I am very pleased to announce the limited release of my latest application The Beer Stash (or just Beer Stash for short). I do have big plans for this site down the line but I decided to do the Lean thing and get something out asap and have people start using it. In its current form, it does a a few things:

1. It is integrated with Untappd to leverage their beer and brewery database (thanks, guys!)

2. You can search Untappd’s beer database.

3. Create as many stashes as you want to add beer to! (Don’t know if it will always be unlimited, but for now it is).

4. Link publicly to your stash of choice!

This is about as long as my release announcement is going to be. Below are screen shots of the development process.

With any new development project, the framework is setup.

And we make sure we get something to the browser.

Since my idea relies heavily on Untappd’s search, I decided that would be the best starting point. No reason to continue if, for whatever reason, that didn’t work.

Next logical step? Let’s add beers to something!

With functionality checking out, I decided to start on some design work. I tend to work better when the site looks like a fancy site and not just plain text. WARNING I AM NOT A DESIGNER NOR DO I TRY TO BE as I’m sure you will notice using the app.

Working on the layout - notice the filler information on top. Got a basic search look and feel going.

My original Lean idea was to only have one default list that everything gets added to at first, then allow for more. For various reason, I decided it would be better to allow all users to start creating stashes from now.

Starting to get fancy!

And fancier still. More astute readers will notice the name “The Beer Stash.” I tried rebranding the site when I bought the domain thebeerstash.com, but really didn’t like how it looked, so I reverted.

Making sure that the ajax was all hooked up properly for adding beers.

Rendering all of a user’s beer stashes.

Consider this more of a prototype. I wanted to see what kind of usage it got. I want people to start adding beers to their stashes. I want people to use it. I am excited for this because I see a huge potential in this that will keep me interested in a very long time. I also like the idea of blogging updates (as previous project updates will show) so maybe I’ll be blogging a lot more.