Beer Compass is a simple $0.99 application for the iPhone.  You want beer, and the beer compass finds it for you.  The application doesn’t really find beer, with a press of a button it searches for all the bars and restaurants nearest to your location.  Then with great fanfare (and lots of noise which you cannot turn off) Beer Compass gives you a list of possible bars.

The Beer Compas points you the the next pub. Hope it's close.

Beer Compass knows your next bar

It looks like the application uses the Google Maps API to find near by watering holes.  The selections returned include restaurants and bars.  For some reason, it also returned a chiropractor.  I guess the application can only be as good as the data behind it.  Sometimes Google hiccups.  The application then passes off the selected bar to the Google Maps iPhone application which gives you directions from your current location to the bar.

Results

Beer Compass did find all bars within a short range from my location.  I can see this application being very helpful when you are out on a pub crawl, especially in a neighborhood you are unfamiliar with.  Hopefully in future versions Beer Compass will give you the option to turn off the noise, but the fact the application can quickly find all the nearby bars with directions a drunk can follow makes the application well worth the price!

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