Your beer catalog

1930 unique beers on Untappd, a few thousand more that are lost to time before I found that app. There are plenty I remember but won’t add them unless I have them again , I don’t go buying beer just to add a beer. I have a list of my honeymoon beers someplace but all the others are in my mind only. I don’t do full reviews too often or even check into a beer here with a rating much. Untappd is just much easier and I get to add a photo to remind me of a location or the beer.

Did I even answer what was asked by the op?

Enjoy

 

100% of my catalog is on here.

About 98% or more of everything I've ever tasted is also on here. I've missed a few brews along the way. But I don't use any other sites/apps.

Cheers!

 

Good question, and I have an interesting answer...
Got into craft beer around 2005ish. Started a personal list on a computer and print out. Then got onto this site 2009. Started rating some of my beers on here, but when I didn’t have time just recorded them on my personal list. It was in the 1200 range. This was until 2010.

I got out of beer until 2019. Unfortunately the computer and paper list I had previously were long gone. My ba account was still active so was able to salvage that.
Over the last year I slowly transitioned from double entering on here and untappd to almost exclusively untappd. (Unless it’s a top 250 or someone from this site hooked me up, then I try to record it on here).
It’s been an interesting journey. I’ve currently got about 1300 beers on here and 1400 on untappd, so clearly it’s been a big drinking year for me.

 

One of the things I neglected to mention in my original reply to this thread was that I use the List feature on Untappd to sort my fridge particularly by bottle date, which is hugely invaluable to me. I put packaged on/best by dates where applicable, so my older beers don't sit longer than they have to and risk getting too old. That said, I tend to buy things fresh so that's not usually an issue but it allows me to prioritize by age if my fridge gets really full.

 

Started drinking craft in 93/94 but didn’t begin tracking it until 2010. First with excel, then UT. UT has probably 95% of the beers I drank from 2010-2020.

 

The ability to attach a photo to my thoughts. If I’m looking back at my notes, I like having the setting to better remember the experience.

 

I started taking notes on beers in paper notebooks about 18 months ago. I have been on BA for 13-14 months and as soon as I joined i stopped the paper notes. I strongly prefer using BA to keep my catalog of beers because of the metrics and sorting capability, although I may punt to my own system (maybe based on Excel) in the future so that I could embed photos with my reviews. I review 98% of all new-to-me beers except most of the ones that I drink for the first time at breweries/restaurants (probably an average of 15 a year). I don't review those (very often) because I don't like to review from memory and seldom am I at breweries with friends/family who think that me taking notes instead of socializing is in good taste.. I don't use Untapped.

 

I share your love of data and while BA comes close to what I envision as ideal, I'm really not likin' the inability to attach a photo to my reviews. If you care to share your handiwork, please elaborate on what fields you have in your spreadsheet, or does it just replicate the BA review data fields+comments? Personally I would add a field for price because I think it would be a hoot to watch prices change over time and also to graph or trend my total beer costs/month.

 

Under the “inventory” tab I have the following columns (text in brackets is explanatory)

• Brewery
• Beer [name of the beer]
• Style
• State/country
• ABV
• Quantity [# of containers]
• Container volume [in mL]
• Location [beer fridge or cellar]
• Reviewed? [yes or no]
• Bottling date
• Best before date
• Best after date
• Bottle code (if no date)
• Notes

Under the “ratings” tab I have the following columns:

• Brewery
• Beer [name of beer]
• Style
• State/country
• ABV
• Rating/review [score/review copied over from BA]

So basically when I review a new beer I just copy the first several columns from the inventory tab over to a new row in the review tab, then fill in the score/review. Tracking ABV, best by date etc. helps me stay on top of which beers I need to consume sooner vs. what might benefit from aging or at least stay a little more stable—in theory, anyway (I’ve been on a weight loss program for a few months now so I have cut way back on my beer consumption since summertime, and some of my bottles are now close to 10 years old and probably past their prime). Tracking # of containers, volume per container etc. helps me stay on top of exactly how much beer I currently have.

I can also sort the data in all kinds of ways, as you can on BA, to see for example what states I drink the most beer from (just a guess but probably WA, OR and CA), styles I drink the most of etc. For me it’s just nice to have all the info in one place—and of course not risk losing all my reviews should something unfortunate happen to either BA or its data.

I thought about adding a “price paid” column at one point but I was already several hundred beers into the project and it just seemed like one piece of information too much to track. But it would be interesting—some of my favorite local barrel aged beers used to cost around $10 or $12 for a bomber and new they’re up around $32 or even $36–crazy.

 

Used to keep my beer list in a Word doc, now I keep it in both Word and Google Drive. I typically only "claim" a beer if I've had a growler/6er/4 pack. Because I'm weird.

 

Before I found BeerAdvocate, I had an Excel Spreadsheet with my Beer Catalog. It is now a 7 sheet file on Google Sheets. One sheet simply tracks beers with other for countries, states, styles and other random things. There's even a sheet of reserved for homebrews.

 

I still use Excel to log my beers, been doing it for about 15 years now. Never got into logging them on this or other sites because I don't actually rate or score them. I prefer to just record a comment about the beer and/or the experience.

 

Probably 20 years ago, I saw a piece on TV, maybe 60 Minutes, about the great American Beer Fest, and they were talking to a guy who kept those notes, and he was going for his 5,000th individual beer he'd tried. At the time my mind was blown, how could there be that many beers out there? Of course, now we're way over that number of breweries, in the US alone. I think it's over 9000 at this point. Well over 100,000 individual beers, I'm presuming.

I've never really kept notes of what I've had, other than at fests I'll usually cross off ones I've tried. I do generally remember most of what I've had, though. |It's getting harder as more and more breweries come on line and are distributing / going to fests / tastings.

 

More reason to drink more of the 'classics'?



Cheers!

 

I can't argue there. There's something about those old-school brewers, the ones that have been around long enough to see the coming and going of fads. I wonder what will happen if / when the demand for hazies fades out. There's so many breweries now that have come up with a dozen varieties of hazy IPA, barely different even side by side. Something like Two Hearted is refreshing once in a while, actually clear, with pronounced bitterness alongside the later additions. Around here Berkshire Brewing has been doing it for ages, Smuttynose, a few sales notwithstanding, even Sam Adams Boston Lager, if found fresh, is an exceptional showing of that style.
|I'm as guilty of looking for the next best thing as the next guy, and most times will buy something different, but there are a few anchors that I'll try to keep in stock in my cellar.