difficulty of searching for a Zymurgy article through the AHA website

Zymurgy
1

Just got an email from the AHA about the new AHA layout, which I really like.

I was poking around looking for some recipe ideas and so I searched “Franconia” and the only hit I got was this:

https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/homebrew-recipe/prost-bock/

That page mentions that the recipe is from November/December 2011 so I went to the online Zymurgy archive to read the whole article but couldn’t find it in that issue. So I used the search function within the online Zymurgy magazine app (mydigitalpublication) and was able to find the article. Turns out it is from the November/December 2014 issue, not 2011. (Not sure who at AHA to tell this to.)

So here is a question I have. Why is the search function within the Zymurgy magazine app (mydigitalpublication) so good but the Zymurgy search on the AHA website (https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/zymurgy-magazine/) so bad? If I type “Franconia” on that Zymurgy page it comes up with zero hits, but if I search within the mydigitalpublication app I get 18 hits? And If I search the AHA website I get only that one hit for Franconia, which is how I came to that recipe in the first place?

Oh well. As long as the mydigitalpublication search doesn’t go away, I know the best place to go to search for AHA content. And there is so much good content. I love having those Zymurgy archives.

2

I find this is the case with several different beer mags I subscribe to, crappy search abilities. And sadly I hate to tell you that they have discontinued the Zymurgy app, it is no longer available in the app store and that means that it won’t be long until yours is no longer usable/helpful. Hopefully they will take your feedback into account and get their search working better on their “new” website. When you are doing research on a new technique or something it is nice to just type in “decoction mashing” and read the 10 different stories that have been written on that topic previously.

3

I did all of the above searching on my laptop, not my phone. I had heard the phone app was going away, but thank you for pointing that out.It is an important distinction and I didn’t make myself clear.

So here is an example of what I am talking about (I assume this only works for AHA members who are logged in):
https://mydigitalpublication.com/publication/?m=7884&i=228970&p=8

This is the Prost Bock article from November/December 2014 that I was talking about.

Will this platform be going away? It is still in use on the AHA website. If you use the search function built in there, you can find every word going back 20 years. I’m just wondering if the search feature on the Zymurgy page (Zymurgy Archive - American Homebrewers Association) could use he same database?