Vermont Brewery Challenge

My friend and I really enjoyed visiting the different breweries. We made it a weekly trip where we’d plan out a few breweries on the list and visit them. At some point the app upgraded and ALL of our stamp’s disappeared!! When looking into this I discovered that they reset them every however often. Extremely frustrating and now completely disappointed in this app. It has removed all of the fun from our trips.

I would love to review the app, but I can’t log in. Apparently, having a log in for the Massachusetts app is a problem, as it uses the same credentials. However, a password reset has not worked, and my MA credentials are long forgotten. App “support” recommended I log out of the MA app and try to log in again, but without knowing my credentials and having had my password reset fail for multiple apps from this same developer, I refuse to do that and risk losing my history. After telling the developer this, they stopped communicating with me. If I could give negative stars, I would. Awful “support” and I’m left frustrated and unable to plan future beer trails outside of my home state. This is awful.

Vermont Brewers gave me a voucher for my March 2020 tix for the festival and is refusing to honor them for March 2022

Nice app for seeing all the breweries in the state. The GPS location doesn’t work which makes it impossible to “stamp” your digital passport.

Lets be real, I downloaded the app and “completed” the trail w/ 50 breweries for the beers and spending time with my fiancé & friends. But when I FINALLY reached the 50 breweries I was really looking forward to getting the free merch as the “reward”. I was especially stoked about the vba trucker hat. I claimed my 50/50 rewards and got a T shirt and 1 sticker - no trucker hat, no bottle opener, no koozies, definitely no mention of the early access to the VBA fest. I got the reward for 20/50. I saw the notice stating rewards wouldn't be fulfilled til after the pandemic...so, who knows, maybe the rest will show up someday. Doubtful. Also too bad I've since moved... And dont bother trying to email them, you wont get a response. Even before the pandemic my fiancé had an issue, tried contacting them, and got no response at all. App is cool and facilitates having a great time while enjoying some great breweries and beers along the way. The experience is 5/5 stars, everything else is really lacking.

There are a few breweries on the App that are within Geo-location of each other where a stamp will work for both. The app will not let you stamp multiple breweries within 30 minutes of each other. I understand “drinking craft beers responsibly” as the app suggest’s, but at times you forget to stamp as you walk in/out of one place and you are so close you do it next store and the app doesn’t allow you. A possible feature to amend in the future.

Passport stamps don’t work. Just a marketing tool.

Initially we were unable to make the app work correctly at all for passport stamps, so gave it 3 stars, but through trial and error on our own, we found that if we logged into the app only once we reached a brewery we could get the geo position system to log us at the right location to make the app respond. Then we had to be sure to log out and then only log in again when were reached the next brewery. Without this workaround, the passport subsystem just hangs (keeps showing filling glass) - probably because it has locked in a coordinate from some other location. Note that this approach is never going to work at locations where cell phone service is nonexistent (there are a few places in VT with this issue).

Just spent a weekend tackling part of the tour. This app needs to be updated, as mentioned by doub1ejack’s review. At one of the biggest breweries, Long Trail, geo-location didn’t work. After three days, there has still been no response from the VBA regarding my submitted selfie (for proof-of-visit) or my notifications of out-of-date brewery listings. Last app update was 3 months ago! Come on, VBA- get on this and keep your data current! On the plus side, WHEN the app worked for electronic passport stamps, it was a simple enough process.

The app works ok for a passport, with two qualifiers: 1) the app often isn't able to activate the GPS needed to stamp a location ("you had one job!"). The workaround is to switch to Google maps, wait until it displays your current location, then open this app and try again. 2) the app intro/walkthrough actually confuses the process for simply stamping the passport. Finish the intro, close the app, reopen it, and then it's pretty intuitive. The other features either don't work well (good luck making a brew tour if it extends beyond the predefined areas), or just do a poor job of duplicating the On Tap app (the "Beers" list in this app is often out of date). This lame app is probably an example of design-by-committee, paired with a lack of user testing. If they drop 75% of the features and improve the remaining ones, it could be a great experience though. The core passport idea is really compelling.