ONE-OFF Brewery Greatness vs. GREAT BREWERY Regular Offering

Maybe a stronger ranking based on number of reviews would help even things out.

 

Meh, don't really care about scores anymore.

 

I think this is not a valid comparison. A brewer's capacity should not be taken as an indicator of it's quality, but whether a player is in the minors or majors most definitely should. A small brewery can make a small amount of a world class beer, and many do. A huge brewery can satisfy millions with a product that is great, but not unique or exceptional in any way. Judge the beer on it's merits and everything should work out.

 

How much HF have you had? Sean is brewing top notch beer no doubt especially in the IPA style. Should everything he brews be in the top 100? No, that is rep that will even out over time. But Galaxy should actually be ranked higher IMO, so maybe too many IPA's from HF has kept it the best from going top 10. Also Lawson's Double Sunshine should be up there as well, damn small VT brewers have it working right now.

 

I'd suggest it isn't really needed because it is already built into the lists now. The Top Beers lists include Popular (which requires only 10 reviews to make it onto the list) and the Beers of Fame which require 1000 reviews to make it onto the list.

A beer that makes it onto the Popular list will do just that, become popular, as it does so it will get widely sought after. If the non-locals agree with the locals that the beer has proved its worth, then it is will not stay on the list just because of a possible local bias. This allows a relatively unknown brewery making good beers to become widely known and increase the likeklihood of its success both in and outside of its local area. If the beer does not prove its worth as more non-locals review it, the beer will fall from the list fairly quickly.

However, a Beer of Fame has stood the test of a combination of time, widespread distribution, and lots of barrels produced because it has been made in a reasonable comgination of large enough quantities over a long enough time and been sampled over wide enough territory to proove its worth to a very large number of reviewers.

 

If size is all that matters, then Bud Light is obviously the best beer in the world.

 

This was the reason that minimums were instituted for getting into the Top 100 lists. The minimum was 100 reviews at one time, but people complained because it was hard for smaller brewers to break into the list, and also because the list became too static. The minimum is now 10 reviews. Personally I think this is too low, but it does make the lists more dynamic.

 

Actually, that's not entirely accurate. If you look at the actual weighting formula, even 10 perfect reviews won't get a beer any higher than a 4.33 weighted score, which could be no higher than 88 on the current Popular list. And no beer gets all perfect scores, so if it did happen the Bros would nuke all those reviews for being obvious attempts at artificial hype generation.

The fact is, craft beer is an artisanal product that often (certainly not always, but quite often) benefits from the obsession and intense supervision of a single talented brewer. The most special beers are often the products of the most careful hand-crafting, and just aren't replicable on a larger scale that would allow for mass distribution. Cantillon Blabaer wouldn't be the top-rated Lambic on the site if it were brewed in a bigger brewery with a bigger batch of necessarily lower-quality blueberries. Some beers can scale, some simply can't.

The question remains, why are you so offended by local, hard-to-find beer showing up on the lists? How does that hurt you? Rather than complain about amazing small-batch beers getting recognition, perhaps you should reevaluate the amount of stock you place in website rankings. Just because a beer shows up on a BA Top 10 list doesn't mean that you're duty bound to track it down. Beers aren't Pokemon - you're under no obligation to catch them all.