Regional rating bias

Vermont has it's share of hipsters. If I have a local bias, it is a freshness issue. Nobody loves a good German beer more than I do, but not after sitting in cargo holds and warehouses for a couple of months. Not to impressed by West Coast IPA's, but I am not drinking them as fresh I get the local ones.

 

EVERYWHERE has their share of hipsters...Portland has a TV Show based on it that is right on the money and hilarious...that's the hipster big time...and what you say about freshness is part of what I love about VT...but sadly I live right over the border by 7 miles in NH now so my maple syrup tastes different these days...

 

I certainly think local bias comes into play when rating. Many people want what THEY have access to, especially when others don't, to be special. Throw that on top of the pre-conceived greatness that many convince themselves all highly-hyped beers have before trying and the "damn that was a lot of work to get" factor and you have the makings for a beer's rating to be inflated. Doesn't mean the beer isn't great. But I do think it helps inflate certain beers against others.

Recently I was lucky enough to try a boatload of IPAs/IIPAs from MA/VT/NH. My little brother was up there for three months and stopped by to share beer/stay with me the day he left. Everything we tried was somewhere between good and fantastic, but nothing was substantially better than things I've had from many other parts of the country. And the two I liked the most were probably the most readily available of the 6 we tried.

 

Of course having said that you now have to tell us which they were. My guess is one was Sip Of Sunshine.

 

If you're willing to forego growler fills, you can often grab cans in the early afternoon on a Saturday with no wait. Swung by there last week around 12:30 and was back in my car 5 minutes later.

 

I think style bias is more of an issue. Giant IPA that's quadruple dry hopped, or a triple barrel quintuple blended in barrels of five varieties of wood blended with coffee and vanilla. Anything else can GTFO.

Slight exaggeration, but there's 75 stouts and 84 IPA/APAs on the top 250, composing 64% of the list. Meanwhile, you only find two hefeweizens, one bock, zero lagers and zero pilsners. This is partly the ultimate regional bias in that American beers are overwhelmingly favored.

 

Sip of Sunshine and 14th Star Tribute IIPA were my two favorite, with Vicinity, Heady, and Focal right behind those.

 

If you are going to get into homerism, well there are definitely times when some people may be doing that.

What I do notice though is there is a lot more East coast participation here than other US regions to some degree, and the ratings seem to reflect that. So you can read into that how you like.

The beer for me has to be good regardless of where it comes from, some of it some it isn't to me, doesn't matter if it was down the street or 2500 miles away in San Diego...

 

I am harder on my hometown brewery than on others because I care more about how well they do over time. Same applies to regionals. I also think I am entitled to be harder on them because I spend more money there.

 

I've been getting a little frustrated as of late with BA community (or lack there of), in adding new breweries and new beers. Too many times to count lately, I'm the person adding a new startup brewery or new beer for the 1st time and its not like I'm walking into the establishement the 1st week it opens up (well one time I did anyway for Red Shedmann). It's much ly higher than what I was encountering in past years. Not sure why but seems alot of people just aren't rating beers on BA. Heck I was only the 8th person on the planet to tick/review a Belgian beer by Halen brewing. How does someone in rural central MD, that gets a mediocre/average distribution, become the 8th person on the planet to review a great beer imported from Belgium? And its not that new...I saw earlier ratings in 2014 and 2013.

 

Just going to throw out there that this topic has been thrown around a bunch not just across the whole US, but also just within the Pacific area....

http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/regional-rating-bias.165510/#post-2296902