BrewPalace.com FAQ
- What is The BrewPalace?
- About the Bottle Collection
- What is the purpose of The BrewPalace?
- How do I use this site?
- What technologies are used?
- How are the beers rated?
- What is next for The BrewPalace?
- Release Summary
- Browser Issues
The BrewPalace began years ago as note taking
and bottle tracking device for an extensive beer bottle collection. Instead of
simply collecting the bottle, I have created what has become a very
large database of the beers that I've had and the bottles they come in.
I capture very detailed information about Companies, Beers, and Bottles, and can provide statistical
information regarding the information I've captured. With a lot of time on my hands,
I have taken the bottle collection and its database to the next level, where it is now
called The BrewPalace.
The BrewPalace's goals are a bit different than the humble beginnings
of the original collection. The BrewPalace aims to be a place for
the exchange and organization of beer information among beer fans.
The Holmes is able to kick off the discussions by adding his insight, but
the rest is up to the beer lovers to provide their perspectives.
Note that this site is not intended to be the
be-all of beer knowledge; far from it, it is intended to capture a good
amount of information on each of the bottles, beers and companies that I
have in my collection. If I don't have a bottle by a brewery, then
you won't see any information on it in the database.
The BrewPalace and the Bottle collection are
entirely sampled by the King of BrewLand, The Holmes, in San Diego, CA. This site is entirely
developed and maintained by The Holmes himself. The Holmes is no longer 22 anymore, so doing
more than 150 new bottles per year is a bit difficult, particularly since he wants
to keep his weight down a bit. After all, The King must be prepared to go to battle.
One of the foundations of The BrewPalace is the
extensive Bottle collection of The Holmes. The bottle collection has
been a main obsession of The Holmes over the last 11 years, growing to consume
every available square foot of wall space in The BrewPalace. Although The BrewPalace is referred
to by some as a "townhouse", it is in fact much more than a
dwelling for The Holmes. Every bottle is displayed on wooden shelves, spread throughout
the rooms and hallways of the palace.
Most bottle collectors have some rules governing their collection, and
The Holmes is no exception. His rules are as follows:
- The Holmes rates all of the beers, with no input from anyone else.
- The Holmes must drink the beer, usually all of it. No empties are considered. For the larger bottles, I will share them with friends.
- Only bottled beer factors into the rating. (This includes ceramic and plastic, not just glass)
- Homebrews are included, but each bottle must have a label, even if it is done with a crayon. 17 are
included so far. If you have a homebrew that you want rated, sent
it to The BrewPalace and you'll see it appear on these pages within a few days.
- Different bottles for the same beer are included. Bottles differ in
size, country of origin, label type, and the occasional label error.
Seasonal beers have multiple bottles only if their labels are significantly
different.
This web site provides several functions, both for me and the visitor.
For the you, the visitor, it provides:
- Viewing of summary beer and bottle information as it is captured in the database
- Viewing of detailed information on the companies, beers and bottles that are stored in the database
- Provides a global place to rate each beer
- Provides a message board to hear other people's comments on each beer. This is a good read
- Serves as an excellent source of brewery links
For The Holmes, the BrewPalace King, it provides:
- Global access to my information. I can't
possibly remember all of this stuff, so now I can quickly look it all up in the database
- Remote editing capabilities, allowing me to enter information into the database from where
ever I may be. You cannot see this part
- Two heads are smarter than one. Some kind visitors will have more information than I will on a particular company
or beer, and they may be nice enough to forward me on some more information
- A place to learn some Web technologies, an area in which I was lacking
For the most part, you will find the most benefit of this site in the following 2 areas:
By commenting and voting on an individual beer or company that you enjoy (or maybe don't enjoy!)
- Select a technique to find the company that brews the beer you are looking for:
- Use the full text search located on all pages
- Use the Database Locator to find
a list of companies or beers that match your criteria. Want to
find all Pilsners from California? Use the Database Locator
- Use the Walk Through to see a full list of all companies, beers and bottles at The BrewPalace.
- Using the Reports, you can drill down to a specific company or
beer.
- After you have selected the company, the Company Details tab is displayed.
Select the Beers tab to show all of the beers that The BrewPalace has for that brewery.
Select the one you want to bring up its details page.
