Terms of use

These terms are the deal between you and Hop Grail. We've tried to write them the way the register talks: plainly, and only about things the site and app actually do. Please read them; using Hop Grail means you agree to them.

Who we are

"Hop Grail," "we," "us" and "our" mean Hop Grail LLC, based in Honolulu, Hawaii. "The service" means hopgrail.com, the Hop Grail iOS app, our emails and alerts, and anything else we offer under the Hop Grail name. "You" means anyone who visits or uses the service.

1. Accepting these terms

By visiting hopgrail.com, using the app, or creating an account, you agree to these terms and to our privacy policy, which explains what we collect and why. If you don't agree, please don't use the service. If you use Hop Grail on behalf of a brewery or other business, you're agreeing for that business too, and you're telling us you're allowed to.

2. Age

Hop Grail is intended for people who are of legal drinking age where they live (21 or older in the United States). We don't direct the site or app to anyone under that age.

We don't ask for proof of age to read the site. If you create an account, you're telling us you meet that age where you live. If we learn an account belongs to someone under that age, we'll close it.

3. What Hop Grail is (and isn't)

Hop Grail is a register of beer: a place to find out what breweries have coming, what's out, and what's on tap. It is a discovery service.

• Hop Grail does not sell alcohol. We don't take orders for beer, hold stock, set prices, or ship it.
• Links to retailers. Some beer pages link to outside retailers (for example, to search a beer at a shop that ships). When you follow one, you leave Hop Grail. The retailer is the seller and is solely responsible for its own sales, prices, stock, age verification, and compliance with shipping and alcohol laws where you live. Some of these links may be affiliate links, which means we may earn a commission if you buy something. When a link carries an affiliate code, we say so on the page. An affiliate relationship never changes the order in which retailers are listed.

4. Where the data comes from

The beer data on Hop Grail is compiled from public sources, mainly:

• US Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) label approvals, known as COLA filings, which are public records;
• Open Brewery DB and breweries' own websites, newsletters and announcements;
• tap-list and menu photos that users submit (see section 6).

Some details (style, ABV, hops, the label's own wording) are read from those sources automatically and can be wrong. See how the register works.

Please keep in mind:

• A label approval is not a release. A COLA approval means a label was approved by the TTB. It is not a release date, and it doesn't mean the beer will ever be made, sold, or available where you are.
• No endorsement. Listing a beer or brewery doesn't mean we endorse it, or that it endorses, sponsors or is affiliated with Hop Grail.
• Trademarks. Beer names, brewery names, logos and label art belong to their owners. We show them to identify the beer and the source record.
• Reusing our data. The underlying public records belong to no one. Our compilation of them is covered by our data license: browse freely, quote with attribution, and don't bulk-copy or republish it.

5. For breweries: corrections, holds and removal

If you're a brewery (or speak for one), you can email us to:

• correct a detail on your brewery or beer pages;
• hold a label: keep a newly approved label off Hop Grail until your release; or
• remove a listing.

Email curtis@hopgrail.com from an address at your brewery's domain if you can, and tell us the page or beer. A real person handles each request by hand. We'll make reasonable efforts to act quickly, usually within a few business days, but we can't promise a specific turnaround. We may ask you to confirm you speak for the brewery. A hold lasts until you tell us the beer is released or until the agreed date. Because public records stay public, we may decline to remove accurate information in rare cases; if we do, we'll tell you why.

6. Your account and what you add

Signing in. There are no passwords. On the website you sign in with a link we email you or with your Google account; in the iOS app, with a one-time code we email you. Signing in confirms you're of legal drinking age where you live. Keep access to your email (and Google) account secure, because anyone who can read your email can sign in as you. Tell us if you think someone has gotten into your account.

What you can add. With an account you can keep grails, follows, a journal with scores and private notes, style lanes, brewery visits and check-ins, and label scans, and you can import your check-in history from Untappd. You can also rate beers, build brewery crawls, and submit photos of tap lists and menus. Without an account, you can watch a beer or brewery by email.

