Hey all!
I’ve been hard at work trying to get every state represented on here, and while you could say I’ve cheated a little, I’m happy to say that the site should now have a (nearly) comprehensive list of (almost) every brewery in the United States!
When I say perhaps I cheated a little, I mean that I took a shortcut for accomplishing the last several states in the interest of getting data to you quicker. I wrote some Javascript to grab information from the directory available from the National Brewer’s Association, filter out the in-planning breweries and give me JSON I could parse server-side to add breweries to my own database while hopefully avoiding any duplicates.
This got me a ton of data, but I’d be very surprised if its comprehensive, as new breweries are opening every day across the country. It also didn’t give me a chance to vet the tour and taproom availability of these breweries or verify their Yelp! ID, but rather it makes its best guess. If you notice things amiss, still best if you let me know so I can promptly fix it.
The important part is every state is represented, so be sure to share with your friends in every state. I want this to reach as many people as possible and, in turn, benefit as many independent brewers as possible.
So what’s next? There have been overwhelming requests to see the breweries that showed up for your trip in a list format, browse the directory as a whole, and I’m also aware of some funny stuff happening on both mobile and laptop-sized screens, so I’ll be looking into that. One of my personal goals is to evolve the blog into a place where people can share the stories of their own beer pilgrimages with pictures and such to inspire other people to do the same. If you use the site and want to write about your adventure, be sure to reach out to me.
And of course, there are comments on comments about breweries missing, so be sure to utilize that feedback button to let me know what you see missing. Blindly comparing lists every day against what I have is time-consuming and not something I’ve automated at this time, so you’re my best tool for keeping this site up to date!
Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. I’m excited to spend time working on features and interface rather than data entry, so keep sharing with your friends and follow on Twitter, where I’ll be announcing fun stuff like features, publicity and new breweries!
Cheers,
Ethan