So the usual question I get asked by friend is 'what's your favourite beer?' I usually reply 'I have several'! So what is your favourite beer website? As usual this depends on what specifically you are looking for.
Keeping in mind that this information is based on actual user data generated on global websites, none of this is my opinion.
The Top 10 Beer Websites for August 2011
1 Beer Advocate
2 Ratebeer
3 Beer in the Evening
4 Home Brew Forums
5 Oktoberfest
6 Kirin
7 Murphy's
8 Sapporo
9 Guinness
10 McMenamins Breweries
We can view the top 4 websites as the two key beer websites for information on beer, breweries, ratings and forums. The #5 website is due to it being September when Octoberfest is held in Munich. Germany had 54% of users viewing the site with United States being 8% of viewers of the site.
Kirin, Murphys, Sapporo and Guinness are all large brewery websites with distribution and brand marketing to promote people going to their websites. The real surprise is #10 McMenamins Brew Pub in Portland Oregon.
Top 10 Craft Beer Websites
1 Beer Advocate
2 Ratebeer
3 Beer in the Evening
4 Home Brew Forums
5 Oktoberfest
6 Northern Brewer
7 Dogfish Head Craft Brewery
8 McMenamins Breweries
9 New Belgium Brewing Co
10 Stone Brewing Company
The large difference we can see with this list with the Macro brewers taken out is that we have Northern Brewer who's second largest audience is actually located in Pakistan 6% of visitors. Dogfish Head has 57% of visitors from the United States with 11% from India. Also included in the August top 10 are New Belgium from Colorado and Stone Brewing in Escondido outside of San Diego.
What Trends can we see from the Data?
Without doubt there is an emergence of countries such as India/Pakistan and Philippines who are viewing craft beer websites and are the largest proportion of secondary visitors to many US based websites. U.S. beer is starting to gain popularity around the world as brewers start to distribute to wider borders such as Asia and the sub-continent.
Article comments
1 - Mike Burns
You'll have to check out our website BeerCraving.com. Part of the next generation of beer websites.