Thoughts on the latest updates? Top 250, etc.

But the previous list was surprisingly accurate. I can grab FSW IPAs off the shelf and they are very meh. I pass every time because they are nothing special. Having had the Alpine, Trillium, Tree House, Cycle, and Hill Farmstead IPAs, many of them are world class and the best of the best. They should be on the top 250 list. This should be a top 250 beers available, not top 250 beers that have large distribution and will be available at your local grocery store / Total Wine / Liquor store. That's what the beers of fame list is for.

Add to that, if I'm at a bottle share or event, I don't want to spend a long time with my nose in my phone putting in a detailed review, rather just a quick rating with how good the beer is and then get back to having a good time with the people around me.

 

I understand there is a lot of personal bias when dealing with reviews, preferring higher quality reviews over the quick user who just assigns a number, but this is not a very mathematical or scientific approach. When dealing with scientific data, it is the sample size that matters the most. Large sample sizes make much better statistics and make all of the 1 & 5 quick ratings meaningless. Throwing away the majority of your data sample simply because it doesn't contain a 150 character explanation is silly, it does not make your statistical average any better, I would argue it makes it a lot worse and much more biased.

I think this quick rating data should be included, maybe with just a different weighting than the full review data. Why throw away perfectly good data just because of a bias where you believe it is less useful data?

 

I would strongly say no. On the previous list, my number hovered around 210 and on the current list, it came in at 215. Having tried many of these beers, this current list has a lot of beers I've logged as a 3.25, 3.5 or so on where the previous list had most of the beers at 4 or higher. Easiest example is Trillium's Artaic vs Great Lakes Chill Wave IPA. One beer is world class but not on the list, the other beer is a very mediocre beer that I will turn down every time but is on this list.

 

That's just your personal preference. There are a lot of beers I love that used to not be on the list that now are.

 

I was actually viewing it from the app.

 

Yep! It's a totally different list now and in line with what everyone else seems to be talking about. Thanks.

 

For those of you who haven't been following, BA ratings are going back to their roots, and there is a new system in place. @Todd has the following thread going with all the updates (thanks for all the work Todd & team!):

http://www.beeradvocate.com/communi...ns-to-its-roots-part-two.313997/#post-3886304

I thought it would be fun to compare the top 250 from yesterday (the old system) to today (the new system):



I am doing a bunch of overlap analysis at the moment but at first glance, big changes to the top 250!!

Discuss, comment, and flame on Beer Advocates - I am super curious what people think!

 

Well done! Would love to see impact of newish breweries given it seems that the % of ratings vs reviews is very low with most being ratings. Good candidates would be Trillium and Other Half.

 

Thanks to whomever merged my post - my bad, should have searched first for this thread!

Few topline stats are:

93 beers have changed on the top 250, so almost 40% change

The number of reviews counted has dropped by more than half, and the average rating has dropped too
Topline averages:
Old New
Rating 4.45 4.32
Reviews 1,789 683

Working on more stats - requests welcome!

 

OK, I will run counts of breweries with most beers on top 250, and average rankings for them give me 10min

 

Well at quick glance some beers like Trillium Artaic & Upper Case and Other Half All Green Everything are gone (which is a shame, they are great/world class beers). Now we have other beers, like Great Lakes Chill Wave and Victory Dirt Wolf taking their place (also a shame because they are boring, mediocre beers).

 

Other Half is a great example, reviews only make about 5% of the total ratings.

 

I would really love to see about how many reviews it will take for a highly rated beer to make the list. In the old list, it seemed like somewhere between 95 and 200 "hads" was needed before a beer would show up (even if they only had 5-20 reviews). The question is how many reviews are needed for beers to crack this list. This will tell me how friendly it will be to new beers or will this list be forever dominated by older beers that were around when only reviews were allowed.

 

I think more people will start writing reviews and newer beers will show up on this list. I do think it will take longer for new beers to get on the list, but I think they should. If a beer has been brewed for a long time and has more high reviews it should take quite a few reviews to end up above them on the list.

 

@jrnyc looks like the following:



Trillium took a pounding - dropped from having 12 beers in the top 250 to having only 3.

Looks like 13 breweries have stayed in the top 20 list of 'top 250 most beers', and overall the new list seems like it has a good mix, but does have more of the classic breweries in it.

The breweries that got the boot are:
Trillium Brewing Company
Cigar City Brewing
Side Project Brewing
Funky Buddha Brewery
de Garde Brewing
Perennial Artisan Ales
The Lost Abbey

Seems like a lot of the new kids got schooled

 

Under the old list, the lowest number of reviews a beer had was 85. The new list this is 33.
The distribution looks like this:



Looks like the new list is more even handed - although of course this is all based on the number of records included in the average (not the overall "Hads" as I don't have that stat for the new list)

 

Problem with that is if its a single batch and not a cellarable beer or only available by growler, the beers will be long gone. I've found many wonderful beers once they show up on the top 250 list 2-4 weeks after they were made. But if it takes 3 months, 6 months, or a year, to make the list, it will just show me a beer I won't be able to try. Or worse yet, it will have been retired before it would make the list. Also, with such a large batch of review of beers that have been around since before the change, I don't expect new beers to make into the list in less then a year from its release.

Overall, this just made the amount of time and commitment for keeping up with new great beers to grow exponentially.

 

Thanks, that is what I figured! Good thing is I know Other Half and Trillium have awesome beer without a list!

 

I think my biggest problem with this is I use to look to the top 250 list and get excited about the beers I haven't tried yet. With the new list, I look at the beers I haven't had yet and I don't care, they aren't something I'm looking forward to trying. Unless it surprises me and proves to allow for new beers to regularly make the list, the list has gone from a valuable tool to a worthless list. This is best seen with the lowering of the average score from 4.45 to 4.32, which means their are a lot of worse beers on the list.