Hop Topic
Feb 24, 2020
Despite its explosion in popularity, craft beer is still a relatively small and tight-knit community. A generation ago, when the number of breweries was a fraction of what it is today (literally about a fifth), the community was even smaller and more tight-knit. But even in those days, obsessive drinkers often fell into one of two camps: BeerAdvocate users and RateBeer users. These two sites were the most popular places for rating beer, and though you might search both for info, the people I met typically only used one or the other for entering reviews. But in the past decade, just as the innovation of craft beer upended big beer, another innovation upended the beer rating world: apps. Founded in 2010, Untappd—a new player on the beer rating scene—focused all of its energy into its app, making checking-in beers easier than ever for a new generation of craft beer enthusiasts who weren’t as interested in the older, primarily web-based sites. By 2012, the Untappd app passed the 10 million check-in mark, a milestone on its path to becoming the new leader in beer rating, set to hit 1 billion check-ins this year. Now, that success is shaking up beer rating once again: Next Glass, Untappd’s ownership group, has announced it's acquiring BeerAdvocate.