I recently posted about developing a hop network using data from the Beer Maverick site. As I slowly add data the network graph can be refreshed and tweaked; eventually I’ll land on a combination of styles, colors, and sizes that optimize the graph for interactive exploration. For the latest rendition, we’re up to 10 hops, mostly familiar ones for American IPA and pale ale drinkers. This is still just a small representation of the eventual graph but it does provide an idea for where I’m headed with the display.
Color-coding the labels provides a quick visual cue for whether a node is a hop (green labels) or an aroma/flavor element (blue). The labels are also sized based on the number of connections between a node and the aroma element, which makes sense for the aroma elements. I’m not sure this is the best way to represent the hop sizes, so work in progress on that one.
You can still sense the relative positioning of each hop to every element; I will possibly adjust the default settings as more hops are added to the graph data so the graph remains easily readable. At some point we’ll have tooo many labels; this is where interactive zooming can be highly effective (e.g.- labels are only displayed at a certain zoom level).
That’s it for now; thanks for reading!