Are Tree House Ratings Stuffed?

It gets traded to the rest of the country. Try a can and you will see.

 

People trade for their beer all the time, check out this site's Trading Forums. Will be filled with be looking for (ISO) and trading (FT) Tree House Beers. Or people actually trek out to the brewery to get their hyped beers.
Cheers!

 

Definitely not ballot stuffing.

Their beer makes it all over the world - their Twitter is interesting and has pictures of their cans nearly everywhere imaginable.

Like is said above, their beer has gotten absolutely incredibly distribution due to secondary markets. And it's worth it, too.

 

They make really great beer! But there are plenty of breweries making beer that is just as good.. I don't truly understand why so many of their beers are on top 250 list, but my guess has always been that the list is a BA list, and this site is dominated by east coast folks, and then also hype fuels hype.

 

I beg to differ from others here. It definitely started As locals hyping the hell out of the product. It takes just 10 reviews to get A ba score registered. Once a beer reaches a certain number, I have never seen a beer deviate too far away from that starting number. People love comparing things off of a base number. It's just easier that way. So many 1-5 review newbies just pushing the beer score to 5. Hyping up your own locals for improved trade bait is a real thing

The beer also has to deliver. There is no doubt they are quality, but worlds better than other stuff? Nah. I've traded in the past and sometimes you feel obligated to give beers a higher score because of cost and shipping involved

Some of other halfs beers are pushing 4.6+ plus. Just months back, they were much steadier in the 4.2 range. I don't think their beers are better now compared to back then, but the hustling and trading has brought on people who over rate

 

I agree Tree House makes some great beer, but there are so many out there that are just as good or better. Before I came to Afghanistan, I got about 10 packages of beer from some very kind people that included Tree House, Trillium, Aslin, Other Half, Monkish, Tired Hands, RAR, Bissell Brother, and The Veil. In my opinion, the beer from The Veil blew Tree House and all of the others out of the water.

 

These are pretty much my thoughts, both on the rating system and ways to game it as well as Tree House itself. I don't know how the rating system should be changed (or if it should be changed at all), though, so I won't comment on that.

I have had nearly every "hyped" Tree House release (not including Doubleganger, King Jjjjjuliussss, or every single Curiosity), and honestly, they just don't do that much for me. They are generally good beers, and Green and Curiosity 13 are actually worthy of great status, but the likes of Julius, Alter Ego, Doppelganger, Very Green, Haze, Very Hazy, King Julius, In Perpetuity, and especially Juice Machine (the most disappointing beer of the last year to me) are hugely overrated. They exhibit no balance or subtlety whatsoever, and basically every beer tastes so similar to every other one that they end up indistinguishable from one another. Some (Juice Machine) even come off unfinished (and I like hazy NEIPAs, so it's not that I find their appearance "unfinished"), tasting like wort rather than a completed beer.

I also dislike what they've done to other styles of beer like Old Man ESB and Eureka Blonde. With Old Man (which is actually an above average example of the style), they get unfair praise for it being a Tree House product; it's nowhere near the best ESB; in fact it's not all that dissimilar in quality from Pabst's Old Tankard Ale, but you wouldn't know that by the ratings. Eureka is essentially another pale ale/session IPA, and calling it a blonde ruins people's expectations of a blonde ale and spits in the face of actual to-style blonde ales (which I admit is a bit of a broad category). I don't wanna go off on my stylistic adherence soapbox too much, so I'll stop there.

I do need to say that their coffee stouts are awesome, though, and I have yet to try any of their wilds/saisons, so I won't comment on them.

I'm much more a fan of Trillium because I feel that their beers have more nuance and tons more balance. I can see why the almost complete lack of bitterness in Tree House beers appeals to the masses; they're essentially IPAs for those who don't like IPAs in my mind.

In summary, Tree House makes good beers with a lot of mass appeal. The astronomical ratings are a combination of quality beers and homerism, the cyclical hype machine, self-fulfilling expectations, difficulty and cost of acquisition, hivemind, and brand image.

By all means, try them for yourself. I'm sure you'll find they are really quite good (they are, even if I come off fairly negative about them). I will take the plethora of easier to acquire and better options (in my mind) and leave the Tree House for the hype-chasers.

 

Don't worry, when Trade House finishes their expansion the hype will die down a little.

 

I hope so.

 

I am interested in seeing what impact the expansion has on both beer quality and availability. One thing that hasn't been mentioned is the reason that its only available at the brewery is because the demand is high enough to sell out every single week from the brewery. They don't even provide kegs to bars anymore. Their current facility is a 30 bbl capacity and their new one is going to be 50 bbl. They do 3 canning runs per week at usually 500 cases per canning as well as doing growler fills. That's a lot of beer to sell out week over week. On Wednesdays the per customer limit is usually about 12 cans give or take. Their brewery is in the middle of nowhere as well.

When they first started there really were few other breweries that made beer like them at that quality. In the past year or two there have been an explosion of NE IPA's that are easier to get and at least close in quality. Personally I find TH beer's to have a longer shelf life than other NE IPA's. Most NE IPA's I find start to fall off after a month but TH still taste good 2 months later. The look is the same, there's no floaters like other NE IPA's after that time as well. Now all that being said is it worth the effort? I'm not sure, time will tell. Sip Of Sunshine is a great example. Its a great beer and when it first came into MA it flew off the shelf within a half hour. Now its relatively easy to get. When/if TH is easier to get we might see something similar and there will be another brewery that's hyped in its stead.

 

It is always interesting to see what happens at blind tastings. Put them against other local hazey, hoppey, juicy beers, and the winner may surprise you. I do love everything I've had from them, I just believe there are as good or easier to obtain options in my own backyard.

 

They do 4 canning runs per week, occasionally 5. I'm betting it'll be similar to Trillium's setup where you can just go in and pick up a lot of beer, and there's the occasional rush based on release or time of the week. From the trends I see Trillium releases a batch and it lasts about a week or two.

 

Worlds better? Heavens no. But the Tree House beers I have had are hitting are scored as high, or higher than other NE IPAs. They're just a touch better than other options, and at the top level, there is only a fine line between podium level world class and just off the podium. Is that touch better worth the trading effort? Meh, depends.

That said, I wouldn't put any Tree House beers I've had at a 5. The closest was Doubleganger, but Westbrook's Two Claw and Trillium's Melcher Street are just as good IMO and available more frequently. Still haven't had Other Half, nor do I plan on pursuing it. There are Vermont breweries that I'll trade week after week for that some folks still don't talk about here. Yes, keep getting distracted by the hype train

I do agree about the baseline score determining a beer's future ratings, and about creating local whales. It'd be an interesting experiment to prove it.

OP: If Tree House is an option, visit! It's not bad stuff. Just don't drink it thinking it'll make every other beer afterwards taste like garbage, because it will not. I tried hard to find flaws in Julius and Haze when I reviewed them, and while they weren't perfect or an end-all-be-all beer, they were damn tasty and well executed.

 

Juice Machine blew away the hype for me, so much so that I didn't care as much for Julius and Green. Very Green was great but it wasn't Juice Machine. That said Treehouse isn't worth the hype for what it takes to get some, just too much of a pain in the ass and the gouging that usually goes on.