Beer review fatigue.

Tons of threads on this, everyone states the way they rate. Simply put if you don't like rating, and think it takes away from the enjoyment of your beer then don't do it. I rate because numbers are pretty much shit. If I look at my ratings, I am pretty generous dude. But if I am at a bar, and I feel like a dank puppy, then I am pulling out the phone and checking it out. You can't get that from numbers. I drink based on craving. Sometimes it is a dank ipa, other times it is a juicy ipa. Number can't give you that. So simply put, if it drains your soul don't do it, others will happily review it.

 

I go through cycles (currently on a review kick).

But I will say in general, there are a few factors that lead me to review, and all cases that don't fit are based on a whim. I will always review (or try to) if:

• I add a beer (almost no "try to" here, if I can't review, I won't add)
• it's a beer with ratings but no reviews
• it's a local beer that needs more reviews

To reiterate, I will review in many other cases (NBS is an easy example) - but I feel where the reviews are useful, I hope I can add a review that others use. Given the above situations, I try to be as objective as possible. I think that giving BAs such an opinion is better than nothing - and hopefully spurns others to add their support or counter to my thoughts.

In most other cases, it's hit or miss. I get the OP's thoughts, and can focus on the people I am with, without a problem. But I also enjoy new things, and have a constant companion who is adventurous as well and enjoys our discovery attempts and is fine with my behavior in the cases mentioned above... mostly

 

I'm sure the folks who made the beer would prefer if you just enjoyed it, and then maybe even another , "in the moment". Stop feeling guilty about doing what comes naturally. You're on the right track.

 

Somehow, and not unreasonably, this just came to mind, courtesy of Msgr. Whitman:

"When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars."

 

I feel the same way much of the time, especially if the words don't come easily, or are "slippery" (?).
Mostly I review ones that have few to none. That is at least helpful ( I hope) . If there's already 70gazillion reviews I figure a rating, if that, is fine.

 

Sometimes I feel a little tired of it and feel like my reviews get repetitive for styles with similar characteristics. I got into BA by looking at reviews to see if I would like a beer, and when I signed up I did it with the intent of becoming an advocate and giving back to the community by describing and rating the beers. It does get a bit tiring and repetitive at times, but it's not obligated and it is all for fun and community. Nowadays I take my time and just put down notes as I'm drinking the beer. Things are usually never exact and looking at everybody's reviews together can be a good way to determine what a beer may be like.

 

I wrote about 550 reviews but after awhile it got old plus typing is hard for me due to Parkinson's so now I just rate beers

 

Uh... ya. It's called having children.

In all seriousness, most hobbies don't hold the same "mystique" after well over a decade or so.

 

Tried reviewing for a while.
Tried mostly ratings only for a while.

Noticed a parrern.

I'm cheap and only want to repeat beers I enjoy while avoiding wasting money on repeats of beers I don't much care about.

The pattern I found was that among the beers I only rated I was wasting more money and some enjoyment on doing repeats than I was with doing repeats of beers I had reviewed. Something about reviewing improved my ability to remember which beers I wanted to avoid.

Then I also realized that having reviewed a beer didn't decrease my enjoyment of a beer the 2nd, 3rd .... 99th time around. Especially after I also realized that there are many beers whose complexity (and my enjoyment) seemed to increse when doing repeats. Some times I'll buy a whole case of something I really enjoyed just to track for myself how the beer from a single batch changes/matures with spreading out consumption over a month or so, e.g., some heavily hopped beers improve for me with a week or two of bottle age. (It also makes it easier when I just want a 6 pack of someypthig I like to simply look at what's there, check a few bottle dates, and be on my way again without wasting time or being one of those ... who has to whip out a device to look up something up online. )

So to save money and invest in ongoing enjoyment of the beers I really like I'm back to mostly reviewing.

 

I have experienced similar feelings. I was very keen on making 1000 unique beers. Then after that I noticed that my desire to try new beer did not really wane but I found that I simply enjoyed certain beers and could drink them to excess with enormous satisfaction. I went form a new beer a day to a new beer each week. Now I love New Beer Sunday. For me that thread preserves the ceremony of the new beer and is a nice place to put on a little finery and really wax poetic. As I learned about beer I also developed an interest in food and beer pairing and I haunt that thread as well as WBADYN because that is a groovy place to just hang out. Reviewing beer is a skill. You can't forget how to do it and it is always with you. I have learned to make beer recently and am right now biting my nails to see how my IPA will turn out. So I started out reading, then reviewing and now pairing and brewing. I would say this is a great hobby that keeps leading you to the next wonderful new thing!

 

Reviewing helps me appreciate beer more. Ranking reminds me whether I liked the brew but reviewing reminds me why. Can't say I'm very good at it but capturing my first impression is for me, like daily exercise, a good discipline.

 

Agreed.

I write reviews more for myself than for other people. I don't think too many people would want to read my reviews anyway, so it works out. It's fun and it helps me remember why a beer was good/bad/average and whether it's worth trying again.

 

I have always wrote a beer down that's new i feel it helps maximize my enjoyment. It helps make the beer memorable. Recently i write it down then put it on here to. It can get exhausting when i sometimes just want to have a beer. In that case i grab one I've had before. I feel writing makes it more memorable. I have over two thousand different beers wrote down and i could probably tell you if i had that beer before or not. On a side note i don't take ratings so seriously here because you got some beers being rated highly just because it's hard to get. Then you get people that say i hate barleywines and how it tastes like a barley wine. Then they review it really low even if it's a really good one just because they don't like it.

 

I used to review beer quite frequently, but burnt out on it. I like the rate option myself. It's nice to sit down and enjoy a beer without feeling the need to review.

 

I stopped reviewing/rating about 7 years ago, for a few reasons.

For one, it began to almost feel like homework. It wasn't adding to my appreciation of the beer, in fact it felt like it took some of the fun away of simply just being in the moment and enjoying my beer.

Also, I began to realize how futile it was to review a beer when the same beer can differ so dramatically depending on a big number of factors of which I often would have no knowledge of (is this beer fairly fresh or has it been sitting in a warm warehouse for a month? Did it travel thousands of miles to get to me and would it be fair then to judge that beer against one that was made a few miles away? etc). If I went back and re-drank all the beers I've had before in a blind test I have no doubt my ratings would be much different than they are currently. So what's the point unless I am going back and reviewing the same beers over and over again, making sure it's under differing conditions (from tap, from bottle, at home, at a bar etc) and constantly updating my ratings?

As discussed many times here before, the ratings systems here are largely a popularity contest. The more subtle style beers have no chance of ever scoring as high as an average IPA/DIPA or imperial stout on this site.

But mainly it goes back to me just simply wanting to enjoy the beer without over analyzing it.

 

I review all new beers (not samples), because my memory sucks, and I talk beer constantly at work, and with my my buddy that owns a craft beer bar. I don't write long dissertations, just key notes to remind myself of what I liked or didn't like, and to pass that info onto others.

That said, it sometimes does feel like self imposed homework, and can take away from the enjoyment of the beer