Yankee Brew News Archive

Brewing and the Internet

Originally Published: 03/95

By: Rob Lembree

Editor's Note: Besides being a homebrewer, Rob Lembree has been a software engineer for ten years and uses the Internet daily as part of his work. One evening, Rob was enjoying a pint of beer with Mark Evans, Vice President of DESTEK Group, Inc. (DESTEK is one of many companies providing Internet services) at Martha's Exchange Restaurant and Brewing Company in Nashua, New Hampshire. Rob commented to Mark, "Wouldn't it be nice if there was a Martha's Web Page (Internet jargon described in the article) so we can find out what kind of beer is on tap before we come down to the brew pub?" Rob and Mark discussed the possibility with owners Bill and Chris Folkas. Seeing the opportunity of being on the Internet, both Bill and Chris agreed. Two weeks later, Martha's Exchange was on-line on the Internet.

The Internet craze has begun its sweep through the East Coast brewing industry! In early January, Martha's Exchange Restaurant and Brewing Company became the first East Coast brewpub on the Internet. It is estimated that in excess of thirty million users populate the Internet, sometimes known as the "Information Highway," and it is growing at unprecedented rates.

While many users access the Internet at work, home users are jumping on board via direct-access Internet providers and indirect providers such as Prodigy, America OnLine, and CompuServe. With its presence on the Internet, Martha's Exchange hopes to educate users about the brewpub industry, and to give users a way to keep up-to-date with what's going on at the brewery, besides giving on-line viewers a sense that they are actually at the brewpub.

A new mechanism called "World Wide Web" (WWW or the "Web") gives users "point and click" access to the overwhelming resources of the Internet, and this ease of access has greatly contributed to the growth of the Internet. The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) has taken on the task of making the WEB widely available, and easy to use, by producing the Mosaic WWW Interface Program. This program is freely available for just about all computer systems, such as Windows-based PCs, Macintosh systems, and UNIX workstations, to mention a few.

With Mosaic, or its commercial sibling, NetScape, information is organized into "pages" where, in addition to viewing full-color photographs, graphics, and text, users can click on sensitive areas known as "hotspots," moving them onto other pages on the Web. Using either Mosaic or NetScape, users are presented with a starting page, sometimes known as a "home page". By clicking on their home page's hotspot, users move out onto the Web, and before they know it, they're "Surfin' the Net"!

A Web page can provide a huge amount of information. To use an old quote, "a picture is worth a thousand words," a Web page is worth a thousand links. The Martha's Exchange Web page provides viewers with a list of brews on tap with detailed brew descriptions, photos of the brewery and its beers, a schedule of live entertainment, brewpub news, direction to the brewpub, and specials. In addition, Martha's provides hotspots to other beer and brewing-related pages, such as the Brew Free or Die Homebrew Club's Web page. The Martha's Exchange home page can be found at the following URL (uniform resource locator) ://www.Destek.Net/Marthas.

Many users view the Martha's page repeatedly because the page changes daily and is a good source of brewing-related information. Soon to come are features such as a full menu, t-shirt and logo glass sales, comments and suggestion box, more photos, interactive brewing class, and a "Ask the Brewer" mailbox. The response to Martha's page has been amazing, with connections coming from dozens of countries around the world.

While Martha's is among the first brewpubs on the Internet, it's far from alone. There are a number of San Francisco Bay area pubs on the network, including the Marin Brewing Company in Lakespur, California. Brewmaster Brendan Moylan is excited about the prospects of being on the Internet. Marin's been on the Web for a little over a month, and has photos of the pub, brew information and pub merchandising.

John Martin of the Triple Rock Brewing Company in Berkeley, California has had a similar experience. On-line for about a month, Triple Rock maintains an electronic mailing list to stay in contact with visitors to its "page". Martin expects that the upcoming addition of World Wide Web capabilities will expand his audience.

In addition to brewpubs, larger scale commercial breweries have begun to show some presence on the Internet. Anheuser-Busch has made a brief ride on the Information Superhighway, but for the time being has disappeared. Miller Brewing Company is presently "constructing" two Web pages; one called Miller and another for the Miller Genuine Draft Tap Room. There is even a Zima Page. If you've seen Zima commercials on television, you have a good idea what the Web page is like.

In contrast however, Red Hook Brewing Company, in Seattle, Washington has a Web page that is more informative, providing technical description of their products. Included for each of its beers are descriptions, original gravity, bittering units, and alcohol content. Even Grolsch has a Web page, but you have to be able to read Dutch to make much of it.

The next several months should continue to show rapid brewing-related growth as more breweries and beer-related pages find their way onto the Information Superhighway. The Internet, specifically the Web Page, is another tool available to today's brewers to better market their product.