One of the most challenging aspects of the research that I have come across is how to categorize the beers so that users can easily find their favorite beer. I can’t just categorize every beer under the term of “Beer,” but at the same time I don’t want to get as complicated as wine. Wine falls into many different categories: you can classify wine by color, grape, region, year and taste. Beer can be set up to be as complicated as wine in terms of classification, but would you really want to complicate beer? Chances are you have been drinking your favorite beer for quite some time never stopping to think what category it falls under. So for the sake of keeping things simple, there are two main categories of beer: Ales and Lagers. From those two categories of beer you get different styles. For example, the Pilsners fall under the Lagers and the Stouts fall under the Ales. But how would the average consumer know that a Stout is an Ale and that a Pilsner is a Lager? The answer is research.
Of course we don’t want to discourage users from finding their favorite beer across the world because they don’t know the category their brew falls under. So our biggest challenge at BeerBin.com is to find a balance between catering to the drinkers that know their beer and to the crowd that just likes to drink their beer. The way we structure the website will determine whether we are successful or not. BeerBin.com needs to be as easy as possible to navigate and as thorough as possible for those who want to find a specific style of beer, from a specific brewery in a specific country. It is a challenge that we are more than ready to tackle.
