Highly rated beers and boring beers

With a rather provocatively headline, “Rate Beer vs. Beer Advocate: The ratings war!,” Top Fermented takes a lengthy look at how the top-rated beers at Rate Beer and Beer Advocate compare.

Is there anything to conclude other than “it’s an interesting look at the tastes of the user base at both sites?” You decide.

If you have the new All About Beer magazine (“Brewing in Wine Country” is the top story”) in hand the story about the super raters at Rate Beer and Beer Advocate makes interesting supplementary reading.

And for perspective check out Ron Pattinson’s post about boring beer (it’s short).

Now I’m back to writing about wheat beer, fortunately not boring to me.

 

#43 – Where in the beer world?

Where in the beer world?

Think you know where in the beer world this photo was taken?

Leave your answer as a comment. Also feel free to add a comment simply because the picture inspires you.

With all the signage you surely don’t need a hint for this one.

 

When rare ceases to be rare

The assistant managing editor in charge of being cranky at the last newspaper where I worked used to have a note posted on a bulletin board in his office: “All boldface is no boldface.”

For instance, consider just one entry today at beernews.org. Four more rare beers, including one (Brooklyn Sorachi Ace) brewed with now-rare hops. Good breweries all; undoubtedly good beers. And even if we never taste these beers good things may result — when I was at Stone Brewing a few months ago brewmaster Mitch Steele and I talked about how much he learns during one of these collaborative projects.

But I can’t help but remember that quote attributed to Goethe (though I suspect it was made up). At some point being rare ceases to be rare.

#42 – Where in the beer world?

Where in the beer world?

Think you know where in the beer world this photo was taken?

Leave your answer as a comment. Also feel free to add a comment simply because the picture inspires you.

A hint? This is a spot mentioned in the “Ten beery things to do in Germany without visiting Oktoberfest” written for All About Beer magazine. A second hint? Wheat beers.

 

The $1 million book, wine included

You may have seen mention in various blogs about an upcoming book, called “1001 Beers You Must Try Before You Die.” To the best of my knowledge (based on the fact I’ve written the profiles on a few of the beer included) each beer will get its own page. That makes for a fat book.

But nothing like the upcoming the 66-pound, $1 million wine guide Decanter reports will be published next year. The Wine Opus will list the world’s top 100 wineries. That’s not a typo: $1 million. Because . . . every purchaser of the book will also receive a six-bottle case of wine from every one of the 100 wineries listed.

So that’s 600 bottles of wine for $1 million, less whatever value you put on the book itself. But still about $1,667 a bottle. I’m pretty sure you could acquire every one of the choices in “1001 Beers” for less than $1 million, given that would be an average of $999 a bottle.