The drinkers have spoken, and the state’s greatest beer is Maine Beer Co.’s Dinner, with Bissell Brothers’ Swish snapping at its heels. Or a minimum of, that’s what “check-ins” on the beer ranking app Untappd would inform us.

In the event you’ve ever seen somebody taking a photograph of their beer in a brewery tasting room, odds are that individual is logging it in on Untappd. However the cell app is not only a spot to charge the beer; it’s additionally a type of social media (the app’s tagline is “Drink Socially”), the place drinkers “good friend” each other and might monitor what beers these round them are consuming. In keeping with a 2020 blogpost by Untappd co-founder Greg Avola, there have been about 820,000 distinctive customers from world wide who had checked in a minimum of as soon as (person numbers for Maine should not obtainable).

The very best rated beers on the Untappd app inside 25 miles of Portland. Picture by Ben Lisle

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What Maine beers do Untappd customers most take pleasure in, apart from Swish and Dinner? Run your eyes down the listing of the highest rated beers inside 25 miles of Portland and also you’ll discover a sample: the highest 17 are all IPAs.

To make certain, there are some nice beers right here, together with stalwarts like Goodfire Prime, Maine Beer Co. Lunch, Bissell Substance and Orono Tubular. Relative newcomer Belleflower pitches in three scrumptious hazy IPAs of its personal.

However it is usually sure that this portrait of the Maine beer scene is a really distorted one – a funhouse mirror that nearly erases the outstanding breadth of experience and depth of beer tradition right here. As with all social media app, the customers create a lot of the content material, for higher or worse. And so, the Untappd universe is hardly a portrait of the world as it’s, however a slim and twisted illustration of that world (on this case, a hazy IPA utopia, which isn’t inaccurate, however grossly reductive).

Nearly any beer you’re prone to drink has a profile on Untappd, the place you’ll discover an array of details about the beer, together with an outline, its ABV and IBUs (a measure of bitterness); what number of check-ins you, your Untappd mates and all app customers have made with the beer; the scores for these check-ins; locations you could find it; tasting notes from customers; an choice so as to add it to a self-created “listing” and a scroll of the newest check-ins from world wide.

Elsewhere on the app, customers can seek for breweries by way of a map characteristic, search for “trending beers” at completely different geographical scales, and discover lists of top-rated beers and breweries (in accordance with the Untappd person scores).

Untappd was based in 2010, and its rise has roughly paralleled the explosion of breweries throughout the nation. In keeping with the Brewers Affiliation, there have been 1,813 breweries in the USA in 2010, rising to 9,247 in 2021. The variety of breweries in Maine, fueled by regulatory adjustments in 2011 that allowed breweries to promote their beer for on-site consumption from tasting rooms, jumped from 34 in 2011 to 165 this yr, in accordance with the Maine Brewers’ Guild.

It’s not the primary beer scores platform. The web sites BeerAdvocate (based in 1996) and RateBeer (based in 2000) have lengthy supported on-line beer consuming communities, together with scores and opinions of particular beers. These are typically qualitative – usually richly so – describing look, aroma, physique, taste and end.

However on Untappd, the nice majority of check-ins merely charge the beer numerically (on a scale of 1 to five, in quarter-point increments), with out clarification. The biases of Untappd drinkers are clear from only a informal look at “trending beers” (that are searchable by distance and elegance). These are typically, predictably, pastry stouts, pastry sours and people hazy IPAs. In different phrases, beers with large, intense flavors. It’s uncommon certainly to seek out extra delicate or refined beers with scores over 4.

Even so, some within the business take these scores fairly significantly, utilizing them to form their very own decision-making. In a 2021 story for Good Beer Searching, in regards to the app and its affect, Kate Bernot reported on quite a lot of episodes wherein potential companions – like supply apps, distributors, bars and even festivals – declined to work with breweries attributable to what had been perceived to be insufficient Untappd scores.

How do native breweries relate to the app? Gene Buonaccorsi, director of selling at Mast Touchdown Brewing Co., mentioned: “We don’t spend a ton of time specializing in it, however we do see it as an extension of our model in little methods.” Untappd is usually a drinker’s first encounter with the brewery, so most breweries – notably bigger ones – examine to be sure that their beers are precisely cataloged on the app.

“So far as the scores go, we take a look at them, however with a grain of salt,” Buonaccorsi mentioned. “It may be a very good indicator of what’s resonating with the general public,” and the brewery can “get an instantaneous response a few new beer.” Maybe extra vital than the scores themselves are the occasional person feedback, which “could be informative to see how individuals are deciphering a beer,” he mentioned.

Peter Bissell of Bissell Brothers Brewing Co. remembers that within the brewery’s early days, “being inexperienced to the disturbing act of placing a product out into the world,” they might usually examine the app, generally participating with customers – and even “embarrassingly” arguing with them. However since shifting from Industrial Approach to Thompson’s Level in 2016, he’s largely ignored it.

Bissell staff would possibly examine in each every now and then, as a type of high quality management, to be sure that they aren’t seeing repeated feedback which may sign an precise drawback with the beer’s manufacturing. However person scores by no means come up in technique conferences. “In the event you base your plans off one thing like Untappd, you might be setting your self up for an existence of perpetually chasing the market,” he mentioned. That doesn’t imply others aren’t doing it: Bissell says that, judging from personal conversations he’s had with brewery managers and homeowners, “it’s clear that in lots of locations outdoors of New England that Untappd is a significant component in shaping manufacturing schedules.”

However not in Maine, in accordance with Bissell. “Untapped is seen by producers and others with business pores and skin within the sport the identical approach Yelp is to restaurant homeowners” – and Bissell would know, as a associate at Highroller Lobster – “that’s to say, a platform that provides voices to individuals who don’t know what they’re speaking about.”

As a longtime person of Untappd (since March 2013), I can confirm that there are numerous rubbish opinions and scores there, as in any social media area. Undoubtedly, a few of these have been mine through the years. And whereas I examine in much less steadily than I as soon as did, I nonetheless discover it a really great tool. I hardly ever charge beers anymore, however attempt to depart a story report of what I tasted – for others and my future self.

On this approach, Untappd features most prominently as a report of my very own beer-drinking historical past, which has advanced over time, passing by way of completely different locations and phases – from my very first check-in (Prairie Hop, from Oklahoma’s Prairie Artisan Ales) to my most up-to-date, New Outdated Inventory, a wealthy and creamy Baltic Porter from Bissell. What’s subsequent? A Bissell Swish: Untappd tells me it’s fairly good.

Ben Lisle is an assistant professor of American Research at Colby Faculty. He lives among the many breweries in Portland’s East Bayside, the place he writes about cultural historical past, city geography, and craft beer tradition. Attain him on Twitter at @bdlisle.

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