I think as long as they are “active”, they’re fair game. Many (not all) people are probably more likely to rate a beer if it already exists. I would imagine many casual users aren’t comfortable, or won’t take the time, or don’t know how to add a beer. I emphasize “active” though. I don’t think there’s any point to add retired or old beers just for the sake of numbers.
While you make a valid point, there is value to listing retired beers for the historical record. It’s not “just for the sake of numbers.” Doing it just for the numbers may be fun, but would be of little benefit. Fortunately BA has a sort to separate retired entries, and it is a good idea to report a retired beer when knowingly posting one. However: Enlarging the dataset helps to show how dynamics change in a specific brewery, a given region, or the industry as a whole. There are myriad other reasons for expanding the historical record. It’s also good for individual consumers as it adds context to a current tap list and helps BeerAdvocate get hits. It also helps individuals who remember some beer from back when and are seeking a memory bump.
All valid points that most people won't look at as being important, but they're still valid. Another point that should be considered are some BA members who came here from Rate Beer with a list of the beers they accumulated over on that site before its demise. Some of them may have already added their beers here already, some of them may have decided to wait until they have time to do it, and some are waiting until a method for electronic transfer may become available. Whichever, many/most of those beers are older and will be in a retired status. But these members want a home for them so they can track their beer consumption history and ratings here.
As I'm doing my best to drive the moderators crazy, duplication happens. I find when I am on the brewery beer list here and select display ALL, it's still pretty easy to create a duplicate entry. Navigating back and forth between sone really wonky brewery websites and the list, its almost inevitable to make a mistake. I have done it a lot these last few weeks. I see it when I go back to the ALL list, refresh it and see the duplicate in the alphabetical list. Lousy explanation... The way to rectify is to report an update which I assume requires a moderator to fix the mishap. @Todd - wondering how hard it would be to have an "oops" window like we have to edit posts. Then I (and others) who are adding beers can self-correct a duplicate or other error when we are adding beers. I mean, I see it right away since I double check, then report the update. Would it take some stress off the mods if we could self-correct?
Warning!: Here comes some math. See below posts. From midnight Friday, Feb 6th to midnight Sunday, Feb 8th, 918 beers were added (209 per day). I waited 3 days and the unique number for the beginning beer and ending beer stayed the same, so unless I'm misunderstanding the 'posting' process, that total is the best that I can do. (I concede that some duplicates might have been added during those two days, but there's nothing I can do to adjust for however many that might be. Here's a reference to the 29-day total that I posted above for comparison (7,276 divided by 29 days = 251 per day average). So the early birds during the month of the discussion were busier each day than us 'designated weekend' warriors. P.S. At a rate of 7,276 per month, to reach a goal of 250,000 (roughly it would take to get to the 1,000,000 level) would take 34.4 months. That sounds very reachable, especially at what seems like a high rate of new beers being produced out there.
I've added a bunch recently from my local breweries' tap lists. Question: I'm seeing quite a few beers described by the brewery as "West Coast Pilsner". What style would you put those in? Maybe India Pale Lager (IPL) or Italian Pilsner? I don't usually drink pilsners so not as familiar with how to categorize those.
Upon further consideration, I think Cold IPA would also be acceptable. Cold IPAs are fundamentally hoppy lagers, but anything with an IPA tag will sell better.
An interesting example. I saw on one of my favorite brewery’s website that they had a keg remaining of a popular beer made with a new hop called Krush. When I checked BA, someone had just added this beer, I suspect as part of our push to add beers. By the time I got to the brewery they were already out. No one had managed to rate or review the beer, so we have a historical record of the existence of this beer with a little detail (8% ABV, American IPA) but nothing more. Eventually (5 yrs?) it will get retired. Thoughts?
1 - If it is popular then it likely will be brewed again. 2 - I tend to record my notes on paper and upload batches of notes at a later date. Sometimes MUCH later. I’m trying to do it monthly or bi-monthly. So it is possible that some notes are pending posting. 3 - If Krush starts to be more common than having some record, any record of its earliest uses will be valuable. 4 - Seeing it may spur others to use it.
