It's Come To This: Touch-Screen Beer Taps
(CBS) -- A dramatic innovation in the beer world is expanding in Chicago.
As CBS 2's Vince Gerasole reports, new technology allows you to be your own bartender at a "pour your own" tap room.
Tim Enarson and Erik Swanson have developed an appreciation for beer's Old Word roots while travelling the world.
Modern technology is allowing them to share it with the rest of us --- as long as you pour your own.
Their Navigator Taproom in Logan Square allows guests to serve themselves some 50 varieties of beer.
On tablets above the taps, guests read up on a beer's honeylike sweetness or spicy notes. They next swipe a tab card and select the beer of their choice. Software tracks how much is poured. Customers pay by the ounce.
"In fact, a lot of people try just two ounces of this and three ounces of that," Enarson says.
The software also limits drinkers to 32 ounces at a time, so that proprietors can make sure no one is being over-served.
Self-serve tap rooms have popped up across the country. Chicago is considered a craft-beer epicenter.