What stays private and what's public. Your journal, notes and label-scan photos are private to you unless you take a separate step to share them, as our privacy policy explains. Some things you add help build the public register:

• Ratings. Your rating is pooled with others. A beer shows one public score, the median, once at least five people have rated it. We don't show your individual rating to others.
• Crawls. A crawl you choose to make public can be seen by anyone with the link. It doesn't show who made it.
• Tap-list and menu photos. When you submit one, we read the beer names from it automatically, and a person reviews it when something looks off. We use the names to show what's pouring at that brewery and to send "spotted" alerts. The photo itself is stored privately and isn't shown.

The license you give us. You keep ownership of what you add. You give Hop Grail a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, copy, process and display it to run and improve the service: for example, to keep your journal for you, to count your rating in a beer's public score, or to turn a tap-list photo into a "what's pouring" list. For anything you make public, the license also lets us show it to others on the service. The license ends when you delete the content or your account. The exception is records that no longer identify you once your account is gone, such as scan events and barcodes you helped match to a beer; those stay in the register.

Your responsibilities. Only add things you have the right to add. Photos should be of tap lists, menus and labels, not of people who haven't agreed to it. You're responsible for what you submit.

Acceptable use. Don't:

• break the law, or use Hop Grail to buy, sell or advertise alcohol to anyone under the legal drinking age;
• submit false, misleading or deliberately wrong information, such as fake ratings, a tap list from a different brewery, or a crawl meant to mislead;
• harass anyone, or post anything hateful, sexually explicit, or that infringes someone else's rights;
• scrape, bulk-download or copy the register, or access the service with bots or automated tools, except as our data license allows or with our written permission;
• interfere with the service, get around our security or rate limits, or try to access accounts or data that aren't yours;
• pretend to be someone else, including a brewery you don't speak for.

Suspension. We may remove content, or suspend or close an account, if we reasonably believe it breaks these terms or puts the service or other people at risk. Where it's practical, we'll tell you why.

Deleting your account. You can delete your account at any time from your profile. Deletion permanently removes your account data, as described in our privacy policy.

7. The iOS app

Your license. We give you a personal, non-transferable, revocable license to use the Hop Grail app on Apple devices you own or control, as allowed by Apple's App Store rules. These terms apply to the app along with Apple's standard licensed application end user license agreement; where they conflict for the app, these terms control, except where Apple's rules require otherwise.

About Apple. These terms are between you and Hop Grail, not Apple. In particular:

• Hop Grail, not Apple, is responsible for the app and its content.
• Apple has no obligation to provide maintenance or support for the app.
• If the app fails to meet any warranty that applies, you may notify Apple, and Apple may refund the app's purchase price (if any). To the extent the law allows, Apple has no other warranty obligation for the app.
• Apple isn't responsible for handling any claims about the app, including product liability claims, claims that the app fails to meet legal or regulatory requirements, or consumer protection or privacy claims.
• If someone claims the app infringes their intellectual property, Hop Grail, not Apple, is responsible for investigating, defending, settling and resolving that claim.
• You confirm that you aren't located in a country subject to a US government embargo or designated as "terrorist supporting," and that you aren't on any US government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
• Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these terms and may enforce them against you.

Push notifications. Hop Grail may offer push notifications right after you grail a beer or follow a brewery: in the iOS app, and in web browsers that support them. They're optional. Your device or browser asks for your permission first, and nothing is sent unless you allow it. You can turn them off at any time in your device or browser settings, or with the notification switches in your Hop Grail profile.

Location and camera. The app asks before using your location (for "near me" features and check-ins) or your camera (for label scans and tap-list photos). You can change either in your device settings.

8. Emails and alerts

When you have an account, we send emails that are part of the service: sign-in links and codes, alerts about beers and breweries you follow or watch, and weekly emails. Our newsletter, The Friday Pour, is sent only to people who sign up and then confirm by clicking the link we email them. Except for sign-in emails and essential account messages, you can turn emails off with one click in your profile or in the email itself.

Alerts are based on public filings and announcements, so they may arrive late, be incomplete, or describe a beer that is never released. Please don't rely on them for anything time-critical.

