Normative Guidelines for Collaboration Beer Names Are Needed

Feel free to ignore this suggestion, especially if (as @dbrauneis suggests) there's already a BA Standard that is already being applied. But anyway...

For my own spreadsheet, I enter collaboration beer names as
Beer Name (with Secondary Brewer, Tertiary Brewer)

Two main advantages:
1) No duplication of information
2) Easier to find beers alphabetically

1. This naming standard adheres to the otherwise-standard practice on BeerAdvocate of NOT entering the brewery's name as part of the beer name. It becomes duplicate information at that point. And duplication that becomes hindering in cases of long beer names, causing portion of the beer name to be dropped. Example:
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/22150/223702/

2. When viewing an alphabetic list, there would only be ONE place to look for the beer's name.
2a. This is especially important if the viewer is unaware that the beer in question is a collaboration (or who the collaboration is with), potentially leading to duplicate entries.
2b. Also important when a beer - that IS a collaboration - is not entered as such. Again, the listing would not be in the expected location. Example (that is an Omnipollo collab):
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/32409/271681/

While I feel like this would be better, I don't know if it's worth changing all entries from the current standard. But I thought I'd put it out there. Cheers!

ps - Woody, I enjoy reading your reviews immensely. Keep it up!

 

I know this thread's over a year old, but I didn't find anything newer.

I recently added a couple of beers that were collaborations between a brewery and local artists, I used that exact format but they were all edited to just the beer name later.

Did we move away from the "[Brewery] / [Collaborator] - [Beer Name]" format at some point? Or was it just because the collab. is between a brewer and a non-brewer that it was removed?

Just want some clarification in case I've been adding stuff wrong all this time.

 

I'm super glad this will be addressed. I vote for the parenthetical style ie: "Whatever Stout (collaboration with Generic Brewing)".
I like having the collaboration on the name line because it is often very clearly stated on the label, but the concatenated brewery names get out of hand and do seem to be likely to produce duplicate listings.

 

How about we just stop drinking collab beers? The are never better than either brewery's regular beer and it's probably just another NEIPA anyway.

 

I like just adding the collaboration brewers in the notes. Less data points are better, unless we intend to make that feature searchable. And if that's the case, those searches for Mikkeller or Stillwater collabs might break the search engine....

 

Damn, concatenate is a really good word. I mean it.

 

Coming from a background that included some data entry and database design, that would seem to be the ideal solution, but I've always felt that adding fields here was not on the table. From a database point of view, that would make them searchable too, which would be more awkward in a notes field.

 

Copy that. Thanks!

 

Is there somewhere in the Help that defines how currently collaboration beers should be named when adding to the database? Is it still being left out of the name and only in the notes?

 

And ideally, for data purposes, there is a main brewer "with collaborators" though we know some collaborations are much more equal and end up with two entries: Brewery A (in collab w/Brewery B) and Brewery B (in collab w/Brewery A). Especially given the usually limited life of these beers, it'd be nice to be able to combine or at least link the separate entries.

That said, it's not that big an issue, volume-wise - just a minor annoyance I felt like commenting on

 

Well, for tax purposes, the beer is credited to the brewery where it was made. That seems a good guideline here as well.

 

Sounds good, though taproom beers where it’s made/served in both locations could either not clear things up or not be readily available to the BA adding the beer. They’ll add it where they’re having it, most likely. I’ve actually requested a merge of such before without any visible change occurring - although I don’t think I requested an internal link in the notes.

 

A beer is only made in one place. It is that breweries beer. If it is served at the other brewery, it should be listed as a guest tap. People are gonna people though, and we'll never completely get rid of duplicate entries.

At least it's not UT, where I've seen the same beer listed 4-5 times.

 

True - and I'll be honest, I like seeing the difference in ratings based on brewer under which the entry was made. That said, most of the beers I'm thinking of (local-local collab limited on-prem release) generally have so few ratings as to draw any true "conclusions," which is also why it's a small issue, as mentioned.

 

Love that Freudian slip of a typo. The above could be a motto.

 

Hold your horses for all the various "Black is Beautiful" entries that will be coming (over how many breweries??) I'm sure. Just might break the system.

 

Same with the different "All Together" entries. I just enter it in the system based on the brewery who made the beer, since with both All Together and Black is Beautiful some of the breweries put their own little spin on the beers so it's not like the exact same recipe was used for all of them.

 

The timing of this thread is excellent. I've added numerous collaboration beers to the BA database using the same format that @woodychandler suggests. Last week, I noticed that those beers had been changed to just the name of the primary brewery but that the collaboration is now referenced in the commercial notes. I checked a couple of local breweries, notably Magnify and Carton, which had numerous beers formatted with the names of both collaborating brewers but the second names have been removed. I assumed this change was by design, i.e., the beer should now be added only under the primary brewery's name with the collaboration "noted" in the commercial notes. I prefer Woody's proposed format because it makes the collaboration more evident.