Celebrating one thousand beers on Untappd!

Last Saturday evening I finally hit the magic 1,000. One thousand what you may ask, and the answer is 1,000 unique beers ticked on beer-scoring app Untappd. The latter is the well-known app that I've been using on and off for the last dozen or so years ago. Untappd allows users to tick or “tap” beers in real time, that they’ve been drinking in pubs, bars, restaurants, or hotels, but not only places away from one’s dwelling, but at home as well. Using tracking software, linked to the app, the technology keeps a record of each individual beer scored by the user. It’s clever enough to note each time you tap a beer that you haven't tried before and then keep a running total. Slowly, and overtime, your score of tapped beers continues to rise until, like me, you hit a significant milestone.

Untappd is surprisingly straightforward, as long as you don’t forget to tap those beers as you go along, and slowly, but surely, over the years you will build up a record of all the beers you’ve encountered and enjoyed over the years. You can also track of the beers your friends, and acquaintances have been enjoying – as long as those people are fellow Untappd members, of course. Once you’ve set up your account, the Untappd will store details all those beers that you’ve sampled, even the ones that you’ve long forgotten about. 

Last Friday, I knew I was inching closer to that magic 1,000 beers, especially as I was convinced that the beer I had just cracked open, was a new one (unique, in other words). I was wrong though, and if proof was needed that Untappd doesn’t lie, my beer tally was stuck stubbornly on nine-hundred and ninety-nine! I wasn't even sure if the beer I'd picked next was a new one either, although I could have looked on Untappd first, but instead, I decided to take a chance. As luck would have it, this was indeed my first check-in with that beer, and the satisfying notification confirming that I'd finally passed the 1,000 mark. The beer in question was a 5.6% abv Festbier from Privatbrauerei Ettl, based in the small Bavarian town of Teisnach, situated approximately 95 km to the east of Regensburg. The brewery can trace its history back to 1543. It was a good beer to celebrate the 1,000 mark, even though it was an unexpected one.

On reflection, I have consumed well over 1,000 different beers during the course of my lifetime, with a substantial majority not recorded on Untappd. We are talking here about a period of over half a century, and many of these beers were regional brews from my youth, that are no longer available. Others were enjoyed in distant places—sometimes on the other side of the world. Examples here are the United States, Japan, and, to a much lesser extent, China.

One notable example relates to a brewpub near Solingen in the Wuppertal valley region of northwest Germany. I visited this area with a group of friends from Maidstone CAMRA, back in 2017, during a visit to Düsseldorf. On the second day of our visit, our tour leader had brought us out to the Wuppertal region so we could have a ride on the unique Schwebebahn Suspension Railway, but not before lunch and a few beers at a large brew-pub, houses in a former municipal swimming baths.  

 Gräfrath Klosterbräu was another brewpub, that was just a short trolley-bus ride away, and was situated halfway down a hill, and away from the main road. All the shutters, doors and windows of this attractive pub were painted a bright green almost as if it was some form of corporate colour scheme. There were three or four “house beers” on tap, and here friends with better, faster and cheaper, mobile data than me, were able to tick off these beers on Untappd. 

 

There have been countless other examples of missed opportunities to “tap” more beers, and I’m thinking here about the four Beer Bloggers and Writers Conventions that I attended during the years 2014 – 2018. These events, organised by American-based “Zephyr Adventures” saw me visiting European cities, such as Dublin, Brussels and Amsterdam, and then culminating in a visit to Virginia, USA and a long weekend spent just outside Washington DC. All four of these events allowed conference delegates to enjoy a wide variety of different beers, as well as visiting a number of iconic local breweries.

Although Untappd is a global app, accessing it does require an internet connection, either by Wi-Fi, or whatever data package is available on your phone. Although things have improved in recent years, prices for data, overseas, can still make accessing Untappd, expensive. For these reasons, there are some quite glaring gaps, in my beer-ticking record, especially during the second decade of the century. Whilst many individuals utilise Untappd to document their beer experiences; the platform primarily serves as a tool for personal record-keeping rather than for obtaining recognition or impressing others. It is common for users to comment on, or toast one another’s selections. Thus, Untappd functions as a social networking platform within the beer enthusiast community.

Founded in 2010, Untappd is a beer-rating app that encourages users to “check in” the beers they’re drinking, tagged to a physical location like a bar or restaurant—or, during the COVID pandemic, at home. It is a platform where users can rate beers, earn badges, share beer photos, and browse local tap lists. Headquarters: Wilmington, North Carolina, United States.  

If you're just getting started with Untappd, the process is quite straightforward. First, create a profile, then search for beers and "check in" whenever you try a new one. Each check-in lets you add comments, upload photos that highlight your beer, and specify flavour tags like hoppy, strong, or smooth. You can also note how the beer was served—whether on draft, from a bottle, can, or as cask ale, which will appeal to real ale enthusiasts. Additionally, you can record where you purchased and enjoyed each beer. All of your check-ins appear on your own timeline as well as in your friends' feeds within the app.

The journey toward this milestone has been enjoyable, although I am unsure what lies ahead for the next 1,000 beers. I noticed I was awarded the 1,000 Beer Badge, which may be worth highlighting or displaying on the website, although as stated earlier, Untappd is about keeping tabs on the beers you have enjoyed over the years, rather than an excuse for "bragging rights".

Final point. A growing number of pubs and bars display Untappd on screens, within the bar – usually when the screens aren’t being used to show sports events, or news stories. I noticed this the other day, at the Nelson, in Tonbridge, the day I finally managed to track down the first Harvey’s Old of the season. There, at the bottom of the screen, displayed in real time, was my Untappd profile picture, along with the words Paul Bailey is drinking Harvey’s XXXX Old Ale, at the Nelson Arms. I really ought to have taken a photo!