- On the right you can rate the beer by selecting on one of the numbered
links. Refer to the rating guidelines before
voting. Vote for as many beers as you like, but please, don't vote a
dozen times for the same beer.
- If you like, add a comment to the beer message board under the Discuss tab. I
think this is the most enjoyable part of the site - you should read through the comments!
By reviewing some of the analytical reports that the site contains.
These reports use the same design, build and user interaction techniques that
are used throughout corporate data warehouses (an area that I know something
about). Most of the reports show similar measures (called Metrics in DW
terminology) such as Total Beers, Avg. Rating, Avg. Alcohol %, etc. The
reports differ on their dimensions - such as Year, Country or type of beer.
- Click on Reports in the Main Menu on the left
- Select a Report to view form the Report Main Menu page. Note that some of
the reports can become quite large, and therefore may take a while to appear on your screen.
- Each report may contain the following features:
- Filters Many reports contain an
indicator in the upper left hand corner of the report that will allow you to
turn a filter on or off. In analytical/statistical reporting, you
usually don't want to see small sample sets in you result. For
example, the Country Statistics report has a filter that eliminates all
countries with fewer than 9 rated beers. If you select the Turn Filter
Off link in the upper left, all countries will be displayed, skewing a
metric such as Average rating. (e.g., with the filer on, England is
the highest rated country, but with it off, Ivory Coast is #1 because it has
only 1 beer rated at 4 stars.) Also note that turning a filter off may
dramatically increase the amount of time it takes to display a report.
- Sortable Headings Most reports have column headings that are in
fact hyperlinks to sort by that column. Click on the column you wish
to sort by, and it will sort it. Click the same heading again, and it
will reverse the sort. (e.g., A-Z changes to Z-A)
- Drilldowns Many reports contain drilldowns, a
powerful of Analytical reporting. Data columns shown in blue can
be selected, where another report will be displayed filtered on the
value you selected. For example, selecting Mexico on the Country
Summary report will show the Company Info report, but limited to only
companies in Mexico. Within the Company info report, the company
name is also a drill down, and selecting it will take you to the
specific company record displayed in the Company Details page. In
Data Warehousing, this is a controversial feature called "Drill
through to detail".
Note that Edit tabs are inaccessible to anyone except me - I use them for editing and site monitoring.
Do deliver this site, The BrewPalace combines several technologies and a lot of work.
Hardware
- Dell Dimension XPS - 3.2Ghz P4, 1 GB Ram, 500 GB of striped disk, 120GB Backup disk, wicked sound system, Gigabit Ethernet (what the hell do I need that for?)
- Time Warner RR cable internet. Using the very cool Motorola SBG 1000 integrated Cable Modem, Hub and Wireless Access point (for my work notebook)
Software
- Windows XP Professional
- MS Access 2003
- MS IIS 5.1 Web Server
- Extensive use of ASP 3.0
- Cascading Style Sheets
- Some Java Script
- VB-ActiveX DLL to handle complex, batch oriented tasks and generate all of the reports
Integration
The following custom developed pieces are needed to make it work:
- Base Data structure, developed 1995 in MS Access
- MS-Access based Data Entry screens, developed in 1995
- Data Warehouse tables and loading modules, developed in 1996 in MS Access
- Access based analytical reporting front end, 1996
- Web presentation and data entry, Winter 2000-2001
- Migration to XP & new machine: Fall, 2003
Design
Currently, the BrewPalace runs in a 4-tiered environment:
- Client Web Browser
- HTTP Serving/Generation (HTML and ASP)
- Active X DLL layer for complex transactions
- Data Services (tables and stored queries)
I follow a simple rating guideline, not one of the
fancy ones by professional beer tasters. I think by rating a beer
relative to the ideal of its style assumes that all styles of beer are equally good. I
am not so giving. I rate the beer using an absolute scale, as shown
below. Factors such as color and aroma are meaningless to how good a
beer is, and I they are not considered anywhere in The BrewPalace.
