Show HN: an app I built to help you find great beer | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: an app I built to help you find great beer

beerque.st

43 pointsmroling29 comments

As a dedicated untappd user (500 unique beers, way more checkins), what does beerquest offer over untappd? It looks beautiful; clearly a very well put together app, but is there a compelling reason to switch? Either way, great work!

The biggest difference between the two apps is that BeerQuest is just as much about the place as it is about the beer. We don't rely on third party places data like Untappd does (Foursquare). Checkins are about checking into a place and not a beer. If you're at a place and are drinking a beer, you 'drink' a beer. We also think the journal and maps aspect of the app turned out really well. Quickly map out all of the great places near you and everywhere you been.

From a technical perspective, BeerQuest was built using Objective C instead of HTML5, so it feels like a true native app because it is.

Untappd has been native for quite awhile.

http://blog.untappd.com/post/10844733770/weve-gone-native

It's not native in the strict sense. They ported over their web app using PhoneGap: http://phonegap.com/app/untappd/

Untappd uses webviews to serve up local HTML/CSS/JS. To me, that's not native.

They stopped doing that. It's fully native now.

I don't think so. The showcase on PhoneGap was posted in July 2012. Additionally, it's easy to tell that the app isn't utilizing the Cocoa Touch UI framework. Look at how the views bounce, how the buttons "feel". Those are dead PhoneGap giveaways.

I've never heard this given as a reason to choose one app over another. Are many people fussy like that?

I've found that most people don't care about this unless you're delivering an extraordinary native experience (ala Path) A native app is great if you've got a team who can do it well. If you can't, simple PhoneGap-ish apps will suffice. It's a sunk cost in that if you get traction, you'll eventually need to switch over to native to compete: effectively a re-write.

You should embed a live demo of BeerQuest in your landing page using Kickfolio, so we can try it out before installing it.

It looks like there is quite a bit of data already for Austin users (which makes sense for SXSW), but I just tried this in San Francisco and it looks pretty empty.

Is there an existing data set out there for beer? I know there are a TON of beer review sites, but I'm guessing none have an API or a way to integrate.

If you want this to take off I'd suggest trying to get a few early power users in San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle to light a fire in the Pacific Northwest as this is definitely micro-brew country.

I can already think of a few great uses for this. A few weeks ago I had a friend come into town for San Francisco Beer Week and ALL he cared about was finding which bars carried Pliny the Younger (it's won "Best beer in the world" at least once). There was no easy way to do this.

If you find yourself in a similar predicament next year, SF Beer Week has a searchable schedule that will get you pretty close: http://www.sfbeerweek.org/schedule/#q=pliny

Even if you know where Pliny the Younger is being served, there's still no easy way to do this. They release a limited amount and it usually sells out in the first hour or so. If you go to the Russian River brewery it's a 5 hour+ wait. Crazy stuff.

Untappd already has critical mass in this space though so hard to compete...

The guys at Untappd have done a great job, but we think this is a large enough market for us too.

Had no idea competition existed for this, good to know.

I did a similar App for restaurants in another country, however, I did an Android and iOS version and found that much more people are using my Android app. The conversion rate seems to be better on Android as well.

So, I'd love to see this App on the Google Play store since I am a huge fan of great beer and the bars where to find them.

Great feedback regarding the conversion rate. We actually went down the road of building both an iOS and an Android version out of the gate but found that the Android platform seemed fragmented. With hundreds of different devices all running everything from 2.x to 4.x, it seemed too complicated initially to do it right.

Non-app related question, is there a stock service that will slice together and create the animated screen transitions you have? I am about to put together a site for an iOS app and I'm guessing that this is common enough that I can spend a little money and save a lot of time. (any link related to buying designs/layouts welcome too)

Looks great (and I live in Austin, so recognizing some of the places was cool!) but I only have an Android phone. Would love to know if you make a version for it.

Is the data for this app user-submitted, or do you pull from somewhere?

Currently, all of the data comes from the users.

Is there an IMDB of beers for apps like this to use? And wine for that matter?

I've been using http://beermenus.com for years to find awesome beers near me. They've got both web and mobile versions, which is nice.

Checkout http://www.drinkowl.com/ if you haven't already.

I love this idea and it is exactly the kind of thing I want here in London.

Except I run and Android phone :(

BeerQuest was built using Objective C so no easy port over to the Android platform. We are looking into supporting Android in the future though.

Try the recently launched on Android 'Craft Beer' app.

Does Untappd not work in London?

Untappd is lovely on Android, sounds like it's some way ahead of this app. I use it in New Zealand and it works great. Nothing else mentioned in this thread is close.

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