Regional rating bias

Well, Daylight Savings Time starts tonight - so they'll be 25 hours tomorrow!

 

I'll try to take advantage.

 

I'm regionally biased in my ratings as I'm guessing many other people on here are, whether they admit it or not

 

The math is simple, add up the midwest and east coast reviews in the top beers by region lists and compare. Voila!

 

Bingo! Now guess where the majority of BAs live.

 

I didn't catch the theory here. Why should there be a directional effect? Beer is brewed by people and for people, so it seems like it should flow from places with people to places with people. But that just means it won't go from, say Pennsylvania to Wyoming. It doesn't mean it wouldn't go from Pennsylvania to/from Florida or, to address the original discussion, from Oregon to/from New York, as far as I can imagine.

 

The NE Megalopolis, I'd say.

 

Fat Head's Hop JuJu 2013 Gold
Columbus Creeper 2014 Gold

I'd say OH is doing fine with the hops. Not to mention the incredible number of other great hoppy beers from Fat Head's and Columbus and that's just two breweries.

 

I was addressing why the OP only saw a few brewers on the shelves on the west coast, whereas we see much more beer here from west coast brewers. To infer that it's all about the quality of the beer doesn't tell the whole story. It just makes much more sense to ship your product to more densely populated areas, and if you are in a more densely populated area then you will have much greater demand before you have to expand westward.

 

Well now Fat Heads is open in Portland, so thank goodness we now have a great brewery brewing IPAs. Oregon was such an IPA desert before then...

 

It doesn't go either way, the local population drinks it all up!

 

Not what I was saying, but go ahead and take my post out of context. Cheers. No wonder I never post on this website anymore.....

 

Personally I like West coast IPA'S because of the bold hop flavors. I like East coast for the balanced attack.
I like a good IPA and I like many styles within the class.
A good fresh IPA is a fantastic beer no matter how it tastes.
Don't forget this is a capitalistic country and breweries aren't in it for the fun of it. They're in it for money.

 

OP, are you sure it isn't your own personal opinion that is skewed?

Not trying to be funny, but if you're taste buds are telling you something that the ratings are telling you it is different, than the issue could be you.

For instance, personally, I think all IPA's are over rated and belong in the 2.0 category of the BA scale, but I hate IPA's.

 

OK—maybe. It's plausible.

Actually after some more thought, it seems likely: wherever the brewery is, they expand to the east.

 

Fathead's expanded west.

 

New Yorkers previously really overhyped Southern Tier.

 

There are under the radar gems all over the country, produced by small brewers/brewpubs which see very limited distribution. You find the ones in your area. Due to the large number of brews in the PNW, there might be a greater concentration in one area and fewer misses. However, they do exist in other places.

Comparing local your PNW beer to East Coast beer which makes it out west is as fair as the eastern US comparing all of their local beer to Rogue.

 

I was primarily talking about beers from elsewhere that aren't distributed here, which I've traded for—not the handful of East Coast/Midwest beers that actually make it out here. I'm sure there are hidden gems all over the place, and I don't pay attention to regional forums so I'm sure I'm not even aware of most of them. Bell's Black Note and Founder's Imperial Stout are two beers I've gotten via trade that absolutely lived up to the hype, but a lot of others have not.

Mostly though, I was just agreeing with the OP, who is from the East Coast, and corroborating his observations with my own limited experience sampling local beers while traveling to other regions.

 

Some people are too busy enjoying right now and don't find the need to quantify it or take a picture of it.