Key takeaways
- Current hours and a fresh tap list are the whole trust test. A stale page reads as a closed business.
- Answer the taproom visit decision in one screen: address, parking, food, patio, families, and dogs.
- Show what is pouring now, and keep the beer archive on its own page so the live list never lies.
- Give wholesale a real page, so the bottle shops and restaurants deciding to carry you can reach you.
- Selling beer online in BC has real rules; many breweries keep it simple with merch and gift cards.
On this page
What should a brewery website include? The short answer
A brewery website needs seven things: current hours and open status, a live tap list, the full taproom visit decision, events and release nights, a where-to-find-us page for wholesale, merch or gift cards, and real photos of the actual room. Built mobile-first and kept current, that set turns a thirsty search into a walk through the door.
Someone decides where to drink from a phone, often standing in a parking lot or scrolling from a hotel. They check whether you are open, what is pouring, and whether the room looks worth the drive, all in about ten seconds. The website is not a brochure. It is the front counter of the taproom, answering the question the phone would answer if anyone had time to pick it up.
This holds for a Nelson brewery, a Rossland cidery, a Trail taproom, or a small distillery three provinces over. The style changes; the job does not. A visitor is running a quiet risk test before spending an evening and a tank of gas, and the site either lowers that risk or hands it to the brewery down the road.
- Current hours and open status, front and centre, so a stale page never reads as a closed taproom.
- A tap list that shows what is pouring now, easy enough to update the day a keg blows.
- The taproom visit decision answered in one screen: address, parking, food, patio, families, and dogs.
- Events and release nights with real dates and a plain way to find out what is next.
- A where-to-find-us page for the liquor stores, restaurants, and bars that carry your beer.
- Merch, gift cards, and canned sales handled honestly, within current BC rules, if you sell online at all.
- Real photos of the actual room, plus tour, tasting, and accessibility details that lower the risk of the drive.
Four visitors, one website
A taproom site serves four very different people at once, and each judges it differently. Build for all four and the site earns its keep through every season, not just patio weather.
- The Friday-night local
- Already knows you. Taps a saved link to check if you are open, what is on tap, and whether the kitchen or a food truck is there tonight. Every stale detail costs you a table.
- The road-trip traveller
- Searches "brewery near me" or "Nelson taproom" from a highway stop or hotel. Compares on photos, hours, patio, and food before driving over. Your website closes what your map listing starts.
- The out-of-town buyer
- A bottle shop, restaurant, or bar deciding whether to carry you. Wants your beers, your wholesale contact, and proof you are a real operation, not a hobby.
- The event planner
- Looking for a private tasting, a group booking, or a release night to bring people to. Needs capacity, food options, and a human to reach.
The road-trip traveller deserves special attention in Kootenay taproom country. They are comparing two or three rooms from a phone with no loyalty to any of them, and photos, hours, food, and the patio decide it in under two minutes. The out-of-town buyer matters just as much, quietly: a bottle shop or restaurant that cannot find your wholesale contact simply carries someone else.
Why a stale tap list reads as a closed business
The most common brewery website mistake is a tap list frozen in time. A first-timer who sees a summer seasonal listed in December, or hours that ended a season ago, reads the whole business as stale, or worse, closed. Current details are the cheapest trust you can build, and the easiest to let rot.
The fix is not a fancier list. It is a simpler one you can actually change. Build the tap list as its own plain, editable page, separate from a beer archive, so updating it takes two minutes the day a keg blows. Keep the beers people ask about on their own archive page, so the live list only ever shows what is really pouring. A plain list you keep honest beats a beautiful one that lies.
A stale tap list does not just disappoint. It quietly tells a first-timer you might be closed.
Brochure site vs. a site that drives visits
The difference is rarely design taste. It is whether the site answers the visitor's real questions or hides the details that decide the drive. A brochure looks fine and explains nothing. A visit-driver puts the answer exactly where the doubt is.
| Brochure site | Site that drives visits | |
|---|---|---|
| Hours | Buried in the footer, last updated two seasons ago, so visitors assume you might be closed. | Current hours and open status on the first screen, matched to your Google Business Profile. |
| Tap list | A frozen beer archive that still lists a summer seasonal in December. | What is pouring now, quick to update, with the archive kept separate. |
| The visit | No address, no parking note, no word on food, patio, families, or dogs. | The whole visit decision answered in one screen, so the drive feels safe. |
| Photos | A few dark phone shots or stock glasses of beer that are not yours. | Real photos of the actual room, the taps, the patio, and the people. |
| Where to buy | Silence, so a bottle shop or restaurant cannot tell if you sell wholesale. | A where-to-find-us page and a plain wholesale contact. |
Every row of that table is also a review-prevention strategy. Wrong hours, a stale tap list, and a missing food note are exactly what the disappointed reviews describe. The website is the cheapest place to fix them, long before anyone posts one star over a locked door. The same instinct runs through a good restaurant, cafe, and food business website: publish what people phone to ask.
What each page of a brewery site should do
A taproom site does not need to be big. It needs a handful of pages that each do one job well: home, tap list, visit, events, wholesale, and merch. Here is what each one owes the visitor.
- Home
- Open status, current hours, tonight in one glance, and a real photo of the room. The first screen answers "are you open and worth the drive" before anyone scrolls.
- Tap list
- What is pouring now, by style and strength, easy to change the day a keg blows. Keep a separate archive for the beers people ask about, so the live list never goes stale.
- Visit
- Address, map, parking, transit, patio, food or food-truck schedule, whether families and dogs are welcome, and accessibility. This is the page that turns a search into a table.
