The Beer Cellar is a project by a beer enthusiast who was unsatisified with existing cellaring options. With an emphasis on tracking your personal consumption habits and tasting notes, along with features aimed at those interested in trading, it provides a useful tool for all beer fans, from the mild hobbyist to the seasoned collector. And if you fall into the former camp, don't be surprised if you find yourself tempted to deepen your cellar after getting into the habit of tracking your activities—this is certainly what happened in the case of the author!
The author is a web developer located in the Bay Area. I began collecting beer in earnest in early 2012, and quickly realized that I'd need a way to track my ever growing collection. In particular, I wanted a tool that would help me be vigilant with my tasting notes and consumption records—I'm sure I'm not the only beer drinker who has neglected to keep proper notes for every delicious (or, as is sometimes the case, not so delicious) bottle opened. Thus, The Beer Cellar was born.
The technology powering The Beer Cellar consists of a custom application built using CakePHP on a LEMP stack along with Elasticsearch. Everything is hosted on Linode. On the layout side, Twitter's Bootstrap provides for much of the site structure, and most icons were licensed from The Iconfactory. Special thanks is also due to Sara Gray for the original Beer Cellar logo, versions of which are utilized in various ways on the site and on social media. In addition, the initial database of beers, breweries, and styles was provided by the Open Beer Database—though that dataset has since grown substantially thanks to the efforts of the site's users.
This site is under active development, and I'm always open to new feature requests, suggestions, and feedback. If you'd like to get in touch, feel free to send any comments to josh@cellar.beer or hit me up on Twitter at @CellarDotBeer. The blog is also a good place to keep up on site updates.