Pour Picks
Spreadsheets work for the first 10 to 15 bottles, notebooks for the first 5, and dedicated apps scale past 50. The bottle count where each method quietly fails is consistent across most collectors. The decision is whether you want to log at the moment of pouring or do data entry once a month.
You have a shelf full of bourbon and a vague sense that you should be writing things down. Maybe you started a spreadsheet. Maybe you bought a leather-bound notebook. Maybe you keep meaning to and just have not.
Every collector eventually picks a system. Most pick the wrong one the first time. Here is the honest comparison between the three real options, with the bottle count where each quietly falls apart, and the friction question that ends up deciding which one you actually keep using.
A bourbon collection without records is not a collection. It is a pile of bottles. That is not snobbery, it is functionality: without records, you cannot answer the four questions that separate a cellar from a shelf:
By the time most collectors hit 20 bottles, they cannot reliably answer any of those four from memory. The Pappy I had last year, was that the 12 or the 15? The store pick I bought in October, did I open it? The Russell’s Reserve I was raving about in February, am I remembering the right bottle?
Tracking solves all four. The only question is how you do it.
Almost every bourbon collector starts with a spreadsheet. Usually Google Sheets, sometimes Excel, occasionally Airtable. The bourbon Reddit community has shared dozens of spreadsheet templates over the years, with the most-downloaded ones organized by columns like distillery, mash bill, proof, store pick batch, purchase price, date opened, current pour count, and tasting notes.
The spreadsheet works for the first 10 to 15 bottles. Below that, the data fits, the friction of updating is manageable, and the spreadsheet view actually shows you everything at once.
It starts failing somewhere between bottles 15 and 25. The symptoms are consistent:
It is effectively dead by bottle 40. At that scale, the spreadsheet is six months out of date, you genuinely do not remember which bottles you have opened, and looking up the Eagle Rare you bought in February takes more clicks than just opening the bottle.
The failure mode is not a missing feature. It is friction. The spreadsheet is across the house, on your laptop, behind two clicks and a search. You are standing in the kitchen with a pour in your hand and you do not get up to update a spreadsheet. So you do not. And once you skip three pours, the spreadsheet is unreliable forever.
There is something genuinely appealing about a leather-bound notebook with handwritten notes for every bottle you have opened. Some collectors have kept beautiful notebooks for decades.
For most people, the notebook fails faster than the spreadsheet, for two reasons:
The romantic version of a notebook can work as a tasting journal alongside a digital system. The notebook holds the long-form, the digital system holds the data. Pretending it can do both at scale is where collectors get into trouble.
Practical ceiling: 5 to 10 bottles. Past that you will lose entries, miss pours, and stop reaching for it.
The honest reason cellar apps win at scale is not their feature lists. It is that they remove the friction at the moment of pouring.
You are in the kitchen with a glass. Your phone is in your pocket. You take it out, open the app, tap the bottle, type “decent pour, more caramel than last time,” put the phone back. Twenty seconds, done. You did not have to walk anywhere. You did not have to find a spreadsheet tab. You did not have to flip through 47 pages of a notebook.
That friction reduction is why apps survive bottle counts that no other method survives. The features matter less than the act of actually getting logged.
What a good cellar app does well:
What a good cellar app does not do:
| Bottle count | Spreadsheet | Notebook | Dedicated app |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 to 5 | Works fine | Works fine, may be charming | Overkill, but no harm |
| 5 to 15 | The sweet spot for spreadsheet | Failing | Strong choice |
| 15 to 25 | On borrowed time | Effectively useless | Clearly the best option |
| 25 to 50 | Mostly stale, you are guessing | Lost | The only system that scales |
| 50+ | Unreliable | Decorative | Essential |
The collection sizes are approximate but match what most experienced collectors describe. The pattern is consistent: spreadsheets are great early, become unreliable mid-collection, and never recover.
Whichever method you pick, the field list is similar. The minimum useful set:
The non-obvious one is “date opened.” Most collectors skip it for the first year, then realize they cannot tell which open bottles are over a year old and getting oxidized. By that point, half the bottles on the open shelf are mystery dates. Tracking it from day one prevents the problem.
