Andy Chase

I came across Coastr this evening. It's another socialnetworkingfolksonomyweb2point0ohmygodtaggingissooverated web site centered around beer and places to drink it. It appears to be built using Ruby on Rails or one of its many imitators, and I've killed a bunch of time there tonight.

I find the simple metrics provided by Coastr much easier to absorb, and therefore ultimately more meaningful, than the multiple score, hundredth-decimal figures on sites like Beer Advocate. I haven't made up my mind about the reviews yet - there are a lot of unhelpful

"yeah this beer is great"

reviews, but refreshingly few armchair beersnob^* offerings like

"Pours with medium density head, not quite thick enough to float a bottlecap on. Head dissipates in 13.754 seconds, leaving nice lace on the glass. Color is appromately 16.523 on the Lovibond scale, with a rich mahogany hue (with a slight hawaiian koa cast). Smell is roasted barley with hints of oak. Taste is smokey with hints of fruitiness on the finish and blah blah blah notes of blah blah blah hints of blah blah blah medium body blah"

reviews. If enough people start posting something in between those two extremes, this could become an interesting resource.

Tagged:

• beer
• folksonomy
• coastr

^* I say this with the utmost affection, as a long-time fellow armchair beersnob.