Welcome to The Beer Cellar v2.0!

You'll notice that things look a bit different, but there should also be a good deal that's familiar. The aesthetic has received a much needed overhaul, existing features have been improved, and a number of new features accompany this release. Details are provided below, but first, a quick disclaimer.

This is a big release, and there might be bugs, so let me know if you have any problems! While I've had a number of beta testers checking out the preview version of the site over the last few weeks, this release touches a lot of code and there could be edge cases that no one discovered during testing. If you have any issues, please hit me up on Twitter or via email and I'll look into it ASAP. I'm releasing on a Monday night to ensure I'm available throughout the week to deal with any issues that are reported.

Also, please log out then log back in to ensure all new site features are properly enabled.

With that said, below is some information on what's changed, what's improved, and what's new for The Beer Cellar!

What's Changed?

• The site has received a visual overhaul, with a new color palette and some new design cues here and there. However, the general user experience remains very intuitive, and basic cellar management tasks should be familiar to existing users.
• Cellar management is now entirely asynchronous, meaning no more full page reloads are required when adding or editing cellar entries. As a result, quick cellar updates will be quicker and bulk management tasks can be accomplished much faster than before. This was a big part of the new release, and is by far the most prominent change.
• The application has been refactored almost from the ground up, which means new features and improvements will be much easier to add. I have a number of additional improvements already planned, which I'll detail in a later post.

What's Improved?

•  Thanks to a new Elasticsearch backend, beer and brewery searching is now much improved! Non-exact queries will provide correct results much more frequently, and there should be far fewer duplicate entries created as a result.
• On a related note, the CSV import now leverages the Elasticsearch index for initial matching and fixing unmatched entries, meaning the the matching process can now be completed in a fraction of the time. This won't affect existing users much, but new users should have a much easier time importing existing data into the site.
• Despite the addition of new features, cellar load times should be slightly improved over the previous release, with bigger cellars seeing the biggest improvements thanks to low-level application adjustments.

What's New?

• A number of new account settings are available, including default sort order (beer or brewery), the ability to disable the In Fridge column, and note and tasting note public visibility.
• User messaging! Any user that has the feature enabled (all users are opted-in by default) can be messaged in order to facilitate trades, discuss beer, or generally shoot the shit. If you'd like to disable this feature, do so in the My Account area.
• A new Drink By field is now available on all cellar entries, and a corresponding indicator will be displayed on all entries that have this field populated. You can control the public visibility of this indicator in the My Account area.

That covers the big items, though there are a number of smaller improvements sprinkled around the site that are not covered here. I have a lot of improvements planned for the coming months, and I expect far less downtime between releases given the improved code-base.

I'll detail those planned improvements in a later post, but in the meantime, enjoy the new site! And, as always, if you have any bug reports, usability issues, or feature requests, please let me know at @BeerCellarMe or via email at josh@beercellar.me.