Short answer: building the app was the fun part. Getting a human to actually find it is the real work.

I finished building Pour Recall the app that helps you remember which wine you actually liked and for about a week, I felt done. Then Google Cloud Console asked me for a “SHA-1 certificate fingerprint.” Not once. Twice. One for my app signing key, one for my upload key, and no, they are not the same number. I found that out the hard way.

Nobody warns you about the maze

App-building is the fun part, the screens, the colors, the moment your idea actually works on a real phone. But what I quickly found out is that finishing the build just just moves you into a place that is ‘not so fun’, business operations and distribution infrastructure and Google’s own family of consoles – Cloud Console, Firebase, Play Console, analytics…then onto consent screens, branding verification, domain ownership proof, all written in a language nobody warned you you’d need to learn. I’ve spent more hours in Google Cloud Console the last few weeks than I ever expected to in my life. Oh, and Apple runs on a completely different business infrastructure of its own, with its own vocabulary, its own certificates, its own rules. So it is not one big maze it is two different business operations.

Then I noticed who I was actually talking to

With Google’s and Apple’s business systems finally settled down, I moved into keywords, search terms, and reviews the BIG stuff that decides whether a real person ever sees Pour Recall at all. And somewhere in there, I found myself writing for a computer algorithm. I’d catch myself asking: will the computer read this word better, or that one? As a human, I liked this word but I couldn’t use it, because the computer would just crawl right over it. So I started optimizing a description. Chasing a search term. Talking to the computer that decides whether a person even gets the chance to see Pour Recall.

So, human to human

If you’ve ever loved a wine and then stood in a store six months later with zero memory of its name well, that’s why I built this. Pour Recall is the wine app for the rest of us: snap a photo, jot down what you liked, and it remembers for you. No tasting-note homework, no wine expertise required. Just you and the wine you actually want to buy again or never again.

Get Pour Recall: iOS App Store · Google Play

And if Pour Recall helps you remember your favorite bottle, a app review would mean the world to a algorithm exhausted human.

Quick FAQ

What is Pour Recall? A wine journal app that helps you remember which wines you liked, without needing to be a wine expert.

Is it free? Yes, log up to 5 wines free, then unlock unlimited entries for a one-time $2.99 (“Pourever Access”).

Where can I get it?