A quick announcement: beer styles have been updated to match the latest at Beer Advocate. It was thankfully a one-to-one mapping, plus a few new styles have been added (Milkshake IPA, Grisette, and Festbier, just to name a few).

Development has tapered off for now but things are stable and working well, and I'll make sure they continue to do so. Cheers!

You should not infer anything from a lack of blogging activity, as we're still here, and with new updates to boot.

First up is the ability to search your Consumed History by beer and brewery name, a long-overdue feature that will let you quickly find consumed entries and any associated tasting notes. The need for this feature was apparent as I struggled to look up past beers at a recent bottle share, which previously required a lot of scrolling and paginating. This feature is available on both the desktop and mobile versions of the site.

Next, the ability to sort by Bottle Date has been added to the mobile site. I often want a quick way to glance at my oldest bottles when on the go, and this new filter option does the trick, sorting from oldest to freshest. You can find it in the Filters pane when using the site on your mobile device.

More improvements to come as I have the time, and in the meantime, santé!

Long time no blog! Yes, I'm still here, despite an extended period of radio silence (though I've been posting the occasional update on the @CellarDotBeer account). I did manage to get some development and cleanup work done recently, however, which I'll detail below.

First up, it's been far too long since I went through and made sure the available beer styles were matched up with what's on BeerAdvocate. As of now, the styles database has been updated to match the offerings seen at the aforelinked page. Most changes were just name updates for existing styles, but a few styles have been removed as more specific categories now exist.

I moved all beers affected by these style removals into their appropriate categories, but it's possible some existing beers may have an incorrect style attached thanks to wording updates in BA's style guide. If you notice that a beer doesn't have a style or is styled incorrectly, you can add one or report the error via the "Beer" info pane in the extended details section for an entry (note: this view is only available on the desktop version of the site). For more details on available community database management and reporting capabilities, check out this blog post on the topic.

And secondly, I've got a minor mobile update in place: when sorting/filtering beer in your cellar, relevant bottle totals are now displayed in the sort header. E.g., if filtering to see only beer from Cigar City Brewing, you'll now see "Cigar City Brewing (XX)" in the header, where "XX" is the number of their bottles you currently have. These totals are also displayed for other filter modes such as Style, Location, and In Fridge.

As always, I have more development planned, but in the meantime, thanks to everyone for their continued contributions to the site. New beer and brewery entries are rolling in every day from users, and as a result our database is healthy and up-to-date. This site wouldn't work without you!

It's been almost 5 years since I launched The Beer Cellar, and I'm looking forward to many more years of collecting, tasting, and aging (at least as far as the bottles are concerned). We've passed a few major milestones lately, and I wanted to take a moment to share them.

• We recently surpassed 4,000 users! Each new user brings more beer and brewery entries and helps keep the data ecosystem healthy.
• On that note, we now have over 4,200 breweries and more than 31,000 beers in the database. Impressive numbers, and completely user driven!
• Across all users, over 310,000 cellared beers are represented. That's roughly 75 beers per user.
• Additionally, over 85,000 beers have been consumed since the site's inception.

I'm planning many more feature additions for the cellar, but I'm really happy with the current state of the site and I'm glad so many find it helpful. Thanks for using the site, for the always helpful feedback and feature suggestions, and for keeping this crazy craft hobby alive. Santé!

I thought I'd take a break from development news to talk to my fellow Beer Cellarers (that's totally a word, right?). I recently held a tasting party and went through most of my Firestone Walker Brewing collection (pictures below), and that got me wondering what other folks do when it comes to making progress through their collections.

After closing in on 400 total bottles late last year, I slowed down my intake pace and set out to focus on making a dent in my cellar—all in the name of freeing up space for future bottles, of course. Tasting parties like this one have been a nice way to try a lot of beer, bring friends into that enjoyment, and to ensure I get to bottles that otherwise might age out.

So how do you keep up with your cellar? Does a weekly bottle or three do the trick, or do you need to take more drastic measures (like me)? Feel free to tweet me at @CellarDotBeer, and I'll rewteet any fun stories that come in. And in the meantime, santé!