Holy Grail Beer Website - What would it have?

[Crispyvelo]

If you could design the perfect one-stop-shop website to learn about a particular beer....what would it include?

Here are some ideas I had:

- All the rating sites pulled together in one place (BeerAdvocate, RateBeer, Untappd)

- As many technical specs as possible about the beer (grain bill, hops used, brewing techniques)

- Description from the brewery

- Perhaps a Wants/Gots section for trading

- Clone notes (some section where people can talk about efforts and tasting notes for cloning that particular beer)

- Video reviews - I think this would be cool. Imaging an aggregated section of clips of people pouring, smelling, and tasting the beer. It would be great to have these in one place.

- Distribution map

- Perhaps a way for people to post where in their area they bought it (to help others see where it's popping up around town)

- A "word cloud" that pulls common descriptive terms for the beer at an aggregate level so you can get a sense for the most common descriptive words and phrases for that beer.

- Average price of the beer

- WHAT ELSE? Love to hear your thoughts...

 

[Scturo]

Good list, I would add a brewery brew schedule for a beer in demand. So I know when to look for it. Price and quantity sold per month would be interesting.

Since I started home brewing, I can't see myself paying crazy money for a Grail beer. I've also tried enough sought after beers to know that you can find great beer anywhere these days.

 

[broadbill]

I assume you are asking because you are thinking of putting something together. I think you need to approach this from the aspect of "who is my reader/contributor/customer?" and not be all things to all people. Additionally, execution is a major issue here...how will you aggregate of these information sources in a meaningful manner? For example, in my part of the world Instragram seems to be new/efficient way to organize trades...the brewery announces a release and people comment with their trades. Can you pull that into your website or offer somthing better, new, more efficient? This is why knowing your customer is key.

Its easy to identify features...its very difficult to identify if they are really wanted.

 

[Crispyvelo]

Thanks for the feedback. I think the core audience are the beer enthusiasts that are interested in "beer buzz" (ha!). These are people who's internet search history is filled with youtube queries about specific beers they hear about and want to taste and learn more about. They look up the beers to see what each rating site (BeerAdvocate, etc.) had to say and they totally get off by reading descriptive reviews and seeing other people drinking, talking about, and enjoying the same beers. I'm not alone...there are more freaks out there like me.

 

[broadbill]

Thanks for the feedback. I think the core audience are the beer enthusiasts that are interested in "beer buzz" (ha!). These are people who's internet search history is filled with youtube queries about specific beers they hear about and want to taste and learn more about. They look up the beers to see what each rating site (BeerAdvocate, etc.) had to say and they totally get off by reading descriptive reviews and seeing other people drinking, talking about, and enjoying the same beers. I'm not alone...there are more freaks out there like me.

OK, but what are you going to provide that places like BA, Instagram, FB, beer blogs, etc. aren't already doing? What you describe is already being provided by those site.

There is also the issue of geography. My can tailor my FB, Instagram feed to keep track of my local/regional breweries. The hottest thing coming out of CA doesn't really interest me as I probably will never see that beer. But if I were to travel to CA and wanted to learn, a few clicks on BA will provide me all I need to know.

Then there is still the open question of aggregation: how are you going to pull in the hyperlocal buzz of a given town? What data sources are you going to pull from and are they robust enough to support the quality of your site?

 

[Crispyvelo]

OK, but what are you going to provide that places like BA, Instagram, FB, beer blogs, etc. aren't already doing? What you describe is already being provided by those site.

None of those sites aggregate the reviews from all the disparate sites out there. If someone wants to really look into a beer, they have to go to each of those sites one at a time to try and find information. Imagine if one site could pull the ratings from BA, Rate beer, untappd, etc. along with a stream of relevant YouTube tasting/review videos about that beer. This hasn't been done, and would be extremely useful and convenient...at least for me!

 

[Crispyvelo]

Come on people...I know some of you wish you had that magic wand to wave over your computer and produce the perfect beer information site. What would it have?