I have only rated on beer a 5, although I do have another 11 beers rated a 4.75 or higher, almost all of them rated over 10 years ago Joined BA: July 12, 2009 Total Beers Rated: 649 Number of perfect 5s: 1 All Perfect 5s: 01.30.2021 - De Struise Brouwers - Black Albert
Joined BA 2005 1221 beers rated 565 beer reviewed Zero 5s I feel like I have to leave the rating "ceiling" untouched, still looking for that whale. Maybe someday I will be blown away. As it is I sometimes feel my ratings average too high. I console myself on that with the reasoning that I usually purchase based on brewery reputation and/or fellow BA opinions. Thanks to everyone who contributes here.
I only have a few 5's because I only joined a couple years ago but my most recent was Organic Chocolate Stout from Samuel Smith Brewery(ironically this beer is ranked 3 in its overall category)
I don't rate/review on BA, but I do on its sister site. The character limit forces brevity on me and keeps me from going too far down the rabbit hole. Consulting my check-in history... Damn, I've been stingy. I've handed out a grand total of 19 perfect ratings across more than 4,000 beers, with the most recent going to Other Half Mixed Berry Crunchy at Snallygaster 2019 (yes, I have a weakness for sweet, gimmicky stuff). In retrospect, had I realized how long the drought on 5-cap ratings has stretched, I probably would have been more inclined to award a perfect score to another dessert sour and my top beer of 2025--Corporate Ladder Dessert Station: Apple Almond Cookie.
So there's this beer rating guide that's been around for a while that I tend to follow when I post a rating. The long-time experts there have some well-thought out suggestions, such as: Scoring All Ones or Fives Rating a beer with all ones (no redeeming qualities) or fives (no room for improvement) should be rare. It can be a sign of someone abusing the rating system, too, so consider writing a review to back up your unusually low or high rating. FWIW -- I only have two 5s in my ratings. And yes, both rated to-style.
You still have one rated to perfection, and there are some for whom perfection is an illusion or unreachable as @TrojanRB said before. I can get the point and nothing is ever flawless, but personally didn’t give such a rating randomly, instead based on style, and every aspect of the beer I was sipping on. How we review beer here anyway (I never considered myself a huge beer reviewer ‘cause of language barrier and vocabulary mainly). On the opposite side of the spectrum, I could check it out but I don’t think I’ve given the terrible, 1 overall rating to a beer as we also have an ongoing topic about the worst beer we ever had.
Joined in 2011 Total Beers Rated: 2,819 Total of Perfect 5s: 7 (5 rated, 2 reviewed indicated by asterisk) 09-14-2013 Lou Pepe - Framboise Brasserie Cantillon Belgian Fruit Lambic 5.5 4.58 5 +9.2% 02-03-2015 Olde Rabbit's Foot Foothills Brewing Company - Downtown Brewpub American Imperial Stout 10.13 4.3 5 +16.3% 03-17-2015 Manhattan NW Cascade Brewing / Raccoon Lodge & Brewpub Wild Ale 10.3 4.27 5 +17.1% 03-28-2015 Atrial Rubicite Jester King Brewery Wild Ale 5 4.59 5 +8.9% *01-23-2016 Snowed In - Bourbon Barrel-Aged Funky Buddha Brewery Imperial Porter 11 4.62 5 +8.2% *12-08-2022 Moongazer Equilibrium Brewery Imperial IPA 8 4.17 5 +19.9% 12-08-2022 And You Know Not Your Own Boundary Burial Beer Co. American IPA 7.5 4.8 5 +4.2% Looking back on my review for BA Snowed In, I lol'd at this: S- An intense wave of coconut, bourbon and coffee washes through my nasal cavity sending signals of immense pleasure to my cerebral cortex.
Trillium fanboy, eh? "Ya know, I never fucked a 10. Never fucked a 10! But one night, I fucked five 2s" -George Carlin So good. Again, so good. One time I had the pleasure of having Cuvee Delphine, which is Black Albert aged on Four Roses barrels for 12 months. Straight and, in my opinion, an improvement on the base beer, so you'd have to rate it higher than a 5 if you were to agree, right? Haha
Agreed. Something always has to suffer for something else to be good/great. For instance, beers with a lot of complexity tend to not have the drinkability of a less complex beer, but those sessionable beers tend to lack the nuance that would allow them to be rated higher. That said, rating to style can produce 5s, even if the beer itself doesn't embody perfection.
Or, alternatively : « better have two twenty year old than one forty year old. » Words of wisdom from Shanex’ grandpa.
Yeah lol, again I think it goes back to access. I wish my 5s were more varied, it’s just because I’ve had the most beers from them out of any brewery and I really loved all their stuff I had. I always try be fair when rating and look back at other similar rated beers, sometimes go back when drinking again to see if there’s anything I can add or ratings I can adjust. If I had easy convenient access to Tree House or Hill Farmstead or other great local breweries I suspect most of my 5 ratings would be from them too. Tree House can definitely get up there if I try some of the more limited bigger beers, and now they have a to-go spot in the city too so it’s a train ride away. I was lucky to work near Trillium Fort Point and get most of their limited exclusive releases with ease pre-pandemic, and honestly haven’t really had many similar beers that I thought were quite on that level still of fruited sours or hazy IPAs. Just checked and I’ve had more than half of the beers they’ve brewed, 533 out of 934 on here, and some draft only exclusive offerings I’ve tried too that weren’t added on the database and I didn’t want to be the only rating.
As you suggest, some of us never assign a perfect 5. That’s not to say my distribution isn’t too narrow.
Here are my top five. Interesting that 4/5 of my top ratings are imperial stouts and 4/5 were assigned over 10 years ago. My standards have changed. I wouldn’t give Abner a 4.85 score today. As I’ve had more beers, my standards have evolved.
Bottom line - it’s all very subjective, with the thought that averaging a bunch of subjective numbers across lots of people gives something we can rely on?