Three patterns the bourbon community sees repeatedly:
The Batch Update. Collectors try to “catch up” on tracking once a month. They get through five bottles, lose interest, and never finish. The system has to log in real time or it does not log.
The Perfect-System Trap. Spending six hours designing the perfect spreadsheet schema in week one and then abandoning the spreadsheet entirely by week three. The system that ships is better than the system that is perfect.
The Dual-System Trap. Trying to maintain both a spreadsheet and an app, or both a notebook and a spreadsheet. One of the two will get stale within a month. Pick one canonical system and let the others die.
If your collection is under 10 bottles and you mostly buy what you drink, a spreadsheet is fine. Get a good template and use it.
If your collection is past 15 bottles or growing fast, switch to an app before the spreadsheet quietly fails. The friction is what kills the spreadsheet, and the friction does not get better. It gets worse as the collection grows.
If you want a notebook for the ritual, keep it as a tasting journal alongside a digital system. Do not ask the notebook to be your inventory tool.
The app worth checking first is Pour Picks. It scans bottles to add them to your cellar, logs every pour, tracks date opened and date finished, and the Pour Tonight feature picks one bottle from what you already own and tells you why. The free tier covers most collectors; the $2.99 per month Cask Club tier unlocks unlimited scans and journal export.
Whatever method you pick, the more important thing is starting today. Future-you will thank present-you for a year of records you would otherwise not have.
Pour Picks is a free iOS app for bourbon collectors. Scan any bottle to add it to your cellar, log every pour, and let “Pour Tonight” pick what to drink from what you actually own. Download on the App Store.
What's the best way to keep track of a bourbon collection?
The best method depends on collection size. For a collection under 10 bottles, a spreadsheet or notebook works fine. From 10 to 25 bottles, a spreadsheet is on borrowed time. Past 25 bottles, a dedicated cellar app is the practical answer because it removes the friction of logging at the moment of pouring, which is where every other system fails.
Do bourbon collectors really use spreadsheets?
Yes, most collectors start with one. The bourbon Reddit community frequently shares spreadsheet templates, and there are several public ones with hundreds of downloads. The catch is that most of those spreadsheets are abandoned by their owners six months later, because the friction of opening and updating them at the moment of pouring is too high.
What fields should I track for each bottle in my bourbon collection?
At minimum: distillery, expression, mash bill style (rye-heavy, wheated, traditional), proof, age statement, purchase price, purchase date, store, date opened, date finished. Most collectors also track tasting notes per pour, a rating (1 to 10 is standard), and any context (gift, store pick batch number, club allocation).
What is the right rating scale for personal bourbon notes?
A 1 to 10 scale is the most common because it forces you to commit to a number that is meaningfully different from the bottle next to it. Half-points like 8.5 are allowed but discouraged because they tend to creep up and turn into a 1 to 20 scale within a year. Some collectors use a simple thumbs-up, thumbs-sideways, thumbs-down system to avoid score inflation entirely.
Should I log every pour or just every new bottle?
Log every new bottle for sure. Logging every pour is optional but valuable. The reason is that your impression of a bottle changes meaningfully across the bottle's lifespan: fresh open, halfway down, last quarter. Collectors who log every pour can look back and notice that they liked a bottle better in month two than in month one, which is information you cannot get from a single per-bottle review.
How long do most bourbon collectors stick with their tracking method?
Anecdotally, the typical cycle is around six to nine months for a spreadsheet, three to four months for a paper notebook, and indefinitely for an app that survives the first month of use. Apps that fail to survive the first month tend to fail because of friction at the moment of pouring rather than missing features.
Is it worth paying for a bourbon cellar app?
If you have fewer than 15 bottles and you pour casually, free is fine. If your collection is growing past 25 bottles or you want detailed analytics, the typical $2.99 to $4.99 a month for a paid tier pays for itself in saved time. The question is whether you actually use the app weekly, not whether the features are worth the price on paper.