The Year in Beer: Breaking Down 2019

What about Places, did the traffic go up at all after that thread? I wrote 4 reviews since then.

 

Really interesting stats. The general point about the dominance of IPAs stands but I think people are reading too much into the 21,000 new IPAs vs 5,000 new lagers statistic. It seems to me that it doesn't really tell us much of anything beyond the fact that IPAs are much more prone to one-offs and "sibling-beers" that are essentially the same with simply a hop swap.

More lagers by barrels-produced is a good thing but I don't think anyone wants to see their numbers inflated simply by having more fly-by-night one and dones. That just adds a "problem" rather than solving one.

 

With Other Half brewing that much beers I'm surprised they haven't distributed over the country to the west coast.

 

This would be awesome. I love what Hopleaf and The Beer Temple do year round. Happy Zwanzie Day is still in Chicago after West Lakeview Liquors shutdown (though I think they are semi open at this point). Hopleaf did a great job. I didn't have a ticket, but was able to get great other pours and people were very generous sharing the limited bottles available.

 

A quote associated with Samuel Clemons (Mark Twain) comes to mind: “There are lies, there are damned lies, and then there is statistics”, comes to mind.

Yes, many of those ‘new’ IPAs are one and done beers and thereby makes it appear there are more new brands out there then genuinely are.

Perhaps a few of those lagers are one and done but I suspect very few.

Cheers!

 

The Canada forum was definitely dwindling a bit but it seemed to die a pretty quick death after it got grouped under North America. It seems crazy, but having it not show up immediately on the regional list and requiring two clicks to get there seemed to really stifle the random people that used to post with questions and whatnot.

One thing that has helped in this respect is allowing languages other than English. There is a reason that despite having one of the best, biggest, oldest, craft scenes in Canada everybody in Quebec was always on the other site along with the other non-anglophone beer geeks around the world.

 

Remember it's "the average alcohol by volume for all new beers in 2019." If the new beers are dominated by IPA one-offs, then you should expect the average ABV of new beers to be close the IPA average ABV, which it is. I don't think it's very useful 2019 stat, but *shrug*. Also remember if the average ABV of all beers consumed could be calculated it would probably be very close the ABV of a beer with "Light/Lite" in the name.

 

Great post thanks!

I feel the need to review a few "places" now...

 

I would echo @TheDoctor . I started using this site about a year before I joined and there was a small but very active Canadian user base. Even before the move to ‘hide’ Canada under North America, activity seemed to be dwindling. Other than the CANBIF threads, activity is negligible now, and even that is getting less and less
Participation. Note the current thread asking for Vancouver advice that hasn’t had a local respond in 4 days.

Among my beer friends, I’m the only one who uses the site regularly anymore. Those that weren’t too interested in the forums have moved to Untappd. Most of the francophones always preferred Ratebeer because they could review in French. Some have complained about the moderating , and the appearance that non-US news isnt viewed as important or relevant to a broader audience. I know one guy who quit when a thread about the AB-InBev purchase of Mill Street was moved to the Canada forum. Also, a lot of threads started by US users implicitly restrict discussions to US beers, often tacitly.

I don’t know how you win them back, or entice those new to beer to use the site. Those that like to track their beers and follow what their friends drink are going to use Untappd. Those who have used Ratebeer for years arent going to move over unless they are able to migrate their reviews too. I don’t know.

 

I don't use Untappd. Do they store the photos in their own servers? I believe it's been mentioned that BA doesn't have the capacity for that.

Uhm, I'm not even going to go there

I have a lightweight photo editing app on my phone. Take pic, crop, preset 150X300 resize, save at 80% quality (ensures below size limit)

Yeah, I doubt Other Hand had 306 new, uniquely different beers in 2019. More likely most were one & done variations on a base beer.

 

So I found this stat interesting, as all of these breweries seem to be amongst the top tier/very high quality US beer makers (although I haven't really heard of 450 North, but maybe they aren't on my radar yet).

 

And I would add the adjective of "US Juicy/Hazy IPA beer makers".

It seems that in order to be in this 'league' you are obligated to produce a lot of 'new' one and done Juicy/Hazy IPAs.

Tired Hands is very close to me and I have had quite a number of their one and done Juicy/Hazy IPAs and after a while they all seem to pretty much taste the same despite the varying brand names and the slight tweaks to their ingredient lists.

Cheers!

 

They store photos. See Two-Hearted example.https://untappd.com/b/bell-s-brewery-two-hearted-ale/4133
Some user submitted photos are good, some are garbage, but it's so fast and easy to flip through the photos to find good ones that it doesn't matter how many are crap. More hosting space is needed for sure, but there are ways for a website to automatically reduce/optimize photo file sizes to be more manageable. I bet the trickier part would be moderating photo submissions for errors and abuse by trolls, spammers, hackers, etc.

 

If you dig a bit further you'll also notice they produce mainly New England IPAs. Which by nature have higher ratings.

They also tend to produce those "one-off" riffs on a base IPA with a simple hop swap that the last few posts on this page have been discussing.

Basically, you're not going to see the likes of Live Oak, Notch, Olde Mecklenburg...etc. on this list. The majority of the styles they produce are neither one-offs nor New England IPAs.

 

Still waiting for BA to come back to Los Angeles. One of the best fests I've ever attended.

 

Also, Other Half releasing 306 unique beers is unreal. Are they constantly brewing small batches??