Five Apps For A Fun And Safe Holiday Drinking Season


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This week marks the official start of the holiday drinking season. Old friends return home, families come together, and merriment, in liquid form, will be had by all. But how to get through the season without a weeping liver?

Here are five apps to help.

Untappd

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Untappd, the ‘social drinking’ app for beer, has expanded into a quite good venue finder. While the focus remains on beer, it’s a quick and surprisingly efficient way to track down a venue selling more than just the macrobrews and white zins, and it gives you a lot of options when picking out a group meetup. It’s especially handy if the old bar everyone remembers turns out to be a juice shack or a pizza place everyone would rather forget, and you need to find a new place fast.

Meetup

Another tricky aspect is coordinating the event with everybody who wants to go. Not everybody has Facebook (or wants to be your friend on social media) and a giant group text can be a notification nightmare. Meetup, the classic get-together site, has a great collection of tools to get an event together and get the word out, whether you’re planning ahead or doing something impromptu.

Mixology Drink Recipes

‘Tis the season for that eternal question: “What the hell is in this thing?” The holiday season gets some bartenders itching to try and invent the next white Russian, or digging through their cocktail books to deliver some obscure cocktail last consumed when your great-grandfather was arguing over whether to get into World War I. Mixology has a handy archive of drink recipes that will let you see exactly what’s in the cocktail being handed out for free, or what a friend got you on the round they paid for. Alternately, if you want to be the rare-cocktail giver, you can at least know what you’re handing out.

ALCulator

Yes, yes, we all overdo it on the holidays, but some of us are more worried about it than others, or simply want to be able to drive at the end of the night. In these cases, a blood alcohol calculator like ALCulator is incredibly handy. Keep in mind that everybody metabolizes alcohol differently, and an app should not be a deciding factor for if you get behind the wheel. But this is a good way to keep track of your drinking, and whether you need a…

Lyft or Uber

If you overdo it, there’s no shame in calling a ride and taking that home. The best gift you can give to your family and friends is valuing your own safety. Nobody intends to overdo, but download a ride-share app, and enter a credit card, so you’re covered just in case.

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