Idea: Allow cellared/aged ratings separate from main beer rating

Eh, need to think on it some, but, I think I'm gonna vote no. Folks can just note the age in their reviews. Plus, most aged beers are likely already a vintage/varient that has its own listing.

 

Definitely vote yes. Trying to find out how a beer ages through reviews on this site is a nearly hopeless task, unless there are only six reviews, & then they're probably all fresh. At this point it's just a guessing game!

 

Yes & yes

 

Like I said, I'm still open on the subject, just my initial response was 'no'. Maybe it's one of the aspects I don't really care about, so....

Shrug?

 

It would be nice to have some sort of mechanism to organize these reviews. If there had been something when I had my cellar I probably wouldn't have 'lost' so many beers to old age. Although I still buy cellarable beers, I don't keep them very long any more.

 

I agree. I would be more in favor of just a simple “cellared” tab where you could click and it would just organize all the reviews that were specified as cellared by the reviewer into a separate list. Then you could see a review for 6, 12, 18, whatever age specified and beyond without having to do so much click work. I’m not sure though because I don’t design websites, myself.

 

It's a good idea but the inconsistency in what people consider cellaring could really influence the results. Person A cellars beer at a constant 55F and reports his barleywine @ 6 years is stellar, no off notes blah blah blah. Person B cellars the same barleywine in a dark room but one that can see 30F spikes through the year. He reports oxidation, off flavors etc. A buddy of mine was in the same beer club I was, his stored in an uncontrolled temperature garage mine in a 52f refrigerator. After a couple of years the differences in beer tastes would often be striking.

 

I think it would be too difficult for the average user. Did they cellar it under ideal conditions? Did it sit in a hot distributor warehouse before they bought it? Is their calendar correct?

If people want to note it use their write up. Otherwise I think this is a solution looking for a problem. Would be cool but not going to be reliably useful in practice.

 

Tangentially related - in my experience The Abyss ages better than any beer I've had. And I recently had it back to 8 or 9 years. Don't recall which. Admittedly, at that point, it was a bit beyond it's prime.

I've also got a 2021 Alaskan Smoked Porter that I'll be cracking at the 10 year mark. Supposedly, that beer ages wonderfully.

 

If I'm reviewing a beer with age, that I've had fresh (almost always) I will note the bottle date, and consumption date in the original post and add my notes on the aged beer below it.
I will also not adjust the initial scores unless I feel something is drastically off and the beer is not exceptionally old.
My reasoning is that I feel the 'fresh' beer is most closely representative of what the brewery intended to beer to be.

 

Given the oft-had arguments about forcing a review, I am doubtful that many people would take advantage of this. For the presumed few that might, I assume the beer would show up as "being had" and get in the list of those having been rated/reviewed even without a score?

But spitballing... I wonder if there could be a checkbox as a flag that simply indicates the rating/review is from a less-than-ideal situation. Perhaps this could be used in some backend fashion to minimize the impact of ratings so flagged on overall scores. This is sounding ambitious even to me as my spit is drying up.

 

Ok, I admit that I am a data junkie. More information about aging is better in reviews, but the challenge is how to incorporate the many good observations, ideas, and opinions in the posts above mine. It needs to be easy and voluntary, but promote searching/sorting. The issue of aging method details is a thorny one and as one who has written a myriad of industry procedures and specifications I know the key is to have clearly defined terms to facilitate the correct selection of multiple choice answers. For example, if the aging was characterized by ABC methodology and environmental controls, then the correct selection of aging method used is "A" and not "B" (etc. etc.) A really bad example (IMO) of this is in some of the descriptors were are asked to select for rating Places...far too subjective with far too little guidance on what constitutes a "3" vs. "4" rating, for example.

 

I assure you, it does.

 

I'd vote "no", as folks can indicate how old the beer is in their review.

 

All good points. And I actually like the idea of having a more direct way of getting a decent idea from a few trusted individuals (i.e. BAs who would take the time) of how aging a particular beer might pan out. It seems like it might come down to a question of juice vs squeeze.

Tangentially, I think a lot of what you bring up plays out as more and more people have and rate/review a beer. The number and breadth or ratings reviews even this out a bit, which comes in to play when we (in many other threads than this one) debate the efficacy of certain top beer lists

Which is to say, if it can be done in a "trusted" crowd sourced way to make it useful to more people (i.e. in the overall ratings, to help people who don't take time to read reviews), that'd be a super win-win. A simple win would be a way for those interested to find the data easily.