Beerallels – Beer and Food Pairing Made Simple

Overview
If you are looking for a simple pairing guide for beer and food, then Beerallels is for you.  The layout and easy to use interface is ideal for a beginning beer and food matchmaker, but the intermediate beer/ foodie will be left wanting more.

At the time of posting this article, Beerallels was only available for iPhone and was free to download.  An Android app is coming soon.

Pair Away

Beerallels lets you dive right in- no signing up or login required.  The main page lets you choose from five choices- “I’d like to pair a:”

• Beer
• Cheese
• Food
• Dessert
• Flavor

I began by selecting “beer.”  The next interface gave me 18 categories of beer such as “Blonde Ale”, “Witbier” and “Bitter” to narrow down my pairings.  I then chose “Blonde Ale”.  I was then presented with paring suggestions for a Blonde Ale with the other four main categories (Cheese, Food, Dessert, and Flavor) as well as links to more information on how to pair a Blonde Ale and popular types of Blonde Ales.

Depth of the Information

The App is one giant database of pairing information which varies in intensity.  For example, in the cheese categories, there are over 30 different types of cheese to choice from including six different types of cheddar.  The food category has over 50 different types of food with varying specificity.  Some of the categories are generic like “fruit” and others more specific like “Chicken Satay”.

I was disappointed that the App did not have a search function.  This seems like a basic function that would be built into to every program.

Let’s Get Technical

The App was easy to use and the interface was consistent and simple.  There was no downtime waiting for pages to load.

So App Worth Having?

Yes – if you are learning the ropes of pairing food and beer or just want to have a quick reference of what to drink with your meal.  If you memorized The Brewmaster’s Table by Garrett Oliver, you will be disappointed.

Beerallels was downloaded on April 6, 2011 and tested used an iPhone 4 on the Verizon network.

Tags: App Review, iPhone App