Beer Wed Feb 11 2015

Craft beer lovers now have another way to satisfy their hop addiction with a new online craft beer map, launched by Guys Drinking Beer earlier this year. The website and media project that started off from -- well -- several guys drinking beer, that has grown to being a definitive source of information on the Chicago and surrounding area's craft beer scene, has recently taken all its local drinking knowledge and put it on a map.

Built off of Google maps, it includes a curated selection of breweries, brewpubs, beer bars, tap rooms and bottle shops available in the Chicago-land area. Features include an option to filter your selection between categories and a link back to the venue's website and Google+ page for more information. Question marks signify gypsies (i.e. transient brewers without a home) and contracts (beer that is contracted out to a host brewer) that don't have homes. They live off-shore in Lake Michigan in a futuristic floating craft beer destination (I said it first.)

The project took several months from start to finish, with the majority of the work coming down to figuring out who to include from places that are producing beer and still associated with Chicago.

"The hard part was deciding where to draw the line with the map," said co-founder Karl Klockars. "At the end of the day I asked myself, what is a reasonable amount to ask people to drive or travel to?"

The map isn't the first of Chicago beer maps, but Klockars posits that it is the most up-to-date, curated map out there. Since launched, they did miss a couple of things and say the map will be a living document that changes and updates with the times, which should be often considering how fast the Chicago craft beer scene changes. GDB would eventually like to put this map into a guide that includes more editorial information, a model in-line with their current site. There are currently no plans for building it into an app, but for now, if you want to know what craft beer is available in your neighborhood, you can find it with one click.

"Hopefully the magic of SEO does its work," said Klockars.