Comments on: What happens when you assign numbers to beers

By: Stan Hieronymus

Stan Hieronymus — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:59:08 +0000

Mario – Thanks for the update on the Rochefort scores. Wonder if those are old printouts, and what that might mean.

We had the R10, W12 and StB 12 side-by-side-by-side in Belgium and the R10 won.

By: Mario (Brewed For Thought)

Mario (Brewed For Thought) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:03:57 +0000

Stan, just checked RateBeer’s website, the 10 scores 100 overall and 99 by style. The 6 rates a 95/96 and the 8 also has the 100/99. Not sure where the 93 comes from.

Personally, I prefer the Rochefort 8 to the 10 and a St Bernardus 12 to the 10 as well. Maybe a better use of RateBeer’s site would be to highlight Rocherfort 10′s #2 ranking amongst Quads and #10 rating in their Top 50.

By: Stan Hieronymus

Stan Hieronymus — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 15:44:24 +0000

Bill – We’ve been in stores where the shelf cards are employee recommendations – like you see more often in a book store. “Karen likes Oberon,” for instance. That I like (even if a distributor is twisting Karen’s arm). Local accountability.

By: Bill

Bill — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:25:51 +0000

Thanks for the clarification. I’ve made my peace with the ratings being skewed.

What would be nice is if the sites didn’t allow a shelf-card to be printed unless the beer had been reviewed by, say, at least 100 people… but how could they enforce it? Stores could create their own cards regardless.

The “official” shelf-cards also could be dated and/or state the # of reviews. but again, how would folks not on the sites know the difference between the official and unofficial ones?

Wine tags from Wine Spectator and Wine Advocate also have this problem — if stores do them, you’re never sure if the vintage with the score is the vintage on the shelf if they don’t put it on.

By: SteveH

SteveH — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:32:47 +0000

“I’ll say it: the ratings on the websites are skewed. Not wrong, but skewed, by rarity, by hot-flash fads, by group-think. Someone oughta say something, even though it’s like fish in a barrel.”

HERETIC!

By: Stan Hieronymus

Stan Hieronymus — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 02:14:50 +0000

Bill – What Daria meant was the top rows were full of beers rate “100″ and Rocherfort (one of her favorites) “only” received 93. She was asking if there are really that many beers better than Rochefort.

Struise Cuvée Delphine is an example of a “100″ beer – based only a grand total of 25 ratings.

By: Bill

Bill — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 01:36:28 +0000

Lew and Stan — I’m not sure what Daria said — the sentence didn’t make sense to me. There are 100 beers on the top row? Or they were all ranked 100 points??? Does RateBeer even _have_ any 100-point-ranked beers? Is Rochefort getting a 93 somehow bad? Or are you saying it should have been worse?

By: Erik

Erik — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 00:44:32 +0000

Nice to hear you were in my backyard. I love Parti-Pak but I do have to agree with you that I worry many times that some of those rarer beers are possibly getting musty. But it is the best game in town for the obscure beers.

As to the ratings, I don’t really care for them. I do agree with some of the other posters that they do help guide the neophyte who may not know many of the brands on the shelf. But at the same time the ratings can push people away from drinking a lot of great beers that are a few points lower then something else.

By: Stan Hieronymus

Stan Hieronymus — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 22:37:59 +0000

Thanks for noticing, Lew.

John, also thanks for your viewpoint. Worth remembering how people learn about a wider variety of beers.

By: John LeMasney

John LeMasney — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 19:25:31 +0000

Lew, I’m not saying it’s perfect, I’m saying that it helped me when I had no knowledge of what good was to get a better idea of what great beer could be. It gave me direction when I was just starting out. Those little 100s and 96s all got me buying better beers that I never would have picked up otherwise. It also showed me that there could be fantastic Lagers, which I only had a few bad examples of. Then I realized that just because something had an 60 didn’t mean I wouldn’t love it (e.g. Rock Art DIPA), and just because something had a 100 didn’t mean it would be my thing. (Higher ranked rauchbiers, guezes and Lambics come immediately to mind) However, now I have a better understanding of styles, tastes, ingredients, and breweries, and I can decide for myself. I’m slowly weaning from ratebeer and I’ve left BA completely, but I’ll always think of them with respect for helping me to understand beer better. The same goes for you, by the way. Cheers, j.