

Want to learn about that beer in your hand? Send an SMS to learn more. - dougiebuckets
http://beertext.us/

======
artmageddon
I just tried it and it's pretty neat. How large is the database of beers?

Also, is it possible to do a character count on the message and insert page
numbers on individual text messages? For instance, when I tried "Guinness", I
received 9 text messages. I know there's no way to control in which order the
recipient gets the messages, but sometimes there's a little bit of mental work
scroll back & forth through various out-of-order texts and try to read them in
the correct order. Something like (1/3), (2/3), (3/3). I realize that only
adds to the payload, so maybe it should only be done for the really long ones?

Just my 2 cents. Very cool! I will definitely tell others about this.

~~~
bluetidepro
It looks like they get the info from <http://www.brewerydb.com/developers>?

~~~
dougiebuckets
yup. that's the case. it was our first time playing around w/ it. really nice
api! i'd encourage you all to check it out ;)

------
abrichr
Not sure if you have this or not, but I think that a useful piece of
information you could include is the number of calories. In fact, that alone
would be a good service for any type of food.

Also, is there some sort of revenue generation happening here?

~~~
freiheit
It's rare to find actual Calorie information for a beer (except mass-produced
"light" beers).

You can estimate it at about 30 Calories (kcal) per % ABV in a 12 oz beer.
About 40 for a 16 oz (american pint), 50 for an imperial pint.

Basically, yeast converts a fairly predictable percentage (70%-80%) of the
sugars into alcohol, so the Calorie difference between two different styles at
the same ABV will tend to be small because they'll both have similar amounts
of residual non-fermented sugar. (well, sours will often have a lot less
residual sugar and particularly strong beers are likely to have more, so those
estimates get further off for those).

Some beers do print the Original Gravity or Plato, and given that and either
the final gravity/plato or the ABV you could calculate the amount of residual
sugar for a much more precise answer.

------
sciurus
If you'd like to search for breweries instead of beers, the developers behind
BreweryDB offer that service. To use it, send a zip code as a Jabber IM to
brewerymap@tropo.im or as a text message to 919-701-BREW (2739)

The source is at <https://github.com/PintLabs/BreweryMap-Tropo>

(Disclaimer: I work for Voxeo)

------
dougiebuckets
hi everyone - myself and another dev built this at a Twilio hackathon over the
weekend. would love to get some feedback/suggestions.

~~~
simba-hiiipower
like the concept; but i just tried it out with a couple beers and no hits as
of about 10mins later..

admittedly, i threw it some pretty difficult ones: eichhof (swiss), taybeh
(palestinian), but I just tried heineken and still no luck.. any thoughts?

~~~
dougiebuckets
sorry, we ran out of requests to the brewerydb api. just upgraded -- should be
all set now! give it another whirl ;)

~~~
simba-hiiipower
cool, so it’s sort of working now, but sporadically (some requests go through,
others seemingly don’t).

however, of those that do, i’m experiencing a bit of a bug with foreign beers.
if i enter the name of a lesser-known foreign beer with multiple variations i
get a response requesting clarification/the specific type of that beer (as
expected); but, it appears to be in the language of that country’s beer..

for example i entered _erdinger_ (a german beer) and got the response:
_privatbraueri erdinger weissbr?u, erdinger weizen,_ (that’s the exact text, i
think it was also cut-off for some reason). when i replied _erdinger weizen_ i
got a full reply with name/description/ABV in english.

tried the same with a belgian beer and it happened with that one as well.

~~~
dougiebuckets
very interesting--appreciate the info. we're aggregating all of this feedback
and will update asap. when you're not receiving responses, most of the time
it's b/c the db doesn't have the beer (and we're doing a really poor job of
handling this at the moment). don't worry though, we'll get it right soon.
thanks again!

------
prsutherland
Jack D'or got me over 40 text messages. A bit of overkill I'd say.

~~~
artmageddon
40? Wow - I thought the one for Guinness was rather excessive at 9. They may
wanna cull it some, or allow keywords to be added that can just get specific
information(i.e. +ABV) or whatever.

~~~
simba-hiiipower
yeah, it would be ideal if it could send just some of the highlights (beer
type, abv, brewery, country of origin, year first brewed) formatted in just
one text.

maybe adding an alternate command, something like "<beer name> details", for
the full description instead would be nice

~~~
dougiebuckets
thanks everyone, i totally agree. i wish we could use a db for the app that
limited the length of descriptions. right now we're using brewerydb, and i
agree, some of the descriptions are excessive as you mention

------
xoe26
Doesn't work internationally (UK) it seems.

------
swaraj
didn't work for 2 beers i tried: <http://imgur.com/GTMoG>

~~~
dougiebuckets
it doesn't look like drakes heffe is in the db unfortunately. concerning
pacifico, it's in the db but it's not populated with any data.
<http://www.brewerydb.com/beer/xfQQiO>

thanks for sharing this!

