What I keep,
and what I don't

This site doesn't set any. No advertising pixels, nothing following you to other websites, nothing building a profile of you. There is no cookie banner because there is nothing to consent to.

The one exception is the private admin area, which is my “back of the house”. It sets a sign-in cookie after I log in. That's only me though, not you, and it's the kind of cookie that's strictly necessary for a login to work at all.

I do count page views, through Vercel Analytics. It records which pages get looked at, roughly which country the visit came from, and whether it was a phone or a computer.

It doesn't use cookies and it doesn't identify you. There's no profile, nothing that follows you to another site, and nothing I could tie back to any specific person. That was the whole reason for choosing them — I just want to be able to see if anyone is reading the book page, not who is.

I store your email address, the date you confirmed it, and the IP address the confirmation came from. That last one exists for one reason: it's proof that you asked to be here, and I didn't add you myself.

You have to click a link in a confirmation email before you're actually subscribed. Until you do, nothing gets sent to you. The confirmation link expires after thirty days.

Every email has an unsubscribe link at the bottom and your mail app's own “one-click unsubscribe” works too. One click, no questions, no “are you sure”. I keep a record that you unsubscribed rather than deleting you outright, which keeps you from being added back by accident later.

My emails are sent through MailerLite, and it records whether an email was opened and whether a link inside was clicked.

It's there so I know whether anyone actually wants these before I write the next one. It isn't linked to anything you do on the site, it isn't sold, and it isn't shared with anyone.

If you'd rather I not know you opened my email, turning off image loading in your mail app stops the open tracking.

The contact form stores your name, email, what it's about, and your message, so I can reply and so I don't lose it. That arrives in my inbox as well.

Drink card and author services inquiries come through that same contact form, so they land with me directly.

To stop the signup and contact forms being used to spam people, each one keeps a scrambled (hashed) version of your IP address for up to a day, to count how often it's been used. The scrambled version can't be turned back into your address, and it's deleted automatically.

Client quotes on the drink cards page are only there with permission, credited by the author that said it and the book that the drink card was made for (when applicable). I record privately where a quote came from for verification purposes.

Want yours taken down, reworded, or credited differently? Ask and it's done. No explanation needed.

Nobody buys any of this. These are the companies that handle it because the site needs them to work:

• Supabase— stores the database and handles my login
• MailerLite— sends the newsletter, and counts opens and clicks
• Resend— sends everything else — confirmations, replies, receipts
• Forward Email— receives mail sent to this domain
• Vercel— hosts the site, keeps standard server logs, and counts page views
• Google— my inbox

MailerLite keeps records such as delivery and open records, but once you unsubscribe, I'll never email you again.

Messages from the contact form on the website are kept only as long as they are relevant to the business or necessary record-keeping.

Email hello@tapsandtropes.com and ask. You can have a copy of everything I hold about you, have it corrected, or have it deleted. I'll be happy to send that information to the same email address I have on file, no questions asked.

None of it is kept for the sake of having it, and any of it will be deleted on request, except for what I need for business, legal, or tax records.

If you just want the emails to stop, the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any of them is faster than writing to me.

This is a site about cocktails. It isn't intended for anyone under 21, and I don't knowingly advertise to or collect anything from anyone who is.

The date at the top changes with it. If something changes in a way that actually affects you — a new thing collected, a new company handling it — the newsletter will say so rather than me quietly editing this page.