It's Time to Embrace Ratings

For 99% of us, it is subjective. Do I like this beer, would I drink it again?

We are all style biased. Most of the year my go to is IPA, hoppy, realm. Cold weather dark's make their way into my realm.

Whether I purchase at a bottle shop, grocery, brewery, or consume at a brewery, it simply boils down to, do I want another one. When I visit a brewery, is there a beer that screams "I gotta come back and get another one" or is it a "one and done" at some point. In reality, 60%+ of breweries meet this level.

I live in Asheville, some amazing breweries here. Some get rave reviews yet, I can honestly say there is not a single beer they offer that calls to me to return. Sadly, we go there on occasion not for the beer, but to meetup with friends and their food truck. The beer is good, but I've yet to find one that where I tell myself "I'm coming back for more of this". Exactly the opposite at other breweries. Beer kicks butt, and I'm back for more... soon.

When I rate a beer on untapped, it represents only how much "I" like that beer. Does it represent the style, or other criteria some may use to rate beer... don't know, don't care.

 

Ripped the words right outta my keyboard
. I only use my phone to check ratings while shopping and check in on selected threads. I will never use a mobile to review, add a beer, or post pics. I agree that the quality of participation is most likely different between mobile and desktop users but it is unclear what the relative value is between adding a lot of content and just using the site to look at reviews or read threads. Im sure both have some value.

 

Please, dear Jobu, no. As I mentioned upthread, the same beer gets entered under slightly different names regularly (caps vs no caps, the word 'The' at the beginning of the name vs not) and the rest of the info is more often incorrect. Let BA users enter beers here. I use UT, but man it's a pain in the ass to enter a beer there, especially on the app.

 

How do you distinguish between smart phone and tablet?

 

I sort of agree with you, and I sort of disagree with you here. I don't think one has to be in possession of the beer to enter it, but just surfing the web to add beers (and thus add karma points) rubs me wrong. If someone is at a brewery and sees 6 beers that aren't here, but only drinks 2, sure, go ahead and add all 6. But for someone who has never been to a given brewery, and might live on the other side of the continent and be unlikely to ever go to that brewery, rewards that someone who does actually visit the brewery would have gotten seems wrong.

We had a member in the NW forum who would do that very thing, just cruise through brewery pages and add beers. It's frustrating to see so many beers added by the same member, especially one who rarely reviews.

 

I see this as another plus for using the barcode reader to distinguish beers. One barcode, one beer. No duplicates.

 

No. For example, when the "hazy" beers started being cranked out, many of us wanted a separate style, while many others said "it's all just IPA, no need for a new style". Now, we have that. Like someone posted upthread, saisons should be broken out into a few more styles. Brewers keep throwing stuff at the walls, some of it sticks, and it's a disservice to both brewers and drinkers to keep jamming more beers under the same umbrellas.

 

What about draft only beers? Small breweries who hand fill from crowler machines? Breweries that package, but don't sell off-site? Not every label has a barcode.

 

I review beers from a computer because it has always felt awkward to do it from a phone. Most of the beers I have while in public go un-reviewed if I can't take decent notes.

When I imagine mobile reviews I think of simplicity. Would it be possible to add something like a drop-down list or wheel that consists of popular traits for people who rate? For example, a person rating a beer who doesn't want to review it fully can click fruit, then cherry. They could look at the appearance and pick hazy, then somewhat hazy or very hazy, etc. This might also help new reviewers/raters think about what they are smelling and tasting. I would imagine if there are more mobile users it might be easier for them to thumb through things rather than typing them out.

I know a pre-assigned list of traits isn't ideal because it bins people into thinking a certain way rather than relying on their own senses but it could end up being useful.

 

I like to read reviews and note the reviews from users I have some experience with when looking for new stuff to try. That said, I myself like to review, but have just found it to be a little tough to do of late. I’m generally drinking one beer a day with supper. My wife would kill me if I had the phone out reviewing a beer while the family eats. She would be right to do so. So, I don’t review much anymore.

I’d like to see the word count either lowered or disappear. I like reading a well written review, but sometimes, ‘hazy, dank with notes of citrus and a pithy bitterness, creamy, recommended’ is enough.

When I joined, the user could input a rating without the pull down menus for the five attributes. I liked that. I find I have a sense of what a beer should be rated (say 4.15/5) based on recent comparables I’ve tried. I find myself more often than not trying to force the attributes to meet my overall impression. I’d be curious to know if the average rating was different back when one could do this. I’d like this option again.

 

As long as we have some wishin' going on; I'd like to revisit the idea of giving the scores in each category in .10 increments, instead of .25. We had this for a short while, and I found it helped distinguish between two very similar beers better than the quarter-point increments.

 

After an almost decade-long hiatus I’ve been back on ba regularly for about 2 years.
I visit almost daily. Usually multiple times a day.
I still have yet to log onto my account a computer even once, in the last 2 years.
Reviewing would be a lot easier with a keyboard, but it’s just not happening for me obviously.

 

There was a time I had reviewed 100% of a brewery's portfolio on BA. That's misleading though because I only added what I tried.

Someone several states away updated their profile at some point since then. Honestly, I'm grateful. One less step to keep me, or others, from rating/reviewing.

Sitting on a number of LA area reviews, but I'm not sure I want to go thru the trouble of adding twenty beers to various breweries. Would rather just transpose my notes into reviews and be done with it. Oh well.

 

We read. I NEVER, rate without an review. And I'm sorry I don't kiss, for example, New Belgium's ass, their Voodoo Ranger Imperial is an pathetic excuse for an beer, an embarrassing effort, plain and simple. Sometimes, it just, frigging, stinks. As my son would say, peace out, ya'll. (I added the ya'll, lmao).

 

Only reviews i have written have more to do with how i felt than the taste of the beer. To me, beer is all about feeling more than taste. I've had beer that wasn't so good but made me feel great. Automatic 5/5 FTW. You want some cicerone shit go stand in line at Monkish and talk with hazebois about the greatness of citra and mosaic

 

(re: beer stats)
WHEEE! I swear I just heard angels sing.

 

Whats Beer Stats?

 

various statistics related to beer ratings, including statistical distributions in graphical format of how we as individual BA membets rated beers. For example, your average beer rating, but much more. I'm an engineer and to me data is like crack.