Tweaks to the Top Rated Beers

Nice, I just looked at The Beers of Fame and Most Popular Beers, good stuff.
Lots of Trillium and Tree House on the Top Rated Beers New.

 

Sorry if my suggestion sent you down a rabbit hole!

This actually swings the pendulum toward beers with fewer ratings more than I'd personally want, but as you said, it's probably more in-line with the industry. Some of the best beers in <insert state> might be from a brewpub that doesn't distribute and you've never heard of - and is maybe worth checking out if you're traveling there...

 

I applaud the effort for constant improvement and to make better lists. Personally, I'd like to see the minimum ratings needed to qualify for "Beers of Fame" be higher. There are some beers on the new list I have never heard of and have less than 2 ratings/year (average) - to me this does not scream "Fame".

Thanks for the tweaks and the explanation.
Cheers!

 

Can you please explain why a beers are higher on one list and lower on others? For example Henna b3 which is #260 on the top beer rankings and #38 on the top american imperial stout list, where BA Popinski (BAPBM) is #345 on the top beer rankings but higher #34 on the top imperial american stout list. Thank you

 

Wow I lost 20 some beers from the top list. It does make me cringe a little to see some more stouts by JWB and Tree House on there. Some of the new beers also seem to have very few ratings. It does seem to reflect current trends without being completely overwhelmed by NE IPA or pastry stouts.

 

Same, all my hard work down the drain!

 

Is there a Tree House beer that is not in the top 250?

 

I'm kind of sad to see zero New Glarus beers on the list. Then again, if I were to guess about the list's composition without having beers like the one in my avatar in mind I wouldn't necessarily expect to see any 4% (non-wild, non-BA, not very sour) fruit beers making an appearance. However, I did notice that there are two NG beers in the top 25 on the beers of fame list. Interesting that being a top 25 beer all-time is not enough to land you in the current top 250 overall.

 

It WASN'T sarcasm....

 

I went from 125 to 109. Was all excited getting to 125. Took me a long time with a lot of trading. All these beers I never heard of suddenly on the list. Liked it way better before, sorry guys.

 

I applaud improvements and corrections to the algorithms but do feel bit bummed for similar reasons as others have stated - my top beers went down by about 20% and I now have no idea what they were before the change. This isn’t the first time a change in Top 250 formula has resulted in downward adjustments and while I hate to admit it, it just kinda takes the fun out of the chase.

Giving newcomer beers a chance to punch into the ranks, while a noble and admirable gesture, seems off-kilter to me – isn’t that the point of the Top 250 New Beers? Shouldn’t Top 250 Beers reside somewhere between Top New Beers and Beers of Fame?

I would actually rather see some kind of a waiting period before new beers can get entered into the Top 250, and would rather a higher minimum number of beer ratings to qualify (I counted 3 beers in the top 50 with 75 or less ratings). And including Limited / One-Off beers like Trillium Permutations in the Top 250 has always seemed off to me, even if for only a year – this makes no sense to me at all. Maybe give them their own list, maybe include them in Top 250 New Beers, but certainly not Top 250.

I guess either I don’t fully agree with these changes, or I don’t understand them or get the rationale. I’m personally less concerned with whether these changes reflect industry standards, but I’ve also come to respect that you guys (BA) know your shit and are more about leading the industry rather than following, so I’ll go with these changes and assume they’re based on more insight than I am aware of (pretty easy assumption!). However, please take my unvarnished opinions and suggestions in good stride and keep up the good work. Cheers!

 

I think this is a great idea. I'd add that it works really well because it matches the timeframe where you guys retire one-off beers. Also, in today's brewing world, brewers often have significant batch to batch variation when they first come out with a beer. Keeping one-offs or even very new beers off the list for one year helps lessen the impact of that variable. I'd advocate making this change for all the top 100 lists - definitely styles and probably states too.

@hopley 's points summed my thoughts up fairly closely. There was about 30% of me that liked the change and about 70% that didn't. I'd raise the minimum (both to qualify for the lists and in your bayesian formula) to 20 or 30 because I don't think 10 is statistically significant. You could have one reviewer checking the wrong beer and it still having a decent impact at that level.

Here's an example - I've been trying to complete the IL top 100 list, and More's BA Karma is now on that list after the change with 12 check-ins. I live one mile from More, but to my knowledge they've never even had it at their taproom; they've only tapped that beer at two different festivals. I have no doubt it's a great beer, but it's hard to imagine the 12 people who attended either FOBAB or GI's Stout Fest two can effectively judge that beer compared to a beer like Deth's Tar that has been out for a number of years. Based on the timing, I frankly think one of the 12 ratings is an error from More's non-BA version of the beer.

 

Great ideas!

 

While I understand what you guys have done with the Top Rated Beers (Top 250) list after reading through this thread, today officially ends my pursuit of completing this list after realizing the criteria has changed yet again (granted, this time, due to a perceived defect). I started this quest in earnest about 3-4 years ago, and then about a year ago I realized I had made great progress and started aggressively trading for/buying what I hadn't had yet. I also reviewed the list about once a month or so to to keep up with the new beers that appeared after having enough ratings to make the cut. I got it down to 9 that I hadn't tried or didn't currently have in the cellar, and now that number has ballooned back to about 30.

I appreciate new beers coming out and becoming deserving of a spot on the list, but the seemingly constant evolution of what defines the list has become frustrating. Some people may find this evolution exciting, but unfortunately I do not as someone who was trying to complete it.

Obviously this is a #fwp post that doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things; just some feedback from someone who's used your site to track everything since I started this hobby back in 2012.