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. 

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

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.

State of the Blog: Ratings Revised, Part I

It's hard being a blogger, writing out my opinions on beer. Wait...no, it isn't. Basically, I drink beer, and then fart around about what I like about it. Dammit, if only I was getting paid. 

I've reached a weird crossroad in my beer-drinking career. I want to keep reviewing and drinking beer, but I want to focus on what really matters. The Review. The review mainly consists of the words, and not the score that I tack on at the end of it. When I started the blog, I came up with THIS SYSTEM to review beer. I still really like the five categories: Sewage, Below-Average, Average, Above-Average, and Divine Brew. But what's the point of the number/percentage scores? First off, the percentage scores are pretty arbitrary. And second, they make it a pain in the ass to score beers.

Percentages and numbers can "go suck an egg."

Let's look at my break-down of Imperial IPAs. Thus far I have reviewed six Imperial IPAs. We can notice some interesting trends: for example, they all have done fairly well (and this makes sense, and I'll get back to that in a minute). But my main concern is the ridiculous percentage scores that I've forced myself to use. For example, I rated the Green Flash Imperial IPA as an Above-Average beer at 89%. And then I rated Dogfish Head's 90 Minute IPA as an Above-Average beer at 84%. The fact is, these are both Above-Average beers. It seems kind of arbitrary and dumb to try to rank which beer is better.

More so...and this is another huge problem...the Green Flash Imperial IPA is a West Coast Imperial IPA. It has huge juicy hops, it is dank as hell, and it has a distinctly different profile than the 90 Minute. The 90 Minute IPA seems more like an "East Coast" IPA, with more subtle hop punch, and notes of booze and brandy. To objectively try to differentiate between these two beers is like comparing an apple to an orange. And I fucking hate apple and orange comparisons. 

Another example would be comparing Tripel Karmeliet to the Chimay White. These are both beers that I rated as "Divine Brew". Although I rated the Karmeliet at a 98% and the Chimay at 93%, who is to say that one is really better than the other? The Chimay is a malt bomb (apple), and the Karmeliet is this refined beer with huge grain profiles (orange). Even though they are both Tripels, they are dramatically different. 

And so, we now get to the next dilemma. I'm scrolling down the blog page, and seeing a lot of beers rated at Above-Average. There is probably some Selection Bias at play here, as I probably have a tendency to shop for good beer. At some point, I hope I will have had the opportunity to try all the really good beer, so then I can drink some crappy beer and get all nasty in my reviews. Until then.....

My last concern (I swear) has to relate to the incredibly vague style guidelines. The other night, I drank Founders' All Day IPA. It was a damn good beer, but I felt obligated to review it compared to other IPAs because it is labeled as a freakin' IPA. Honestly, the beer drank like a Pale Ale in a lot of ways, and I wanted to review it as such. The fact is, style guidelines are important, but they aren't dogma. As such, if I'm drinking a Porter that drinks like a strong Stout, or if I'm drinking an IPA that is like a Pale Ale, I'm going to make note of it in "The Review," and score it as such. 

I still am going to avoid Apples to Oranges comparisons. I hate that shit, and you should too. A Dry Stout can't compare fairly to an Imperial Stout. It just can't. Hell, if you just read this post, you see that I'm having a hard time reviewing Imperial IPAs and Tripels, because THERE IS VARIATION WITHIN THESE PRETTY CLEARLY DEFINED STYLES!!!!!!!! 

So with all that said....I now present my new review system in [Part 2] of this post.

Review Format: the Experiment is Over

If you read this blog (I'm sorry) you probably have noticed that I have been messing with my review format. I've set up the past couple of reviews with clearly outlined sections for "easy reading." Easy reading is nice, and it actually makes for easy writing when I just dump my thoughts into organized sections. I'm concerned though, because easy writing lends itself to lazy writing.

This is a beer review blog, but this is "Not Another" beer review blog. When I created this blog, I created it for a number of reasons: storing my beer reviews, educating myself about the beers that I do review, and sharing my love for beer with anyone who feels compelled to listen to me ramble.

Because I want to take the time to introduce the brewery and the style of beer for the beers that I review, I went with an editorial-style approach to my reviews. This gave me the option to spend time talking about the beer, complaining about things, and then eventually telling you how I feel about the beer itself.

When I break my beer reviews down into clearly defined sections, I feel like I lose some of the freedom to talk about the beer. I feel like I lose some of the "stuff" that originally defined my blog in the first place. I want to talk about the beer; I want to tell you about the brewery; I want to bitch and moan, because beer culture has its fair share of retardisms. Look at Shitty Beer Tuesday, for example. I'm very amused by Shitty Beer Tuesday, and I look forward to a future of drinking more malt beverages that are more closely related to urine than actual beer. My point is: I'm not going to shove Shitty Beer Tuesday into a nicely packaged format for easy digesting. That seems hypocritical to the spirit of Shitty Beer Tuesday, and to this blog.

There's more fluidity and freedom when I write a review editorial style. That means that I will alienate some readers. That means that you will actually have to read through the entire review to extract content. It won't be "easy reading" like the past few reviews that have had clearly outlined sections. But I need to remain true to myself, and the original spirit of this blog.

So what is the format going to look like from now on?

There will be a TITLE. So you know what beer I'm drinking

Brewed By: [And I'll tell you who brews it,] in [and where it is brewed.]
Purchased: [I'll tell you what type of container it in] from [and where I bought it so you can stalk me.]
Style/ABV: [And I'll tell you the style, and how drunk it will get you.]

Then I will do an introduction of the brewery, the beer, and the beer style.

I'll review the beer of course...and give it a rating.

And then there will be a conclusion.

This isn't just a beer review blog. This is a place for me to vent about things that are silly in the industry, to learn about beer, to learn about the cool people who brew beer, and to think out loud. So, the experiment is over. You are not going to see any more beer reviews that look like the past few I have done. The plus side? There will be more Shitty Beer Tuesday. I'm looking your way Corona...you better watch out!

Ratings

Before I launch into my first beer review, I would like to explain how I rate beer. I have a simple rating system with two components: Rating, Score

1) Rating – I rate all my beers using 5 categories. 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. Here is my rating scale:

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.

2) Score – People like numbers, so within each rating is a percentile. The higher the percentile, the better the beer is within its respected rating category. You can ignore the number score, or you can cling to it and cherish it. Here are the percentiles:

0 - 25% = Sewage

26% - 50% = Below-Average

51% - 75% = Average

76% - 90% = Above-Average

91% - 100% = Divine Brew

For example: if two beers get “Divine Brew“ status, but one is ranked at 93% and the other is ranked at 97%, the 97% beer is the better beer. But isn't it somewhat arbitrary at that point? Oh wait, it isn't. Because math, that's why.

A few final thoughts…

Again, I am not going to compare beers across styles. If you see a Pale Lager with a Divine Brew rating, it is because that is a divine beer for its style. Truthfully, I'm a beer geek, not a snob. I love good beer, but I still enjoy shitty beer given the right situation. Finally, taste is completely subjective and everyone has a different palate. Sometimes I will have conflicting and contrasting opinions. I'm not formally trained in beer tasting, I am not a professional connoisseur, and my only goal is to have some fun while drinking beer and learning about beer in the process.