We've all been there.
Standing in the supermarket wine aisle, overwhelmed by uniform rows of "less than a tenner" bottles. A distinguished craft beer pub, boasting more taps than a plumber's van.
In the end you do what any decent chap would - pick the option with the best label.
But what if there was a better way? What if there existed some application that could call on the social powers of your smartphone to aid you in the selection of the best booze?
Time to stop dreaming: here are the best booze apps to download, instantly enhancing your knowledge of wine, beer and spirits in a few taps. Drink up.
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(Image: Rex)
Untappd
A "social-discovery" app, Untappd allows you to immediately 'share' your drink: take a photo, give it a rating out of five and provide some brief tasting details. Untappd then shares these details, along with where you purchased the pint, with your Untappd mates.
It also doubles as a neat way of remembering the name of that gorgeous IPA you discovered in a gloomy pub in the Peak District before you have too much of it to wipe your short term memory.
Delectable Wines
The essential app for blagging all future dinner parties.
When faced with the wall of choice that is the supermarket aisle, crack open the Delectable Wines app, take a photo of a wine label and get reviews from knowledgeable wine snob types ("buy" or "avoid").
If you want to expand your own plonk knowledge, you can also follow top sommeliers and winemakers to gain from their updates and insights.
International Wine Challenge App
International Wine Challenge know their way around the mean end of a Sauvignon blanc.
The influential wine competition now has its own app, giving instant access to all the information you'd possibly want on the best wine in the world - from where to buy it to what to pair it with (more wine, probably).
Search by country, grape, style, price range, colour and medal - and then pretend you knew it all yourself.
Beer Citizen
If you've struggled to describe a good beer beyond "hoppy", you need Beer Citizen.
As every "citizen" (that's you) reviews the beers they encounter in pubs around the world, this app aggregates the reviews, notes and scores, allowing you to find your perfect tipple and add to the growing knowledge store yourself.
There's also a handy location search feature to find the best boozer in the area. Evening sorted.
Vivino
Much like some of the other offerings in this list, Vivino allows you to search through reviews of wines by taking photos of its label - a neat trick, we're sure you'll agree.
Where this app comes into its own is when you're faced with the label-lacking wine list. Scan it with your phone camera and the app will search its data banks to give you ratings out of five for each of the options.
Prepare to impress at every future dinner date ever.
Elixr
Quite simply Yelp/Instagram for drinks, this is the best way of getting social with your new discoveries.
You 'check-in' to a venue, then start posting images, rating drinks and generally making merry with the beer, wine, cocktails, and spirits you're trying. You can browse other people's feeds, hopefully discovering new venues if you aren't too busy working your way through the complimentary nuts.
BeerAdvocate
Fancy joining in with the largest pub chat in the world?
The BeerAdvocate app is an extension of the massively popular website - a big, swarthy forum discussing everything from new releases to favourite brewers.
Join in with heated forum debates, find local events and add your own tuppence to the ongoing beer discussions.
Beer?!
This one is just a bit of fun.
Fancy a pint? Get your mates to download Beer?! - whose only function is to send the request of "Beer?!" to fellow app users.
Their response? A reply of "Beer?!"
Sure, you're going to have to resort to more conventional means to work out where you'll have your drink, but it's a good giggle.
Plonk
Okay, so you know nothing about wine. As in, you only recently discovered that Rosé wasn't just a mix of white and red.
Plonk is your new best friend (the one you get utterly smashed with). Search wines by country, food pairings, style, grape variety - everything you need to know about the stuff. Want a wine for pizza? Plonk it. To impress an Australian mate? Plonk it. Need to know more about that white you found last week? You get the idea...
The Barman
The one for everything else (cocktails, namely).
An effortless solution for your lack of cocktail knowledge, The Barman tells you what spirits you'll need, mixers and tools to make the perfect Martini, Old Fashioned and any silly-sounding drink your mate might think the app has never heard of (it has).
It then gives you step-by-step instructions on how to make it - with customisable options to boot.
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