Announcing Brewery Search
Last month I was messing around online trying to find companies that brewed beer (breweries and brewpubs) in a couple of locations that I was thinking of dragging the wife and kid to. Through my searches I kept finding myself using a combination of 3-4 sites to gather all the information that I was interested in. After a good hour or so of swapping between sites I found myself thinking that there’s got to be an easier way to do this.
So I started with a simple concept and began coding. After a while I had arrived upon what I think is an easy way to find brewers in a general location. BrewerySearch is the result of that tinkering. Search on anything: beer styles, specific product names, breweries, locations, Britney Spears… No, wait. That last one isn’t in the database, but you get the idea.
The site returns a clean page with the brewery/brewpub’s general contact information, link to a website if it exists, a map to show their location visually, a description of the company and a list of their known beers — all on one easy-to-read page. Sure it’s not as cool as The Beer Mapping Project or have the massive community backing of BeerAdvocate or RateBeer, but when you’re in a hurry and just need the details, you can’t beat its simplicity.
Search On The Go
As an added bonus, I’ve also developed a mobile version of the site. Simply surf to brewerysearch.com on your favorite mobile device and you’ll be redirected to a scaled down version of the site. The mobile search returns the exact same data as the main site minus the map and a few outbound links. Oh, it’s optimized for your lucky stiffs with an iPhone, but is completely 100% usable on any other mobile device.
Wait A Minute Now…
Alright, you caught me. The site isn’t fully complete yet. I’ve got data entered for the U.S. up to New Mexico (states have been entered alphabetically) at the time of this writing. I was hoping to officially launch after the new year with all of the U.S., Canada and Belgium complete, but let’s be honest, data entry sucks and is taking me forever. So why am I launching it now then? Well, the site was flying under the radar for a while, but has recently been getting traffic from search engines and with beer fans all over traveling for the holidays, it seemed like a logical time to let loose with this little project.
So there you have it. We’ll consider this a soft launch or a beta if you will. I am constantly adding information to it as time and family allow. I am also working on a widget that can put in your own site if you’re interested. You can keep apprised of the smaller updates at the Brewery Search blog or just follow here for the major updates.
Thanks and happy searching.