I recently launched the Drink Irish Tap Tracker — a website for finding venues in Ireland that serve independent Irish beer. You can also view the tap-list for venues that have indie beer, and any user can edit a venue’s tap-list. You can also mark a tap as “ran dry” if it is still on tap, but the venue has temporarily run out. The tap-lists include a date that the beer was last “tapped in” so that you can know how recent the information is.
The application integrates with Untappd by linking venues to their Untappd profile. When someone checks in a beer to that venue, it is imported into the Drink Irish Tap Tracker, and updates that venue’s tap-list.
I’m hoping this will be a useful tool for people when planning a night out, or a trip somewhere in Ireland. I’m also hoping it will help encourage pubs/restaurants etc to stock local beer and be on featured on the tap tracker.
In order for this to be successful, it needs as many people as possible to not only use it, but keep it up-to-date. So please create an account and get tapping in (link below).
Some possible future improvements I’m considering include (but are not limited to):
- Star venues. Currently venues are marked with a green tick if they have indie Irish beer in stock, but some a higher fraction of their taps dedicated to local/indie beers than others, and it would be good to highlight them as a ‘star venue’.
- A mobile app. The tap tracker is a website for now, but I would like to look into creating an app from it too. There probably wouldn’t be a lot of extra features offered by the app, but the use of controls/features native to the device might be an improvement in user experience.
- Improve the venue search facility: Find venues by current location. Find venues serving specific beers or beers from specific breweries. Filter venues by street/suburb/area.
- Flesh out the producers directory. Add distilleries and cider mills. The website could then become a good directory of all Irish producers.
- Add more venues. At the time of writing, there are around 2,200 total venues listed on the tap tracker. There are plenty more to add, and I could do with help on this front!
- Talk to venues and breweries to see how this can evolve to make it more useful for them.
You can find the tap tracker at drink.irish. Please contact me with your feedback, suggestions, bugs etc at hello@drink.irish or on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. And happy tracking!