9. Ads, cookies and analytics

Hop Grail doesn't show ads today. Our use of cookies and analytics is described in our Privacy Policy. If we add advertising, we'll update these Terms and the Privacy Policy first.

10. Our intellectual property

Apart from the public records and other people's trademarks and content described above, the service is ours: the site and app, their design and code, the Hop Grail name and logo, our writing and articles, the maps, and our compilation of the data. You may use the service for personal use as these terms and the data license allow. You may not copy, modify, resell or build a competing product from it without our written permission.

Copyright complaints. If you believe something on Hop Grail infringes your copyright, send a written notice to our designated copyright agent (below) that includes:

• your physical or electronic signature, as the copyright owner or someone authorized to act for them;
• the work you say is infringed (or, for several works, a representative list);
• the material on Hop Grail you say is infringing, and enough detail for us to find it (a link is best);
• your contact details: address, phone number, and email if you have one;
• a statement that you believe in good faith the use isn't authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and
• a statement that the information in your notice is accurate and, under penalty of perjury, that you're authorized to act for the owner.

Send copyright notices to curtis@hopgrail.com with the subject line 'Copyright notice'.

We may remove or disable access to material that's the subject of a valid notice, and we may close the accounts of repeat infringers.

11. Links to other sites

Hop Grail links to sites and services we don't run, such as retailers, brewery websites, the TTB registry and map providers. We aren't responsible for their content, products, terms or privacy practices. Your dealings with them are between you and them.

12. Disclaimers

We work hard to keep the register accurate, but much of it comes from public filings, outside sources, automated reading, and what users submit. The service is provided "as is" and "as available." To the fullest extent the law allows, we make no warranties of any kind, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, and non-infringement. In particular, we don't guarantee that:

• any listing, release date, ABV, style, tap list, map location or other detail is accurate, complete or current;
• a beer will be released, sold or available where you are;
• answers from Ask Hop Grail, which are assembled automatically from our records, are correct;
• the service will be uninterrupted, secure or error-free.

Nothing on Hop Grail is advice about whether, what or how much to drink. Please drink responsibly, and never drink and drive.

Some places don't allow certain warranty exclusions, so some of these may not apply to you.

13. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, Hop Grail LLC and its owners, employees and contractors will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, data or goodwill, arising from or related to the service or these terms, even if we were told such damages were possible.

To the fullest extent the law allows, our total liability for any claim arising from or related to the service or these terms is limited to the greater of (a) what you paid Hop Grail in the 12 months before the claim, or (b) US $100.

Some places don't allow these limits, so they may not fully apply to you.

14. Indemnity

If you break these terms, misuse the service, or submit content that violates someone's rights or the law, and that leads to a claim against us, you agree to defend and indemnify Hop Grail LLC (and its owners, employees and contractors) against that claim, including reasonable legal fees, to the extent the law allows.

15. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Hawaii and applicable US federal law, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. There is no arbitration requirement in these terms. Any dispute arising from or related to these terms or the service will be brought only in the state or federal courts located in Honolulu, Hawaii, and you and we agree to the jurisdiction of those courts. Before filing a claim, please email us first; most problems can be fixed with a conversation.

16. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as Hop Grail changes. When we do, we'll change the "Last updated" date above. If a change is material, we'll give reasonable notice, for example on the site or by email, before it takes effect. If you keep using the service after a change takes effect, you accept the updated terms. If you don't agree, stop using the service and delete your account.

17. Ending the relationship

You can stop using Hop Grail and delete your account at any time. We may suspend or end your access as described in section 6, or stop offering all or part of the service. If these terms end, the sections that by their nature should survive will survive, including the content license for de-identified records that stay in the register, intellectual property, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnity and governing law.

18. General

These terms and the privacy policy are the whole agreement between you and Hop Grail about the service. If any part is found unenforceable, the rest stays in effect. If we don't enforce a term right away, we haven't waived it. You may not transfer your rights under these terms; we may transfer ours as part of a sale or reorganization of the business.

19. Contact

Questions about these terms, brewery requests, or copyright notices:

Hop Grail LLC
Honolulu, Hawaii
curtis@hopgrail.com