Should we split up the Top 250 Rated Beers?

The top rated list is just that, the list of the top 250 current beers on BA. If you add other stipulations to it then it is no longer the list of the top 250 current beers on BA and becomes the top beers with the x stipulations, thereby defeating the purpose of it being called the “Top”

 

I thought the purpose of the Top 250 was to reflect the best regarded beers, that are currently in production, by the BA rating community. Adding other stipulations to that would.defeat that purpose as.it would become a different list. I don't see any reason to remove.the current top list but see a lot of value in creating new lists that serve other purposes

 

How about almost none.
I love when people disagree and then build a strawman to knock down instead of addressing any actual points made. Better yet, say those people just aren't smart or sophisticated enough to understand.
I think you are 100% on the right track here, Todd. 75% percent are saying "yes" and they are 100% just as informed and sophisticated beer drinkers as the 25%.

 

I voted no only because it give me incentive to find these beers. I travel often with my wife in our travel trailer. We travel to breweries just for this reason. It is an obsession of ours.

 

I would say leave the Top 250 list alone but create a legend with explanation of the meaning of each classification of acquisition difficulty. Maybe a 1-5 black Diamond rating…1 being easiest to acquire and 5 being the ultra difficult. In the legend explain what each Diamond of difficult mt to acquire means so people reading the list understand. Like 4 and 5 black diamonds…you’ll never find in any stores for example, 5 diamonds you need to enter a lottery or expect to stand in line for hours once a year etc. just an idea. Only would have to do this for the top lists on BA and not for all beers on the site so should be pretty easy for the moderators to mark them.

 

What if the top 250 had a maxium of 10 beers by style? Allow more representation of other beers style into the list….guarantees that at least 25 different styles get represented in the best 250 beers of the world listing. Just an idea to toss out.

 

Good point. I recall the seasonal tags and you're definitely correct that there were several that were incorrect.

Thanks for your response.

 

Sometimes words hurt, man.

 

Ahhh, then it has no real purpose. It is merely an intellectual exercise, an observation of data points, with no practical value. I think it is telling most of the people who voted believe it should have a purpose/practical value, and voted yes.

 

If it doesn't have a purpose or practical value to you, then don't use it. But don't say that it doesn't have a purpose or practical value when it's been described unnecessarily several times over now that it does, and you're choosing to ignore it because of your own bias against it.

 

Wouldn't the poll indicate it doesn't have a purpose or practical value to 75% of the people?

 

BeerAdvocate itself doesn't have a purpose or practical value to at least 75% of human beings, and if we're being honest it's probably more like 99.999%. So let's scrap the website while we're at it.

Popular opinion isn't something I hang my hat on in discussions like this.

 

I spend most of my time with the Canada top 100 list. I am not sure if what I don’t like about it has any crossover to the Top 250 list. The lack of change to the Canada Top 100 list is due to the small pool of Canadian users actively rating beers on the site. Without any access to data, I can only go by my experiential observations. I would presume that the number of Canadian reviewers/raters today is much lower than it was when I joined 7+ years ago. The list certainly reflects this assumption. The list is also skewed towards beers that are distributed to the US. Dieu du Ciel! and Collective Arts have numerous entries on the list. The former makes a lot of very good beers. The latter is decidedly average compared to what is available locally throughout the country.

These two things contribute to list that is more in line with a ‘Canadian Beers of Fame’ or ‘Widely available’ list than a Top 100 list. That is fine of course, but also paints a very out-of-touch picture of the Canadian beer scene. My fear with a change to the Top 250 list along the lines proposed would be that it becomes less exciting for many in the way the Top Canada list has become for me.

Again, I’m not sure this translates to the Top 250 list and the concerns over it. What I have wanted to see with the Canadian list is making older ratings, and out of country ratings, worth less to some degree in the calculation, I think the list would better reflect a truer Top 100.

That said of course, doing this skews ratings in a different direction, one that I would prefer, but likely some others wouldn’t. It also doesn’t account for the Untappd problem. In Canada, Quebec beer aficionados tend to rate local beer much higher than in other provinces. So, the Untappd top list looks like a Quebec top list. There are some fairly convincing social and political reasons for why this occurs. And, the beers at the top are all excellent and reflect a more current picture of the Canadian beer world than the list here. The provincial lists are much more useful on the whole though, due to what appears to be a very different tacit rating criteria shared by drinkers in the other provinces. .

