A Few New Things…

A couple quick website updates and a comment on the “new” homebrew-restricting OLCC’ law should do it for today.

Eugene Beer Directory 
When I posted my Eugene Beer Directory a few weeks ago, Bill and Jack were quick to point out that the Beer Mapping Project had most of the information I was looking for.

Now, Beer Mapping is a great tool, but it doesn’t have everything I want, and the information it does have takes a few mouse clicks and page loads to get at. Not knocking their design or anything; it is perfect for what they are trying to accomplish, but I want something that is more take-out menu than interactive map. And I think I am getting closer.

If you take a look at the Directory (tab at the top of the page), it now has much more information that when I started, including hours and prices. Please excuse the general ugliness; I am working on a style sheet that will display correctly in IE7, IE8, Firefox and Chrome, but until it is finished, you get drab gray boxes.

Bottleshops and an Event Calendar are next on my list of things to add. I will also probably embed a Beer Mapping Project map at some point. I fiddled around with their WordPress widget a little, but I think I will end up using their API directly instead.

Beer Test
Looking back even further (March), I coded up a simple Beer Test; a starting point for an eventual Android App. At launch, it provided a BJCP style and asked you to correctly choose the ABV, IBU or SRM range from a list of 5 possible answers.

For phase two, I was going to include correctly matching BJCP aroma, appearance, flavor, mouthfeel, overall impression, comments and ingredients descriptions. This proved to be more of a challenge than I anticipated. Many of the descriptions reference the style within them, either directly (Export Stout), or indirectly (Stouts). This made about half of the questions dead giveaways. I tried to solve the problem programmatically, scanning the description as it was chosen and masking all occurrences of the style name. This worked for direct references, but not indirect ones. Next, I tried a static black list, but it filtered the descriptions too much; removing the word Stout from the comments description of a Robust Porter and the like. After several attempts, I arrived at the conclusion that I am just going to have to create a new table of modified  BJCP descriptions, edited on a case by case basis.

In the mean time, I tied the Beer Test into the database used for my Beer App. Beer and brewery matching questions are now part of the rotation. I have set up the code that chooses beers to pick only those that are available year-round and have unique names, so there is no chance you will be given ”Summer Ale” and five breweries that all produce a beer under that name. I’ll warn that the beer matching is still far from perfect. I still need to put some filtering in place to keep obvious things like “Full Sail Amber” out of the list.

By tapping into the Beer App database, I will be able to expand the possible questions, like match a brewery to the correct state or pick which beer is a winter seasonal. I will also be changing the test from its current open format to a finite length, providing a score at the end. Until then, the current test can be accessed from the Beer Test tab at the top of the page. I will mention that my host is pretty laggy today, so it may take a couple seconds to load a new question after pressing the “play again” button.

OLCC’s “New” Law

ORS 471.403
“No person shall brew, ferment, distill, blend or rectify any alcoholic liquor unless licensed so to do by the Oregon Liquor Control Commission. However, the Liquor Control Act does not apply to the making or keeping of naturally fermented wines and fruit juices or beer in the home, for home consumption and not for sale.”

This law was reinterpreted this week to mean that homebrew can only be consumed at the site it was crafted; effectively making everything from homebrew competitions to taking a beer you made to your buddy’s house illegal. While this probably isn’t going to hinder any summer cookouts, it does stop dead any organized competitions that want to keep things legit. It also creates a problem for homebrew clubs that meet at breweries and don’t want to put their hosts in the OLCC crosshairs.

Already the Oregon State Fair has cancelled this year’s beer and wine competitions and the Oregon Brew Crew has posted a notice not to bring homebrew to the next club meeting at Widmer. I am going to try to get a hold of someone from the Cascade Brewers Society to see if they plan to issue a similar restriction at their monthly Eugene City Brewery meetings.

Both Lisa and Jeff already have discussions going about this topic, so if you have something to add, I would suggest doing it in one of these two posts:
Lisa Morrison – Oregon Homebrew Threatened
Beervana – OLCC Blowback Escalates

Lisa has links for contacting state representatives, senators and the OLCC. And at the end of Jeff’s post, you can find the Facebook group set up to protest the “new” law.

Well, as usual, this turned out much longer than I had originally intended. I need to learn to stop using the word “quick” in the opening sentence.

Cheers!
Kevin