The Real Ale Database
Just here for tasting notes?
With pubs needing to charge enough for a pint to cover their costs, it's wise to know what your drink might taste like before handing over your money.
This search is provided free of charge so you can see tasting notes and information about a beer or cider before you buy.
As a small independent website, we can't list every beer and cider in existence but we do add new ones regularly.
If you are a pub or festival organiser, please consider signing up for an account to enable you to use the tools we provide to make your life easier.
If you are a brewer, please consider signing up for a free account to enable you to add your beers and ciders to the database and help us stay up to date.
If you've found this site useful, please consider buying me a beer. Thanks
Tasting notes for beers
Originally designed to provide an up to date beer list for a small beer festival, the Real Ale Database has developed over the last decade into a complete system with the easy to use LiveBar enabling pubs and festivals to show customers the range of available beers and tasting notes for each.
We now have thousands of beers listed and we are continually adding more. The lastest updates include adding links from each beer to its Untappd page to simplify check ins for customers. This helps with publicity for the pub or festival and gives drinkers the chance to rate the beer.
The Real Ale Database is not designed as a tickers list or somewhere to comment on beer quality or preferences. We leave that to Untappd who already do that very well. The purpose of this database is purely to collect and share accurate beer information.
We list independent brewers and multi-nationals alike. Where possible, we try to indicate if the brewery is independent or owned by a multi-national. If you want to know more about Indie Beer, you can visit the Indie Beer website for more details.
Pub and beer festival tools
Since the beginning in 2011, the main purpose has been to provide accurate and up to date information for customers. At first, this was just the LiveBar showing the beer details to customers. We have now developed a set of easy to use tools for beer festivals including a cask end label generator and dips manager.
The early versions were intended to be used only for cask beers. We have now expanded to include other forms of dispense including kegs, bottles and cans. We have also expanded the types of drinks we support to include non UK beers, ciders and perries.
Tools for pubs and festivals:
- LiveBar (What's on the bar now)
- LiveCellar (Beers coming soon)
- LiveBar Display (TV screen display of LiveBar)
- Cask End Cards (Beer detail cards for beer festival casks)
- LiveDips (Enter your barrel dips online)
- Download notes for festival programmes
The Real Ale Database