Controversial Beer Opinions Thread

Shark jumped

 

"Becomes an issue"...for who, exactly?

I don't like to read reviews before I try a beer. I like to make up my own mind before accessing the hive mind.

And if it tastes bad, I'm not going to suffer through 12-16oz of it.

That's an issue for exactly no one.

 

This is a sentiment I don't get. If the person is busy or too "important" to finish their beer, why does it matter to you? As long as they're not being a jerk or obnoxious about it, it makes no difference to me. It seems irresponsible to suggest someone should always finish their beer.

 

I have a friend who won't watch a movie without checking Rotten Tomatoes for the score. And if he is debating between two movies, he'll defer to the higher score. Relying on scores given by strangers is a dumb way to pick a movie. It's an even dumber way to pick a beer.

 

I'll give your post a 10 out of 10

 

What if you trust the sources of those reviews/opinions?

I think then it's an extremely valuable way to pick something. Looking at ratings and scores for anything in a vacuum is probably not that helpful. But with a little context, I find it extremely helpful.

I also think extremes can be somewhat telling. If 5,000 people give a restaurant 1 star on Yelp...why am I going to bother checking it out? I find more often than not that if a beer is highly rated on this website, at the very least it's not going to be bad. But if it's rated poorly odds are it's not that great, it may even be terrible.

There's way too much beer out there, much of it quite expensive, for me to take a flyer on a random beer. Having some semblance of guidance is a good thing in my opinion.

 

I'm not sure if you're a gambler, but there's a saying in sports betting: "Find out what way the public is betting, then go the other way."

But in response to your post, you wrote, "What if you trust those sources?" By all means. We all have friends whose opinions we trust.

However, if there is a beer you're curious about and you see a score of say, 3.65 (I chose this number because it's the BA score of a beer I just recently drank, loved, and bought again), and you don't buy it because the score is too low? Then, shame, sir, shame.

 

First off, this is my opinion in an opinion-based thread. Secondly. I take my "concern" no farther than "Wonder why they didn't finish their beer?" Simply an odd thing to do, IMO. Why order something that you're not going to finish? If I order something, unless it is "bad", I plan on eating or drinking all of it. Obviously other people think differently than I do. Maybe I just have a longer attention span than most?

 

From your activity in this thread alone, I think your last question is purely rhetorical.

EDIT: Didn't mean to quote twice

 

That's true, and I'm not judging you for it. There are certainly people out there who will harass people for not finishing a beer, and I don't get that decision. Some people know when they've reached their limit.

That's a good way of putting it. It came off like you'd cold shoulder them should the person not finishing their beer try and interact with you, but as long it remains an interest of you, so be it.

And to help illuminate a few situations I've experienced where I was unable to finish a beer: hard run earlier in the day resulting in a lower tolerance of alcohol than I realized, or how much drinking in the heat crushes my tolerance, or just being damn tired on a busy, competition weekend and wanting to slip back to bed more than finishing those last couple ounces - especially if I'm driving home. I don't see myself as any more importance than anyone else. I just want a beer after a hard effort on the run, or a long weekend of competition. Likewise, I can think of several breakfasts I've ordered that never got finished after long, hard workouts. I ordered a bit extra to account for the larger deficit of calories, but couldn't stuff anything else in my stomach at the time. Felt disappointing, but there was no justification for me to over eat to "clean my plate". Races totally screw up my diet even more than my hardest workouts, but at least I can account for that after a race, workouts are hit and miss as far as dietary impacts.

 

If I had nothing better to do and really wanted to make this a "mic drop" post, I'd go back through and quote all of your posts flaming others for their opinions in an "opinion based thread," but you know as well as anyone what a cop out your response is without me needing to do that.

 

It's no cop out. It's simply a real world perspective. We're debating things here in this thread that really only get debated on boards like this. Such debates don't translate into the real world well, because if they did you'd simply be an opinionated dick that wasn't any fun and who nobody liked to hang around. On these pages, it is different. You choose a stance and you defend it, because if you didn't and you were constantly riding the fence, it wouldn't make for a very spirited debate now would it?

 

If I'm out at the pub with friends, I'd probably break their balls if they didn't finish their beer and probably offer to finish it for them. You know, give them a little ribbing. If it was someone who I didn't know well and we were in a polite conversation, why the fuck would I care if they finished their beer or not? If I'm having a good time and they're having a good time, the mission has been accomplished. No reason to muck things up by being a pretentious ****.

 

The gambling thing is a totally different principle though. The reason to go against what everybody else picks is that it makes the odds more favorable. Also, where Vegas sets the line is done scientifically based on what can make them the most money, and when they do it right, the side with more bets loses. So by going against the popular bet, you're in essence betting on Vegas itself, which isn't a bad idea.

Other people's reviews/ratings should never be the only metric used to make a decision, but if you have two comparable/similar options that you have no personal knowledge of, and getting both isn't an option, why is is crazy to use an Untappd score, or a Rotten Tomatoes percentage, as a tiebreaker?

The alternative would be to go with the lower rated one, but that really wouldn't make any sense.

 

Funny to have this discussion on a site that was founded upon, and gained success by, providing folks with a user driven guide to help us make better beer buying choices..

 

It is most definitely a cop out, and I'd say your real world translation is more applicable here than you think. I won't speak for anyone else, but every time I see that you've replied to someone in this thread my first reaction is, "Oh there's that arrogant dick who thinks his opinion is the end all be all and feels the need to constantly let everyone know it."

Maybe you don't act like that in real life, and good on you for that, because I'm sure that you are right and no one would want to be around you. But the only two differences on BA are that you can hide behind an anonymous username and also no matter how much of an opinionated dick you are, we are sort of stuck with you. So congrats on being that guy!

 

I had a 2015 BCBS over the weekend and it was really good, no sign of infection.

 

Any you're welcome to that opinion, faceless dude from New York.

Not so sure that you're not "that guy" as well, from the tone of your response.

 

The first point - yeah that's pretty weak and the guy has no doubt missed out on loads of great movies as a result. Any BAs out there that do that with BA ratings are massively missing out as well.

However I don't think there's any issue with the second point. If you're in a position where you can only watch one movie / buy one beer, you have a selection in front of you, and there's nothing up front that is going to sway you one way or the other (brewery/director/style/genre), then it's not the craziest idea to consult some aggregated online ratings to give yourself the best chance of a good experience.