State of the Blog: Ratings Revised, Part II

Part I of "Ratings Revised" can be found HERE. In the interest of avoiding arbitrary numbers that force me to rank beers, I have decided to simplify how I rate my beer. I rate all my beers according to their style. That means that all IPAs get compared to other IPAs. Brown Ales will get stacked up against other Brown Ales. I will NEVER do an apples vs. oranges comparison. All the beer I score will be ranked according to these five categories:

Sewage (WTF did I just drink?) – reserved for legitimate swill like Budweiser Chelada, this category is for beer that is not drinkable. Very few beers should make it into this category, and I would never put a beer into this category that has been exposed to the sun or that has an obvious defect.

Below-Average – crappy beer goes here. Any beer that gets this rating has some obvious style shortcomings, is particularly uneventful, or just misses the mark.

Average – these are beers that are drinkable, follow the guidelines of the style they represent, and don’t have too many shortcomings. The difference between an average beer and an above-average beer is that average beers do not separate themselves from the pack. 

Above-Average – these are beers that not only meet the style guidelines, but go above and beyond to provide a unique drinking experience. 

Divine Brew – reserved for the best of the best, divine beers are going to be at the top of the class. These are really special beers. 

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In addition to these five categories, I might include some totally meaningless, touchy-feely type words, like:

"I feel like this beer is a Strong Above-Average beer."

These touchy-feely words are totally arbitrary, and don't mean anything, other than how I'm feeling at the time. I can't claim originality to this idea, as the original idea goes to The Needle Drop. The Needle Drop is one of my favorite music blogs, run by Anthony Fantano, "the Internet's busiest music nerd." He rates all his albums on a scale of 0 to 10, with an accompanying "light," "decent," or "strong." 

I'm a fan of this approach, because I think it works well with an actual review. This seems similar to BeerAdvocate's letter grade system (C- vs. C vs. C+), but I think this is a little bit different. Saying that "I think this is a Strong Above-Average beer" simply captures the fact that I am confident this is an Above-Average beer. I've certainly had beers that have teetered between Average and Above-Average.

I don't know if I will use this approach in every review. The main thing is that I want to cut my reviews down to the five main categories, and get people (myself included) to focus on the actual content of the review. I'm not a huge fan of Ratebeer or BeerAdvocate, and to some extent I'm even less of a fan of trying to rank good beers of similar style (what's the point? good beer is good beer). 

With that said, there are going to be no more numbers; I want to get rid of arbitrary rankings. At a certain point, it becomes an exercise in futility to try and rank Above-Average and Divine Brew beers. If the beer is good, drink it.

With all that said, cheers.