- Events
- Release nights, live music, trivia, and private bookings with real dates. Give it a rhythm the taproom team can actually keep current.
- Wholesale
- Your beers, formats, and a plain contact for the liquor stores, restaurants, and bars deciding whether to carry you. Business buyers judge you here.
- Merch and gift cards
- Shirts, glassware, gift cards, and cans where the rules allow it, with an honest cart if you sell online. Link the store decision, do not force one.
This is the same page-by-page discipline I bring to a craft beverage website design: a small set of pages, each answering a real question, kept current by a team that has a taproom to run. The full build path and pricing context live on that page.
A realistic before and after
Illustrative composite, no invented numbers. The point is the shape of the change, not a metric.
Before
A taproom had one page with a logo, a stale tap list, and hours buried at the bottom. There was no address on the first screen, no word on food or the patio, and no wholesale contact. First-timers could not tell if it was open, and bottle shops could not tell if it sold at all.
After
The rebuild led with open status and current hours, split out a tap list the staff could update in two minutes, answered the whole visit on one page, and added a plain wholesale contact. The same traffic turned into clearer visits and a few new accounts that finally knew who to email.
Should a brewery sell beer online in BC?
It depends, and the rules genuinely matter. Selling alcohol online in BC has real requirements, and liquor marketing carries its own guidance, so check the current LCRB and BC LDB guidance before building a cart or writing promotional copy. This is one place to confirm the rules rather than guess at them.
In practice, plenty of breweries keep the online side simple. Merch and gift cards carry fewer rules than beer sales and are easy to sell from a small store, while the beer itself moves through the taproom and licensed channels. If a real canned-sales channel makes sense for you, it can be built, but scope it against the current rules, not a competitor's setup. When you are weighing a store at all, the honest tradeoffs are in my guide on whether Shopify is worth it for a Kootenay store.
Age gates are the other common question. An age-verification wall is common practice and sometimes expected, but it adds friction and a first-timer has to clear it before they even see your hours. Treat it as a real tradeoff, follow current guidance on when it applies to you, and if you use one, keep it fast so it never buries the details a visitor came for.
How to plan the build
Whether you are fixing the current site or starting fresh, the order matters. Hours and the tap list first, because they build trust. The visit page and photos second, because they persuade. Events, wholesale, and merch third.
- 1Put current hours and open status on the first screen, and make sure they match your Google Business Profile exactly.
- 2Build a tap list you can update in two minutes, so the live list is never wrong and the beer archive lives on its own page.
- 3Answer the whole taproom visit on one page: address, parking, food, patio, families, dogs, and accessibility.
- 4Give events and release nights real dates and a rhythm the taproom team can keep, not a page that freezes in spring.
- 5Add a where-to-find-us page and a plain wholesale contact for the shops, restaurants, and bars that carry you.
- 6Decide the online-sales question against current BC rules, then keep merch, gift cards, and any cans honest and clear.
- 7Shoot the real room, the taps, and the patio, and lead with those photos everywhere instead of stock glasses of beer.
For most breweries this is not a giant project. A taproom-first presence site at Kootenay Made Digital starts at $2,000; a build with online merch or canned sales is scoped to what the brewery actually needs, not a package name. The Own It Monthly plan spreads it: $2,000 once, or 12 payments of $189, $2,268 all in. Start with a free website scan and I will show you where the current site is leaking visits, from stale hours to a frozen tap list, before anything gets rebuilt.
Sources and further reading
- Google Search Central: SEO Starter Guide
How clear titles, headings, helpful content, and useful structure help both people and search systems understand a taproom site.
- Google Search Central: creating helpful content
Google frames strong pages around people-first usefulness and real experience, which is exactly how a thirsty visitor reads a brewery site.
- Google Business Profile help: edit your business hours
How to keep hours and special hours current on your profile, so the map listing and the website never disagree about whether you are open.
- Province of BC: liquor licensing and regulation
The top-level BC entry point for licensing and rules. Marketing and online sales have requirements, so check the current LCRB and BC LDB guidance before you build a cart.
Frequently asked questions
Do breweries need a website if they have Instagram?
Yes. Instagram is where people follow you; the website is where they decide to drive over. A search for your name or "brewery near me" needs to land on current hours, what is pouring, and the visit details, and you own that page instead of renting a feed an algorithm controls.
How do I keep a tap list current without the pain?
Build the tap list as its own simple, editable page, separate from a beer archive, so updating it takes two minutes when a keg blows. The failure is a fancy list nobody can change. A plain list you actually keep current beats a beautiful one that lies by December.
Should a brewery sell beer online in BC?
It depends, and the rules matter. Selling alcohol online in BC has real requirements, so check the current LCRB and BC LDB guidance before building a cart. Plenty of breweries keep it simple online with merch and gift cards, which carry fewer rules, and handle beer sales in the taproom or through licensed channels.
What pages does a brewery website need?
At the core: a home page with open status and hours, a live tap list, a visit page with address, parking, food, and patio details, an events page, a where-to-find-us or wholesale page, and a merch or gift card page. Add tour and accessibility details where they apply. Everything else is a bonus.
Why does a stale tap list hurt so much?
Because visitors read a stale page as a stale business. A tap list that still shows last summer’s seasonal, or hours that ended a season ago, quietly tells a first-timer you might be closed or coasting. Current, honest details are the cheapest trust you can build.
How much does a brewery website cost?
A taproom-first presence site at Kootenay Made Digital starts at $2,000. A build with online merch or canned sales is scoped to what the brewery actually needs, not a package name. The Own It Monthly plan spreads it: $2,000 once, or 12 payments of $189, $2,268 all in.
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