TasteTimer Tea/Coffee/Food iPhone App

Tastetimer is a new collection of iPhone / iPod Touch food apps that provide simple instructions for preparing drinks, including tea, coffee and hot chocolate. Its intuitive interface, extensive tea presets and ease of editing it a fantastic app for tea lovers and for coffee lovers who are willing to input additional data into the app.

NOTE: At $2.99, Tastetimer Prime provides instructions for a wide variety of foods, such as fruit, vegetables, eggs and grains. For $0.99, you can get TasteTimer Tea which focuses on tea. TasteTimer Coffee includes coffee and hot chocolate at a price tag of 99 cents.

TasteTimer comes with instructions for over 300 teas and infusions from Rishi Tea, as well as generic tea instructions (like "A Black Tea"). The categories are:

• Black Tea
• Botanical (Rishi's name for caffeine-free tisanes
• Chai (a.k.a. "Masala Chai")
• Green Tea
• Oolong Tea
• Pu-erh Tea
• Rooibos
• White Tea
• Yerba Mate

Each category has alphabetized preset entries with Rishi's brew time listed under each. When you tap a tea/tisane's name, more detailed instructions are revealed on a new screen. The data includes:

• The tea's name
• The brew temperature in Fahrenheit and Celsius
• The quantity of tea (in teaspoons/tablespoons and in grams) per volume water (in ounces and mL)
• The brew time, usually expressed in a range and sometimes including notes for multiple infusions)
• Additional notes on the tea, such as the origin or ingredients

Below these details, there's a green "Start" button, the timer value (which is usually set for the lowest estimated brew time for the first infusion) and the alarm ringtone. When the "Start" button is pressed, it turns into a red "Cancel" button and the brew time/ringtone data are replaced with a timer counting down to the alarm.

The coffee and hot chocolate presets are not nearly as extensive as the tea presets. They include:

• Cafe Solo
• Espresso
• Moka Pot
• Press Pot
• Qishr (dry coffee husks)
• Vaccuum Pot
• Hot Chocolate with milk
• Hot Chocolate with water

The instructions are fairly basic, but generally good. For example, the "Hot Chocolate with water" instructions note to use chocolate pistoles (the proper way to make sipping chocolate, rather than hot cocoa) and the Cafe Solo instructions include notes on stirring and even on zipping the coffeemaker's "jacket." Fortunately, you can add your own instructions and products using TasteTimer's editing feature.

Perhaps my favorite thing about TasteTimer is the fact that you can easily edit and add content to it.

Prefer your Darjeeling 1st Flush very lightly brewed? No problem. You can change the brew time, brew temperature and even the tealeaf to water ratio. You can also edit the alarm ringtone, tea description and any specific instructions for brewing to meet your preferences.

Have a favorite coffee drink that's not listed? Cool. Just click the plus sign at the top of the "Coffee" screen and you can input all the data for how to prepare it.

Want to be able to access certain drinks quickly, without scrolling through an alphabetized list? Great -- just click the star on the top right of the screen and it will be added to you favorites. From then on it will display at the top of the list for its category. If it's a short-term favorite (perhaps a seasonal item), you can always remove the star later.

This is an incredibly rewarding tool for anyone who is willing to take a little time to input their preferences.

This is a fantastic product for anyone who drinks a lot of Rishi Tea. (For the record, a Gormaya rep said they are Rishi fans, but are not associated with Rishi in any way.) It's also great for tea lovers who don't mind a little editing or data entry. For coffee and hot chocolate drinkers, I'd only recommend it if you're willing to take the time to input more data into the app.

This is the kind of application that is particularly useful for situations in which:

• Multiple people share an iPhone/iPod Touch and are trying to achieve standardization while brewing many teas (such as at a teahouse)
• One person is brewing many teas and wants a fast, easy way to check the brewing instructions
• Someone repackages their teas (into tea canisters or other appropriate tea storage containers) after purchase and wants to keep brewing instructions easily accessible
• Multiple people share an iPhone/iPod Touch and are trying to achieve standardization, but are not opposed to inputting data for their specific drink recipes (such as at a coffeehouse)

Disclosure: A review app was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.