Scoring: What do the numbers mean to you?

Educate the masses.

If you truly like beer, you ought to want to know more than, "Boy, that's really good!" But I started learning about beer before many BAs thought about stealing a sip from daddy's can, so I'm probably jaded.

 

I am an easy rater. I rate according to whether I like it, not necessarily according to how the style should be...as long as it is close, otherwise I will make not in my review.
Most beers, if drinkable are a 4.00 or thereabouts. Some like PtY and Westvleteren XII earn a perfect for me, and Zombie Dust comes close, as it is my go to in the fridge 99% of the time. Rarely for me will a beer rate in the low 3's or worse. If they do, they REALLY suck...IMHO

 

There is no zero in the BA rating scale, so the average for 1-5 is 3.75.

 

Is this a trick question?

BA rates on a 'curve'.

 

"Average" isn't the mathematical term in a rating system like this. There is zero reason to expect commercial beers to be evenly distributed across the entirety of the rating spectrum. We should expect them to cluster from that "average" up.

"Average" in this context refers to an attribute that approximates an acceptable but not exceptional character for the style. That should be near the bottom of the pile for commercial beers

 

I recall reading somewhere (probably Brewing Classic Styles by Zainasheff and Palmer) that most commercial beers would be scored in the upper 30s out of 50 by BJCP judges, and that was written 20 years ago. While some of us (myself included) may moan about diminishing diversity, there isn't much room to argue that beer quality is much higher than it was then.

 

Oops! Math isn't my strong suit tonight, but you did good. I divided the 15 by 4 but it should have been 5 like you did. Something didn't seem right with that 3.75 as the 'average' that I gave but I didn't question myself.

 

Yeah thar seems very reasonable to me. Sure there's outliers, but most beers put out into the market are fairly good representations of their style

 

I've always felt there should be two scores. One for overall, and one to style.

This way you can determine which beers people simply thought tasted the best, and which one's were best to-style.

If a Pilsner gets a score over 4.0 it means a helluva lot more than an IPA being over a 4.0.

 

22/68 German Pilsners rated 4 and over by me.

21/39 AIPAs rated 4 and over. Not sure if this just means I have a fair palate or something else.

 

It would be cool to have some indication of how true to style a given beer is

 

I honestly thought that was the whole idea of rating beers on BA -- at least originally. Now it just seems like a popularity contest.

https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/how-to-review-a-beer.241156/

"Keep style in mind." Yeah, it's not the backbone of rating rules, but it definitely adds more to objectivity when considering what's in your glass.

 

Any beer rated above 4 may not be great depending on style.

If you look at the top Munich Helles list, already at number 53 you have a beer rated under 4. That's Schlenkerla Helles.

At the bottom of the top Hazy Imperial IPA list at number 100, the rating is a 4.44. Higher than any Munich Helles on this site. You'd have to scroll pretty far down that list if it extended further to find an IPA rated below 4. I assume there can't be thousands of great Hazy Imperial IPAs...but maybe there are?

 

I agree especially with my local scene. The bad breweries are usually all closed and those that stay open benefit from staff consolidating as places change. I've had some bad local beers recently, but more often than not they're mediocre at the very worst.

 

I think this is the issue with any crowd sourced rating. Ultimately, it's not realistic to expect a group of unvetted and untrained people to adhere to a standard framing when rating quality.

The question we face if we want to make a better system is how we handicap those ratings to account for biases and ignorance