HopPlotter Helps You Locate Nearby Breweries

I recently went on a cross-country road trip, driving from my home in San Francisco to my old home in North Carolina. It was an epic journey, and while there were certainly beers consumed during the trip, the journey definitely could have benefitted from a few more brewery pit stops. When you’re traveling in a new place, however, finding those breweries can sometimes pose a bit of a challenge. Enter HopPlotter, a new website and mobile app designed to help you find the brewpubs, taprooms, and brewery tours available where you are.

The company was founded by Alex Cartmell, a former software developer at Expedia, Ann Layman, a former travel agent and Lauren Cartmell, a graphic designer.

“Over the last few years, so many great breweries have opened in Seattle and all over the country,” says Layman, HopPlotter’s product/program manager, marketing lead and research lead. “As craft beer fans ourselves, we wanted a way to effortlessly see and locate what breweries exist and what each one had to offer, but nothing like that existed. The three of us also travel quite a bit and wanted a tool to use for when we visit new destinations and want to discover the beer scene.”

The app’s design essentially shows you a map, with color coding to let you know if a location is currently open or closed. If you find somewhere you’re interested in, clicking on the pin on the map will bring up more information about it, including what their top-rated beers are, their Yelp rating, and recent social posts from Facebook and Twitter.

While the map has listings for quite a few states now, it’s also counting on individuals to add their own favorite spots manually. That means that while it’s sometimes a little lacking now (some states are more populated than others), it will hopefully get a lot better as more people start adding breweries.

I plan on redoing my road trip again this summer, here’s hoping there are a lot more breweries in my future.