Well, let's see what the guy who invented the things has to say: https://www.beerandbrewing.com/brewer-s-perspective-the-thinking-behind-cold-ipa https://newschoolbeer.com/home/2021/2/what-is-a-cold-ipa-wayfinder-kevin-davey-definition https://resources.countrymalt.com/s-2-e-10-cold-ipas/
“Let’s start with what cold IPA is not—it’s not just a new name for India pale lager (IPL).” Ok, but how does this help @detgfrsh with this particular beer? Well, these next quotes pretty much put the question to rest. “Cold IPA, …, is more closely related to West Coast–style IPA and to ale-lager hybrids such as altbier, Kölsch, and California common.” “What we ended up with is decisively unique from IPL or Dry hopped lager. It has a magnificent hop aroma, clean assertive bitterness and a bold, clean finish that makes the drinker crave another sip. I felt it needed a name to differentiate it. So it’s a bit Wester than West-coast, it’s crisp and sessionable, but strong and sneaky. It’s Cold IPA” Thanks for the original source information. I happily stand corrected. As Davey notes, there is a difference between what he intended and what many folks are producing under the guise as Cold IPA. But that is a different conversation; one that will linger forever. Now I am looking forward to listening to that podcast later.
Thanks for sharing. In particular that first article is really informative. I didn’t know the history of the Cold IPA. I didn’t at first, but now agree with you, a west coast Pilsner can most definitely be classified as a Cold IPA.
All right...being retired and relatively snowed in....I've added 722 beers this month and I'm grateful for a couple of boosts to my beer karma...Also learning some things along the way. 1. I've found a lot of bigger breweries are fairly well up to date. Medium, small, wicked small much less so in that order. 2. I've found a great variety in quality of web sites. Some breweries I expected to have great websites are horror shows. Some smaller breweries apparently take great pride in slick, informative pages. 3. There are certainly IPA factories with similar flavor of the week beers with different names (and I haven't even gotten to Trillium yet...), but there's also a great variety of beers being produced. Might be in unexpected places, but there's certainly variety. 4. There's plenty o' beers out there and its literally going to be impossible to keep up. That's especially true of draft only brewers who change taps constantly. 5. Wonderment - if I was a brewer, why wouldnt I have somebody on my staff hold a membership here and add my new beers? It's interesting and pretty fun. Informative for sure - adding places I want to visit and finding a few "what we're they thinking" kinds of places.
What is the official beer count? I have been pretty active over past month adding some as many seem to have been as well. Similarly, how many active members are on BA? Active=unique BA profiles logging on over the past 6 months? @Todd you are probably the only one with this information I am guessing.
Nice work! I have probably only half of that total, but that's taught me how much this 'busy work' takes to reach a large total. In my efforts, I've learned something that I'll pass along as a work tip: If you're going to add beers in a mass, organized manner, try this to get started developing your work procedure. 1. In the Places search page, select the city or state for which you want to add new beers, and choose the Brewery filter. 2. Once you get the search results list, click on the column header for # Beers. 3. Then click on Last that's on the header just above the # Beers. This should then give you a list that displays all of the breweries that have zero beers currently listed, and then increasing in number as you work your way down the list. By starting with those zero breweries you don't need to check to see if a beer is already listed, thus eliminating one step. 4. And once you get thru all of the zero breweries, it's not too complicated to look at the next group of breweries and the beer names of the one or two beers that are already listed and see if they are in the tap list that you're using on the brewery's website as your new listings source. 5. It helps to have BA open on a second tab to use as your work page. TO KEEP THE WORK LOAD DOWN FOR OUR WONDERFUL MODS, DO MAKE SURE THAT YOU'RE NOT ADDING A DUPLICATE. USE THE 'ALL' TAB ON THE BREWERY'S BA BEERS PAGE SO YOU'LL SEE INACTIVE AND RETIRED BEERS FOR YOUR SEARCH AND AVOID DUPLICATING THEM TOO.