I don’t know. The lists were one of the things that drew me to the site originally. I find them to be far less interesting now. That is partly because of how little the one I look at most has changed despite huge changes to the beer world here. But, also, I don’t really care much about ‘ticking’ any more.

I suppose whatever makes the lists most exciting to a majority of users would be my vote.

 

A curiosity in and of itself, or an intellectual exercise with no goal other than to display a result, is not a practical purpose. Just saying it is doesn't make it so.

This site isn't an intellectual exercise. It s a business. The goal of the business is to help breweries to sell beer. 75% of the people who voted in the poll want to split up the list so that it is better at doing that.

 

You're trying too hard to separate this list from the greater purpose of this site, because you personally want one to continue to exist and the other to not, instead of stepping back and recognizing the absurdly contradictory nature of your statements.

Just as this site isn't an intellectual exercise, for the same reason you yourself listed, neither is the top list.

prac·ti·cal
/ˈpraktək(ə)l/
adjective

1. 1.
   of or concerned with the actual doing or use of something rather than with theory and ideas.

The list curates a collection of actively brewed, highly-regarded beers for those of us who care to seek out the best of the best as determined in the aggregate.

It serves as a reference point we otherwise wouldn't have had any way of knowing, outside of someone writing an article listing their favorite beers. Articles being the opinion of one person, or some collection of persons, often having nothing to do with beer other than being an entertainment and/or food writer for some magazine in some metro locality, you can always take such lists with a much larger grain of salt, particularly by questioning what role marketing and advertising played in the compilation thereof.

This list is far more practical than an opinion article, ergo far more useful to beer consumers, as well as vendors, bars, and even brewers and breweries. It provides inspiration to explore the world of beer, visit breweries and attend festivals in a more targeted manner. It helps us keep a bearing on what to look out for that might open a new world of beer to us, good or bad.

The beer on this list isn't the only beer sold in pursuit of completing this list. If a brewery is on the list, their pedigree tends to be tested as far as the rest of their beer is concerned, and often, so too will the local area's offerings--maybe brewers left and started their own competing breweries, or joined on somewhere else that seems to be making waves. Or maybe there's just a really solid beer culture in that town, in part because of that brewery, or the roots it grew from. Then there's the fact that these beers have historically often commanded a pursuit of comparatively valued or similar brewed and aged beers in return in the trading community. This all generates more interest and exploration, and inspires actual action in enthusiasts.

I'd wager that the Top 250 list has generated far more economic activity than the Beers of Fame list, because the Beers of Fame list got that way by popular consumption more generally, whereas the Top 250 list is a lot harder to get ahold of, and in turn inspires the quest, which ultimately costs a lot of time (money) and money (money). It may have even generated far more economic activity than any of us could imagine, considering its longstanding yet everchanging presence in the craft beer community as a whole.

Now, are you just going to ignore everything I said, again, and repeat your whole intellectual exercise schtick once more?

 

No, that's not what it indicates. It indicates that 75% of the people who voted want to "split it up", which could mean quite a few things.

 

Good idea! I haven't read all the posts but maybe an all time top 250? I guess the way it is now with retired and rotating/seasonal beers. Then you can have an idea of what historically was the best beers of all time. But I do like the idea of a year round top 250 list. Keep and add. Thanks!

 

I read your your definition of practical. Did you? Refer to my statement that 75% of people who responded want to make the list more practical.

There are folks who want the list to be an intellectual exercise. They have responded in this thread. There are those who want the list to stay the same because they fear there will be less challenge to their ticking and completionism if it is revised. At least you finally came out and admitted that the practical purpose of it you see is to make things as difficult as possible for tickers/completionists. I think this also hits the nail on the head to explain the disparity in the voting.

Anyway, nice discussion. I'm out. Cheers!

 

Ease or difficulty of obtaining a beer has no impact on the quality of the beer.

Perhaps a separate list of the Top 250 Most Difficult To Obtain Beers should be created.

 

I genuinely do not think you did, and you certainly did not make any sort of connection from the definition to my illustration of how it is practical.

And you reveal yourself with your vindictive re-writing of history, putting words in my mouth that I did not say.

You are emotionally connected to the idea that this list be demolished, while I'm countering your hyperbole directly with a sober analysis of the list's practical use.

Accessible =/= practical.