Show HN: Find a whisky similar to your favourite | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Find a whisky similar to your favourite

whiskylike.com

7 pointsboomahora9 comments

Interesting idea, but the current dataset seems to be heavily biased towards scotch. It would be neat to seem some bourbon and rye comparisons as well.

You're right, it is completely biased towards scotch. I started with what I knew, but I am currently working on adding bourbon, rye and other whiskies outside of Scotland. Still lots of work to do on it.

Makes sense. How do you go about determining if one whiskey is similar to another? Are you going off of experience or attempting to crowd source the data?

There are a couple of reasons I would use something like your service.

1. I want a cheaper alternative to something I really like. For example, I really enjoy Eagle Rare, but it would be nice to have something at a lower price point for making cocktails.

2. I want a more readily available alternative to something I really like. Going back to the Eagle Rare example, occasionally it is difficult to find. In this case, I would be willing to pay a little more to have something else that is similar.

At the moment, the algorithm utilizes various tasting notes and other characteristics (price, etc) to determine what is the closest fit. While this has much room to improve, the general idea is there. I would like to get it to a point where users can create their own profiles with their personal ratings and then use that data to make the suggestions more accurate.

This is exactly what I was thinking, I was trying to avoid suggestions that end up being a $10k bottle of whisky, I wanted them to be as similar as possible, without needing to ask the user too many questions.

Once I start getting into the big crowdsourced data sets is when this will get really interesting to see the connections between preferences.

Sounds like I need to try this Eagle Rare! I'm sure you've tried some of these already, but my personal recommendations are Lagavulin, Glengoyne and Edradour.

That looks great and the interface is easy enough that I would like to show it to my dad who is a whisky enthusiast (and does not speak a word of English).

As a follow up to that if you do end up adding features, try to keep the simplicity of it because it is refreshing.

Thanks! I'm keen to hear your dad's feedback.

Simplicity will always be the main focus, I want to make this as easy as possible to not overwhelm users.

No hoops to jump through, just whisky!

God I love whisky. That is an interesting idea. Need to try.

What's stopping you? No signup needed, you just need to type in a whisky name. I love getting feedback :)

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