A few weeks ago The Tank posted about ‘setting the standard for Twitter updates‘ – which was a very interesting and useful suggestion on a pretty geeky topic. Basically what should be the data standard or codex for rating beers in 140 characters. We are still refining the ‘Twitter beer standard’ (TBS).
In the meantime, I’ve been thinking about starting both an annual and LIFE ‘list’ of beers that I have tried. This is probably the super geek or science nerd trying to coming out — but hey what can be wrong with finding another way to enjoy beer and tell the world (or least remind the BV crew)?! 
So, what do I mean by ‘lists’? Well to start it would be a simple way to track all the different beers we get to taste each year – a running total of individual beers and would probably include some other notes as well. As a starting point here are the data points I would include:
Brewery Name, Beer Name, Region, Style, ABV, Tap/Cask/Bottle or Other, Appearance notes, including colour, Nosing notes, Tasting notes, date, location consumed, Optional details like interesting ingredients, IBU, etc.
The rules are you list the 1st one of the season (ie, if you drink a lot of Sn Pale Ale or Dark Star Golden Ale it would still only get one entry) and if you manage to consume the same beer in both cask and bottle form those each count as 1 entry each. A sort of running total. A simple list.
Here is a sample for 2009 so far (just a rough field list to be padded out later on):
Fullers Vintage Ale
San Miguel
Tropical
Meantime Pale Ale
Sierra Nevada Anniversary Ale
Insulation Bitter, Hyde
Avibtinue
Rogue Juniper Pale Ale
Stone IPA
Little Creature Pale
Neglo Modelo
Stella (I know, bad form but I was on an airplane)
Brocklyn larger
etc etc
Feedback appreciated on both the data standard and the concept of ‘beer lists’!!! And if anyone knowns of any good beer lists please send us the link… In the mean time keep drinking.
January 20th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
Good post and thinking Doc.
DATA STANDARD:
I like everything you have there and some other thoughts.
If one is going to give beer a rating then ideally it should be rate for all the factors. I uhhm and aww of this one and not sure, if it’s necessary yet.
Location and mood is an under recognised point. It can drastically change one’s thought about a beer.
LISTS:
There must be an technology answer to the technique to building such a list.
One easy way would be to Tag or Categorise a review, either while posting or afterwards. You could then select by the Tag or Category and that would only bring back reviews.
I’m sure there’s a few others but probably need to look around.