here.

Some of you may already know that BeerTownAustin now has an iPhone app. If this is news to you then go check it out and if you don’t have an iPhone then go buy one so you can download it. Or you can just look at it on one of our iPhones when you see us.

I have wanted to create an iPhone app for some time now and thought that BeerTownAustin would be a great reason to do so. I spent about a week learning everything I needed to and then got to work creating it. I will say that with a background in web development, Objective C (the language iPhone apps are written in) was a little harder than expected and kinda like learning a new language.

Once it was created I sent it off to Apple. When you create an iPhone app it must first be approved by Apple before it is available in the App Store for download. It is hard to know when Apple will approve your app because there is not a set time frame for approval. Luckily for us it was accepted in exactly two weeks with no issues.

So what does the app do?

The BeerTownAustin app is a fairly simple concept. It is an aggregation of everything BeerTownAustin. When you first open the app you are presented with the latest articles from the website. So now if you aren’t near a computer you don’t have an excuse for not checking out the recent happenings in beer world. Well maybe just the happenings in our beer world.

Also included in the app are all our videos that are easily viewable on your iPhone, the Knockin’ ‘Em Back podcast episodes that you could play while driving in your car, our Twitter feed, and all our photos that we have taken in an easy to view layout.

I hope you will check it out and let us know what you think. Also if you like what you see leave a review in the App Store.

Aaron Jones and his friends started getting very frustrated by the fact the it was difficult to find out where the best drink specials were in town. When he decided that he wanted to make an iPhone app, one that helped solve this problem only made sense. So he created Bar Buzz ATX.

A description from the Bar Buzz ATX website:

Bar Buzz ATX is an app dedicated to helping you find the best drink specials in Austin! Once you have installed Bar Buzz you’ll be able to see all the bars and their current specials in areas surrounding Austin, Texas.With Bar Buzz you can:

• Save loads of money when you go out partying.
• See the current specials at every bar.
• See each bars weekly specials.
• View by individual bar or by all current specials.
• Choose from a wide variety of themes.
• One touch Google map directions to any bar.
• Call an Austin Cab right from the app
• Share your favorite Bars and Drink Specials with your friends over Facebook, Twitter, SMS, and Email.

Visit the Bar Buzz Website: http://getbarbuzz.com

When I go out to a bar for drinks with friends I usually end up opening a tab with the bartender. I never feel comfortable doing this. I usually wish I could just pay cash. Leaving a credit card with a bartender, who usually puts it in an organized box, while you spend the next few hours hanging out with friends, is not very secure. It is not the bartender that I am worried about, or anyone in particular, it just invites the opportunity for something to go wrong.

Another downside to leaving your credit card with the bartender is that you may forget it when you leave. After a few drinks one could understandably become forgetful. Aside from the inconvenience of having to drive back to the bar later, some bars will add a fee to your tab if you forget your card.

So what if there was a way to avoid all these inconveniences? Well there is. TabbedOut is a very innovative new iPhone app that allows you to open and close a tab from your iPhone. How cool is that! ATX Innovation developed this app right here in Austin, TX and they already have a number of bars in Austin using their service. And that number is growing.

Let’s take a look at how it works.

• First you have to download the app from the App Store to your iPhone and set it up. One of the great features about TabbedOut is that all of your sensitive information is securely stored on your iPhone and not on a server somewhere. And you are not required to setup an account with TabbedOut.

• Once you have downloaded and set everything up you can easily find the nearest bars that use the service by selecting “NearBy.” Soon TabbedOut will include a feature to manually search for a location.

• Once you get to the bar you can open your tab right on your iPhone. TabbedOut is integrated with the bars Point Of Sale (POS) system so once you open a tab the bar is provided with your payment information. This allows you to leave quickly whenever you are ready.

• When you are ready to leave you will be able to see everything that has been charged to your tab. Once you have reviewed your tab select the tip you would like to include and then hit the button that says “Pay Tab.”

• How easy was that. And you even have the option to send yourself a reciept to your email inbox.

I had the opportunity to meet up with Rick Orr, the CEO of ATX Innovation (the creators of TabbedOut) to see it in action and get the rundown on how it works. Rick explained how this idea has been in the works for years and as mobile technology progressed, the reality of implementing a system like this became possible.

We discussed how easy it is to integrate the software with the Point Of Sale (POS) systems at restaurants and bars. They have already built a number of partnerships with producers of POS systems. For a restaurant or bar to start using TabbedOut all they need is a supported POS. From there the setup is very painless and it doesn’t cost the restaurants and bars anything to adopt this payment option.

TabbedOut makes its money by charging a small fee, currently $0.99, to the user’s iTunes account. The fee is charged for each tab that is opened. According to Orr this fee could change in the future and may be different in different locations.

After seeing TabbedOut in action, I am very impressed. My suggestion is to download TabbedOut to your iPhone, for free, and give it a try. You may start begging your favorite bars to adopt this service. And for those of you that don’t have an iPhone, it will soon be released on Android and Blackberry platforms.

I did a video interview with Rick Orr and unfortunately the sound did not turn out to be usable. But below are some images of the interview.

Follow TabbedOut on Twitter: http://twitter.com/tabbedout

The amount of information can be overwhelming at first, but thanks to the sharp minds at GreatBrewers.com it has been organized into an easy to navigate platform. It all starts with the search. BeerCloud gives you the option to search by beer, brewer, or barcode. With 3 different search avenues it shouldn’t be hard to find the beer you are looking for.

Not only does it give you beer descriptions but it also shows you where you can purchase your favorites or try something new. Once you find the beer you are looking for click “Find this beer” and it will take you to a list of retailers near you. After locating a retailer you can click on “Map it” and it will show you a Google map of where the retailer is located. Did they make it too easy?

Now that you know all about your favorite beers and where to buy them, what can you eat with them? GreatBrewers.com thought about that too. They created a food pairing tab on BeerCloud to help you make the best food choices to pair with the beer you are drinking. Let’s say you are eating beef tonight, you could use BeerCloud to select the type of beef and it will give you a list of beer choices to complement your meal.

With so much information you may be wondering how to keep track of everything. BeerCloud gives you the opportunity to create tasting notes and save all of your favorite beer, brewers, and beer retailers.

Where does all of this information come from? BeerCloud is based on the idea of cloud computing which means the information comes from several sources and is aggregated into one place. GreatBrewers.com collects their information from beer wholesalers, brewers, retailers, and consumers to create the ultimate interactive beer tool.

BeerCloud is an amazing resource to a novice beer lover as well as a beer expert.

Video Demo

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BeerCloud on the Web