Beer, Beer, Beer.

MECHANICVILLE — A website dedicated entirely to beer? It might sound unusual, but Carmine DeCrescente III and his brother Matt have teamed up to form gotbeer.com, the number one meeting place for beer lovers in the Capital District. 

“The vision is to become a beer destination site,” Carmine said of gotbeer.com. “Anything to do with beer in the Capital Region — educational information, events, concerts — is on our site.” 

Gotbeer.com is the latest extension of the DeCrescente Distributing Company, a family owned distributing business founded by Carmine’s great-great-grandfather Angelo DeCrescente in 1948 out of a single truck. Today, the company is one of the region’s top distributors serving the 11 counties within 7,500 square miles. Four generations of DeCrescente family values guide Carmine as he enters the next phase of virtual beverage distribution online and through social media.

“Being involved with your dad and your brothers every day reinforces some of our family values,” Carmine said. “We strive for perfection in everything we do — it’s how I was brought up — so we want gotbeer.com to be the ultimate beer destination for anyone in the region.”

Gotbeer.com originally launched in 2003, but as technology evolved, the DeCrescente brothers saw a window of growth for the website. The site temporarily shut down in February and was unveiled last month along with the new GotBeer mobile app at a DeCrescente Distributing Co. launch party hosted by Jillian’s in Albany on June 9.

“We decided the site had a lot of room for opportunity so we blew it up,” Carmine said. “We custom made it according to what we thought people would like and completely redesigned it to make it more up to date and more of a beer destination.”

The new design includes full social media capabilities such as a live Twitter feed, Facebook connection and a community photo gallery featuring community snapshots of fans from local events, bars and concerts. 

“One of the biggest things we noticed was that people like the photos and people wanted to see themselves,” Carmine said. “We post photos from events and people can also submit their own photographs.”

Most of the site’s social photos come from the featured events promoted on gotbeer.com’s home page. 

“We post events, some that we’re sponsors of like Country Fest and concerts at the Times Union Center,” Carmine said. “It’s anything where beer is being sold because we want the site to become a place where people can come find anything to do with beer —  samplings, brewery tastings, tips for keeping your beer at top quality or for throwing a party, contests and other events.”

Another highlight is the beer finder, which lets visitors search for their favorite brew by brand or beer type and narrow the results geographically within up to a 50 miles radius from a given zip code. The finder also allows searchers to specify further depending on whether they’re looking for to get their beer in a carry-out package or as a draught at a bar or restaurant. 

 Although the site is a branch of DeCrescente Distributing Co., Carmine said the sole purpose of gotbeer.com is not to earn a major profit.

“I’d like to see it get better and maybe someday people will want to advertise on our site,” Carmine said of the site’s future. “We didn’t start it to make money; it’s more to generate excitement and traffic and educate people about beer and hopefully that will ultimately help us sell more beer.”  

www.gotbeer.com

SKL