The Year in Beer: Breaking Down 2019

The other online sites folks have mentioned don’t work on my phone in the way I’m used to; they can resize image, but they distort the dimensions. Downloading an app is a good suggestion. Will give that a shot.

 

Another interesting point is that the 19 breweries who "produced over 100 new beers" collectively add up to 2567 new beers. Even if we take away 500 from that total as a (I'm guessing fair?) ball park number for their non-IPA releases, those 19 breweries produced about 10% of all new IPAs (2067/21,658) in 2019.

 

God, how I love stats - and you provided much to read and re-read.

The most eye-opening-to-me stat - the ratings average at 3.98. I would have guessed it in the lower third of three.

The most interesting thing in the article, honestly, waiting for this lager revolution. At first I was like, ¨Lager revolution? Really?¨ But the more I think of it, yeah, I would like to see that too.

 

you need an app already

 

As far as the 3.98 avg....that was interesting how it stayed exactly the same from 2018 to 2019 ratings. Not sure what to take from that with so many factors at play. Just interesting.

One thing as far as forum posting....seems that in last few years the demographic of participation has been trending to an older crowd and not seeing alot of new blood coming into join conversations. Is forum conversations becoming an old man thing to do like watching MLB baseball on TV every night or am I way off target in my observations?

Agree with Todd, would be awesome if we could get alot more international members joined in forum conversations. There are a few out there, but I personally love to hear from different places and cultures to get a pulse what is going on around the globe.

 

This the most interesting post I’ve seen on BA, but I appreciate numbers more than most people.

But am I the only one who was disturbed by the google analytics stats?
21 million new visitors, and 15 million left and never came back?

What are we doing about that?

 

Well if the majority of beers are IPAs, and IPAs are rated higher than every other style, then this makes sense.

I wonder what the average age of a BA is? Or what the spread of age ranges is...as in how many are in their 20s, 30s, 40s...etc.

 

Good idea. Add a checkbox to the profile page, 5 year increments until 60+ @Todd

 

Oh yeah, forgot about that

 

Thanks for getting that so quickly.

60% 25-44 for visitors makes sense. People looking for reviews & ratings on the latest beers, unknown brewers, and unfamiliar styles before they find the brewers they trust for the styles they like.

I have a feeling that majority of registered users will skew higher (35-55?) and regular users higher still (45-65?).

 

Love this site - and (though possibly poorly) I review every beer I post on. A small blurb would be great in general and simple - I personally cannot find 1500 characters to say about any beer (good for those of you who can) BUT a couple hundred is easy.
God I hate getting/being old (relative) but UNTAPPD is where the youth goes and clearly many more new beers and (simple) ratings hit there before a beer may even be posted on this site which is unfortunate. I use UNTAPPD in this sense though have never posted there. Prefer a true review from someone who cares enough to say a few words about what they consumed.

Addendum: then you show me stats that 38% of users are under 35 on BA - mmmm so maybe UNTAPPD only for the really young??? I feel silly.

 

Wow, the 25-34 group is much larger than I thought it would be.
Good! BA needs the younger demo in order to grow and prosper.

 

I hate to disagree with your disagree but after I finally, finally learned how to resize a picture into 150x300 I have now done it enough times to actually agree that's it's easy enough to do. Having said that - if it's at all difficult to do (anything beyond a few steps, or that requires step by step instructions should be considered as such...), people won't do it (they aren't - hence most beers on BA these days don't have pictures). Not to mention the quality of the photos that I and lots of people are uploading are still very poor either from a resolution perspective, focus, whatever. I don't pretend to understand the difficulties but as someone mentioned, server space is probably a big one. To @StoutSnob40 's excellent points, this and ratings are the primary reasons why people go elsewhere for beer info. And let's not beat around the bush - most are going to untapped. While I do my best to upload pictures and beer details and remain a loyal BA follower, we need that App!! Nothing beats the quality of ratings and especially detailed reviews on BA so in the scheme of things maybe not a big deal, but every little bit counts, and when ratings are dropping by 20+%, definitely something to pay attention to... Cheers!

 

Remember Hefeweizen? Where are all the Hefeweizens? That Widmer knocked me out in Portland OR back in the 1980s.

 

Damn @Todd , that was quick! Thank you so much, as I find this really interesting.

Good to know a lot of people on this site are on the younger side.

That being said, that 1% of members in the 18-24 range is eye popping, albeit understandable. I feel as if anyone in that age range doesn’t have the attention span for a forum.

 

By nature people are lazy. Whatever excuse one can come up with to not do something, they'll use it. "Oh, this is too many steps..PASS."
One could argue though that even with a functioning mobile ap that so much ground has been lost to untappd that to say it's an uphill battle would be an understatement. As stated before, liquor stores used to always have BA scores under heavily sought after beers (or at least the ones near me did)...now...not a chance.
I dunno. I'm a rather cynical person but looking at the way things are now in the craft beer community, I'd firmly stand by saying that BA is for people serious about beers whereas untappd is purely dick measuring and swinging. It's pokemon for beer. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

Yup, couldn't agree more. I do my best for BA but you can only do so much. I agree that there is a big user gap in between BA and Untapped and if this app can make rating beers, taking pictures, etc. easier - it might draw some of those semi-serious people back to BA, if they left in the first place for those reasons. Maybe it will even draw in some less than serious folks in too, if they're wanted. As I'm sure you remember, some time ago, BA intentionally changed from a one click rating system to a 4 attribute rating system - and I know this turned a lot of people off - but it effectively made BA a place for serious beer dudes. In my [limited] knowledge of online beer ratings, there are really only two popular beer ratings vehicles - BA and Untapped, with the latter having far more users. There's another one owned by ABI but I pay it no respect. Point being it's an uphill battle, but one that's still being waged. I'm sure BA knows all this and it's probably been discussed in another post somewhere, who knows. Anyway, cheers again!