Beergeeks - For the love of Beer
In October 1998, my homebrewing buddy Ken Hahn convinced me to buy the domain name Beergeeks.com. We launched a simple site in December 1998, and at the time it hosted homebrewing information and all of our homebrew recipes.
I gobbled up a few other related domain names, notably Foodgeeks.com and Winegeeks.com, and gradually published sites on those domains over the years. But Beergeeks was a short-lived venture; we ran the site for a few years, but never really found the time nor energy to push the site forward. The original Beergeeks.com was retired in early 2002.
In the summer of 2009, I was introduced to Lucy Burningham by mutual friends. Lucy has a captivating personality, and to top it off, she’s written numerous beer articles for many a publication. Even the New York Times. So, as our conversation flowed over macchiatos at The Red E, I mentioned the Beergeeks.com domain that I had lying stagnant, and said I’d boot up the site if I could find the time. She said without hesitation, “Let’s do it”, and by the look in her eye I knew we just had to do it.
For the love of beer, Lucy and I started working on the site in June 2010, each spent about 100 hours getting it ready, and today we’re proud to announce that the new Beergeeks is live! Woo! And I can’t forget a special shout-out to Crystal Beasley, who created the look and feel for all of the *geeks sites.
On Beergeeks you’ll be able to rate and review beers, find information about breweries and beer terminology, and you’ll be able to earn badges to represent all of your hard work. You can friend others on the site and follow their progress and reviews through activity streams and feeds.
We’re trying a bit of a different approach than normal by placing more power in the Beergeeks members’ hands. Any member who is logged-in to the website will be able to add and edit any beer or brewery on the site.
Beergeeks features a rudimentary mobile site which will allow you to quickly look up as well as rate and review beers. We’ll gradually open up our data, time permitting, and plan to make all of our data available via an API.
Give us a shout and let us know what you love, what you hate, or what you can’t live without. Hit us with your feedback and ideas at Get Satisfaction, follow us on Twitter or fan us on Facebook.
And don’t forget to friend me up on Beergeeks while you’re at it :)
