That’s a pop culture reference that doesn’t have anything to do with anything we’re doing, but I was told to open with a pop culture reference, so it was either that or piling onto some new meme bandwagon.
So you may or may not notice in the coming days that you’re getting an update to Craft Check. You may or may not be asking yourself what’s different. We may or may be about to tell you right now.
This update fixes the “receive ALL the notifications!” issue some of you have been having. Now there are no notifications. Trust us: it’s an improvement.
Existing beta users should find their app has updated automatically. If your app doesn’t automatically update, or if you’d like to join the Android beta, you can download it manually at
CraftCheckApp.com/Android or https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.craftcheckapp.craftcheck#_=_
There’s something often said about good intentions. I’m not sure what it is, because our intentions tend to barely graze “chaotic neutral” on the best of days, but suffice to say that sometimes what you get isn’t exactly what you’d planned.
In our case, what we’d planned for Craft Check was monthly updates as we moved into the next quarter’s development cycle, culminating in a big, splashy release on Android, all of which netted us dozens of awards and a fleet of Ferraris apiece. What we got instead was over a year without updates of any kind (and zero Ferraris.) Those two outcomes are kind of different, regardless of how good our intentions were.
Now I wish we had a better explanation other than “we got busy on some other things” but the reality is that Rudy and I both simply got busy with some other things. Craft Check is a side project for both of us, and in the pursuit of continuing to stave off the haunting specter of homelessness, we both had to play a little life triage and prioritize some day-job-esque things. Unfortunately that means putting off serious work on Craft Check until we were both back to baseline.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that two months ago, we both decided that enough was enough, and we needed to get Craft Check back on track. The best news is that today we released a very new, very updated, and very free Craft Check 2.0!
Craft Check 2.0 is a culmination of a number of updates, primarily focused around technical and user interface improvements, plus a few highly-requested features.
Los Angeles, CA - October 23, 2015 - Craft Check, the world’s most popular craft beer verification app, released version 2.0 of the app to the iOS App Store, dropping the price to free while adding new features to ensure faster database updates, more efficient operation, non-craft beer ownership information, and a quicker answer to the question “Is this a real craft beer, or just a crafty imitation from a multinational beverage conglomerate?”
The biggest change is obviously the price - starting with version 2.0, Craft Check is now 100% free.
“We love supporting genuine craft breweries, and think it’s important to distinguish between what’s real craft beer and what’s multinational corporate beverage conglomerates marketing themselves as small craft breweries.” said Craft Check co-creator Barrett Garese. “So making Craft Check free lets every beer fan easily distinguish between what’s genuinely craft beer and what’s just a crafty imitation.”
Beyond making the app free, Craft Check 2.0 also boasts a number of new changes under the hood.
One of the biggest changes to the app is background database updates. Background updates allow each install to periodically sync with Craft Check’s database, and download any changes or additions. The instant news breaks - such as a craft brewery being bought by a larger multinational corporate beverage conglomerate - every Craft Check install will have access to the updated information so users can get the correct results. Background updates also allow Craft Check to add new breweries to the database as soon as they’re up and running, ensuring that as long as your phone has an internet connection, Craft Check will always be up to date.
Another prominent change in Craft Check 2.0 - one often requested from users - is ownership information for non craft beers. When users scan or search for a non craft beer, Craft Check 2.0 will now show additional information detailing which corporate beverage conglomerate owns or makes the beer.
Craft Check has also revamped its User Interface, streamlining the experience and ensuring that finding answers is quicker and easier than ever.
“I’m a big efficiency guy,” said Garese, “so streamlining it down to as few steps as possible was always a goal. Now it’s even easier to open Craft Check, answer your question, and get back to buying and enjoying your beer.”
Craft Check 2.0 also introduces better sharing options, ensuring users can connect and interact with the genuine craft breweries they love, on their social media platform of choice. Whenever available, Craft Check 2.0 will pull up social media account information to let users tag and highlight genuine craft breweries in their posts.
“Craft Check 2.0 is a huge step for us,” said Garese, “and it takes Craft Check from good to great. More importantly it lays the groundwork for where we want to go from here. We’ve got a lot of interesting ideas around continuing to inform consumers, cut through marketing confusion, enable discovery and experimentation of new beers, and connect our users with the craft breweries they love.”
Craft Check version 2.0 is available today in the iOS App store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/craft-check/id775598291
ABOUT CRAFT CHECK
Craft Check was created by Rudy Jahchan and Barrett Garese, and is the world’s most popular craft beer verification app. First released in 2014, Craft Check has since been featured in Fortune Magazine, NPR, Fast Company, Wired, Parade, and nearly a hundred beer, mobile app, and cool hunting blogs. Craft Check uses the Brewers Association’s definition of “American craft brewer” to help you distinguish the real craft breweries from the macrobrewed impostors - either by scanning the barcode or by searching the brewery name. The Brewers Association is a 501©(6) not-for-profit trade association whose purpose is to promote and protect American craft brewers, their beers and the community of brewing enthusiasts.
Contact:
Barrett Garese
[email protected]
www.craftcheckapp.com
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Rudy continues to stifle my versioning creativity, refusing to consider anything beyond “sequential numbers” for our release names. So this month we’re “proud” to announce Craft Check v1.0.3 (but not as proud as we would have been to announce Craft Check v1.0.MonkeysDoingPeopleThings.)
So you may have noticed that with our last release, there were certain things that were - and hang on here because I’m about to get pretty technical - “broken.” For those new to the tech world, “broken” is a term that denotes “functioning at less than optimal capability.” In this case, certain types of UPC codes - ironically, the kind that are most commonly used on MillerCoors products - scanned improperly about 20-30% of the time, which is just enough to ensure tracking them down is a major pain in the ass.
So we didn’t. We’ve got things to do here, people.
Instead of spending weeks on end trying to figure out why this thing happened sometimes but not always, we just replaced the scanning stack and now things work the way they should have the entire time. Easy, peasy, lemon squee - no. Stop fucking putting lemons in my beer. Limes are okay in certain circumstances. Oranges are never okay - it’s beer, not a fruit salad.
I guess what I’m trying to say is: when life gives you lemons (or oranges), keep them out my beer.
To cater to this growing group of craft obsessives, Barrett Garese and Rudy Jahchan have launched Craft Check, a 99-cent mobile app with a simple (to some, perhaps noble) purpose: to let you know whether that beer you’re considering is indeed a true craft. Garese, a former digital entertainment executive turned entrepreneur, got the idea while standing in his local beer store in L.A., where he found himself wondering “which beers were craft and which were just marketed as craft.” He tells Fortune he was surprised he couldn’t easily find an app for such a question. (Information about a brewer’s corporate ownership is available online but can often require a bit of hunting.) Necessity being the mother of invention, he and Jahchan built one, and it hit the app store in late December last year.
Fortune interviewed us about Craft Check!
As the Brewers Association has revised their definition of “Craft Brewery” we’ll be revising our database to reflect those changes. It’ll take a little bit to make sure we get it as right as possible, but be on the lookout for an update in the next couple weeks.