Note that my ratings will show a bias towards sweeter, fuller beers as opposed
to Pilsners and Lagers.
| Rating |
Rating Qualifier |
| 5.0 |
A truly wonderful and perfect beer. |
| 4.5 |
Excellent, but something is just keeping it from being a 5 star beer. |
| 4.0 |
Good enough that I would want to buy and drink a six pack of during a week or so. In other words, I wouldn't get sick of it. |
| 3.5 |
Good, but not quite enough that I would want to drink a six pack of it in one week. |
| 3.0 |
Nothing special, fairly average |
| 2.5 |
Slightly less than average |
| 2.0 |
Bland or minimal taste, mildly difficult to finish |
| 1.5 |
Can barely finish the bottle |
| 1.0 |
Can't finish the bottle |
This is now my third release at "e-enabling" my beer database. As
such, there are quite a few things that I have in store for future versions,
some of which I actually may implement. Shown below are some of the new
features that I would like to implement, along with the reason why I haven't do it so far.
- Port everything over to something like DotNetNuke
- Site redesign on the new platform, to allow for more ads
- WAP enable it
- Add new features such as a Beer Styles guide and Tastings Guide
If you have any other ideas, please let me know!
| Release |
Date Released |
Major Changes |
| 1.7 BrewPalace |
7/22/2001 |
Release devoted primarily to look and feel changes.
- Rewrote every page to better use CSS, and fit into a standard structure and color scheme
- Made sure the site works perfectly in IE 5.5 and Netscape 6. Finally, the Netscape version works, and looks good to boot.
- Removed the Java Menuing system, replacing it with an HTML based tabbed interface
- Moved the whole tree down one level to the root, in hopes of getting robots to work with the site better.
|
| 1.6 BrewPalace |
3/15/2001 |
- Added a new report for Rating Distribution
- Added brewery totals in the brewery details page
- Added a parent linking feature between companies
- Added full support for Beer Glasses, including Edit screens, a room in the Museum and a metric in the Collection Summary Report
- Minor internal database clean-up
- Added stuff for WebHosting and Advertising
- Added 3 new reports to the Database locator, giving the ability to show logos, labels, and bottles
- Registered the name BrewPalace.com, and linked into major internet search engines
- Added full support for User polls, including complete web based Poll editing and management screens
- Made a new logo
- Added a boat load of editing screens for list, links, polls, lookups, etc. You can't see these.
- Reworked the homepage some more. It still needs work.
|
| 1.5 BrewPalace Initial Release |
3/4/2001 |
- The second live release, but the first for BrewPalace.
- Coined the name BrewPalace and created the logo
- Overhauled the user interface, relying completely on CSS
- Moved the reporting code into VB
- Added thumbnail support
- Put in a usable Links section
- Added value-add services such as Recommendations and Beer of the Month
- Added the Museum section
- Enhanced the Database Locator
- Added the Java menuing system
- Changed the way security works
- Reworked the homepage
- Added broader support for states/providences/counties (including drilldown from the country reports)
|
| 1.0 Initial Release |
2/1/2001 |
- The frist live release. What does live mean anyway?
|
| 0.92 Beta |
1/24/2001 |
- Complete overhaul of the site, primarily focusing on look and
feel. Added the Menu buttons, changed the coloring scheme, and
added a few common web features.
|
| 0.91 Beta |
1/13/2001 |
- Added the ability to submit and upload pictures for labels and company logos.
|
| 0.90 Beta |
1/5/2001 |
|
Depending on the browser and the version that you are using, your experience on this site will vary.
This site works best with IE 5.0 or better or Netscape 6, and fails miserably with Netscape Navigator 4 due to its failure to
implement CSS properly.
In general, Netscape does in fact suck in comparison to IE 5.5. A few items:
- Netscape 4.x did not implement CSS properly or
completely, and thus the site doesn't look as good. In fact, it looks
like crap. Version 6 of Navigator fixed the problem, but it required some sketchy development of my style
sheet, as it doesn't handle the Cascading part so well. It actually looks pretty much identical to IE 5.5. I can't believe it.
- Some versions of Netscape 4.x do not display the bullet list graphics or the Menu graphics at all.
- Netscape is very slow compared to IE, particularly on load up and large HTML pages.
- Netscape sucks for editing - you can't sequence the form fields, which is a pain
So, if you haven't got the picture yet, Netscape sucks. This is not an opinion, this is a fact.
Stop being an Anti-Microsoft baby and use the better product. (I am an Anti-MS guy myself)
