Beer review pet peeves

so, this is getting interesting...if you don't consider cost or can description vs. drinking experience in the rating you assign to "Overall", what DO you consider (if anything) in Overall that is not already captured in Look/Smell/Flavor/Feel?

 

I do consider the drinking experience to be part of the Overall. In fact, the actual enjoyment of the drinking experience is the majority of the overall. Why the bloody fuck should the label art, marketing fluff, price, or what other folks think about a beer have any effect on the beer, both in the 4 physical aspects and the Overall enjoyment?

 

So, what goes into the "drinking experience" as you call it, other than the look/smell/taste/feel?

 

Reviews that start with ‘I’m not really a fan of this style, but….’

 

I miss the drinkability category. I think that it would alter scores for certain styles, pastry stouts come to mind. I love them, but can’t drink more than 6oz before they become cloyingly sweet,

 

I associate a dry mouthfeel with astringency, often found in tea or wine.

 

So I am guilty of this sometimes because there are aspects of the beer review that aren't captured in the big four but I still want to give credit for. For example:

-Innovation and creativity: if a brewer does something completely new and/or creative I want to reward that effort, even if it needs some tweaking in the big 4

OR

-Since we are supposed to rate to style, I will adjust the overall for hybrid styled beers that doesn't score that well given it is not true to form but is a great beer.

 

Terry can answer for himself, but for me it is a combination of how well the ASTM work together combined with drinkability, which is what Overall used to be before becoming Overall. Hope this helps.

 

Knowing this was intended for @BBThunderbolt, and indeed interested in his response…. This keys into my thoughts about many of the responses in the entire thread.

Look/Smell/Taste/Feel, are supposed to be in response to the style guideline of the given beer. Overall is supposed to be the style be damed personal opinion of the experience.

Of course I may be mistaken. And certainly my reviews are from an amateur understanding of the styles. Still, there is an intention to understand and relate back to the style. If the first four categories are only personal preference then there is an opening for styles to drift. AND this drift most definitely does occur.

As for price and label art, sure, let them be captured within the Overall rating, as those factors can’t be totally eliminated from a subjective opinion anyway. In fairness, one ought to mention when these are consciously factored into the Overall rating.

 

Thanks for your input.
I looked at the BA "How to rate beer" yet again and found this about "Overall":
Describe your overall impression of the beer. Examples:

• How was the overall drinking experience?
• What did you find pleasurable or objectionable about it?
• Offer suggestions for improvement.

It seems to be the most loosely defined of the rating categories, perhaps as expected. IMO, it leaves it open to considering anything that influences the "...overall drinking experience". So, if the can was stupid expensive for the qualify and/or the perceived smell/flavors bore no resemblance to what the brewer writes on the can, then it seems the rater could downgrade the "Overall" numeric score if those features affected his enjoyment of the beer, although raters are certainly within their rights to have a different interpretation of the guidance.

 

Why a beer has been out for months, I’m not even in the local area, and I’m the person adding it as a new beer on here.

When I entered a beer and check back a year or so later and I’m still the only person. To rate/review it.

Long winded reviews as others mentioned. I’m really just skimming to look for a few key descriptors and seeing what is consistent among other reviewers so I can form a decision of whether I’ll like this beer or not. I don’t need a full paragraph just on how the beer looks. “Looks like OJ, has a 2 finger head that disappeared in about 2 minutes and incredible lacing on the glass” works just fine.

 

So if a brewer releases a “smoked malt Flanders red,” and it gets classified here as a Flanders red, you’ll penalize its taste score for having some smoke character even though it might be delicious and it’s what the brewer was aiming for and selling? And if it happens to get classified here as a “smoked beer” instead, you’d have a different review for it? If so, I can’t understand that approach, but I’m also having a hard time coming up with a satisfying example of a “hybrid styled beer.”

 

Eh, I complained about the opposite in the past - having to add everything local. Now I stick to adding beers as I review them. Otherwise, it'd take an hour or two a week of reviewing releases from across the city and incorporating them into the BA database. It doesn't seem worth while to me.

Even of our most popular local breweries (not Boulevard), there are only a handful of beers that have achieved 10+ reviews/ratings to get a BA score assigned. Meaning people are not participating in BA in my area. I've had to add beers elsewhere too. Seems to be more of a function of a lack of active members working against an increase in brewery production of unique beers.

 

I've not read many reviews, so I don't know how common this really is, but in the the handful I've read I often see people write, "Taste follows the nose." I was always confused by this. Isn't taste highly dependent on smell? Therefore, won't taste always follow the nose? I am not good at picking out specific flavors/notes in taste or smell, so perhaps I just don't get it. Are there beers that taste vastly different than they smell? I'm not saying there are not, I am just curious what some examples might be.

 

I wasn’t clear. I raise the score overall even though it doesn’t fit the style norms. Not penalize

 

To me, most of the time the taste and aroma are in step. Often enough, though, there will be some fairly dramatic reversal of prominence. I think I most often encounter it with hoppy ales that have tremendous fruity notes dominating the aroma but a flavor that has a piney/herbal bitterness front and center with fruitiness as a secondary aspect.

 

For me, the review would stay the same, but the numericals would vary between the two.

 

You would give category that much weight even though its categorization in one group vs the other is possibly an arbitrary decision by a third party? Even though beers get moved to different categories here over time?

 

I use that turn of phrase from time to time. If my review says the beer smells like clementines, yogurt and chicory and I write “the taste follows the nose,” it means “ditto,” the beer tastes like clementines, yogurt and chicory.

In most instances, there are actually some noticeable differences between the aroma and the taste. The beer might smell like clementines, yogurt and chicory, but tastes like nectarines, yogurt and coffee. For example.