I couldn't find a thread title for this, though I can't imagine it hasn't been brought up before. I don't know how I never thought to check this before, but I decided to look at my highest and lowest rated beer styles. I fiddled with extraction using browser tools, but then realized it is actually stupid easy to just copy the My Beers > Styles content and paste / text import it into Excel, then sort. I was mildly surprised my highest rated style was Belgian Gueuze (4.19). English Strong Ale (4.17) was next and a little less of a surprise. Both of these I have had under a dozen within the style. The highest rated style I have had with over 10 beers sampled is Russian Imperial Stout (4.12 on 73 ratings). My lowest rated is Malt Liquor, even below Low-ABV beer and LightLager (all between 3 and 3.25). The surprises on the lower end of the list were, perhaps, Belgian Dark Ale and Pastry Stout. Until I realized these were also the lower ABV versions. Belgian Dark Strong was in the middle and Imperial Pastry Stout was, sad to admit, right behind RIS for styles with over 10 ratings. So, have you ever looked at which styles you rate the highest/lowest, and do they easily fit what you expected? Any surprises? Can you explain any unexpected results? --- FWIW, using that 10 beer minimum, my top 5 styles are: Russian Imperial Stout Imperial Pastry Stout Hazy Imperial IPA Old Ale Flanders Red (11 ratings, American Imperial stout with almost 200 ratings is 6th) ...and my lowest three with the same minmum: Light Lager Euro Pale Lager AAL (Ha! So I am part of the "underrated style" problem, after all)
For styles I have reviewed at least 10 of Highest: Scotch Ale/Wee Heavy at 4.24, narrowly beating Foreign/Export Stout at 4.23 Lowest: American Pale Wheat at 3.13 Looked through my reviews, I drank some really bad wheat ales back in the day.
Also using the 10 review minimum Highest: Belgian Dubbel 4.24 Lowest: AAL at 2.99 Sounds about right. Dubbels are a favorite and most of the ones I've reviewed are Belgian imports. And I review AALs because they're available even though I don't really like the style.
Yeah, I think there are some styles nearer the middle of my scores that I expected to be higher where I think I probably had too many “new brewery middling attempts.” Compounding it might be having more of them back in the days when I rated a little lower overall.
Euro Lager and AAL most likely. I can’t bother to prep a super post about it. Only will add that I rarely ever rate/review beers I find bad or style I’m not fond of anyway.
Russian Imperial Stout at 4.45 (full flavor) American Blonde Ale at 3.61 (light flavor) I had lower scores than 3.61 in several other light-flavored styles to confirm I need flavor in my beers if I'm going to like them, but I don't have at least 10 beers in those categories.
Being egregious, my lowest is American Blonde Ale, with this dumb Edmunds Oast monstrosity being the only review that I did and my first sub 3 in a while, otherwise it's Maibock, probably because I'm very opinionated about my Maibocks and I don't like it unless it's a proper helles bock. Highest number of ratings is of course hazy imperial IPA, but highest average rating with more than 5 examples is tied between American and Russian Imperial Stout. I'd assume since I only buy stouts when they really appeal to me and get the best examples I can find, the scores are always very high. Some of my highest rated beers are stouts and I generally give them huge scores since I have access to a lot of great heavy dark beers.
My current Top 5 styles by avg rating - Hazy Imperial IPA | 204 | 6.49% | 4.76 Fruited Sour Ale | 66 | 2.1% | 4.76 Imperial Pastry Stout | 127 | 4.04% | 4.75 Belgian Gueuze | 12 | 0.38% | 4.75 English Strong Ale | 6 | 0.19% | 4.73 with a few popular styles following right behind: Hazy Pale Ale | 33 | 1.05% | 4.72 American Imperial Stout | 221 | 7.03% | 4.71 English Barleywine | 16 | 0.51% | 4.7 and my bottom 5 rated styles right now are: Irish Dry Stout | 9 | 0.29% | 4.21 English IPA | 9 | 0.29% | 4.18 Light Lager | 7 | 0.22% | 3.78 American Adjunct Lager | 14 | 0.45% | 3.75 European Pale Lager | 6 | 0.19% | 3.3 for at least 10 ratings: Robust Porter | 12 | 0.38% | 4.31 Witbier | 22 | 0.7% | 4.25 Fruit and Field Beer | 36 | 1.15% | 4.25 Pumpkin Beer | 24 | 0.76% | 4.24 honorable mentions to Malt Liquor and Euro Strong Lager which I've only tried a few of and rated 3 or under
Why, Imperial Hazy IPA of course at 4.49. Lowest is American Lager at 3.4 but next lowest is Vienna Lager at 3.41 which isn't a surprise since I don't like Vienna malt. If I had ever reviewed a Rauchbier, it probably would be that
No real surprises here. Top Ten (at least 10 ratings): Imperial Pastry Stout | 37 | 2.1% | 4.5 Russian Imperial Stout | 22 | 1.25% | 4.46 American Imperial Stout | 56 | 3.18% | 4.46 Belgian Quadrupel (Quad) | 14 | 0.8% | 4.43 Hazy IPA | 35 | 1.99% | 4.35 Hazy Imperial IPA | 26 | 1.48% | 4.36 Scotch Ale / Wee Heavy | 17 | 0.97% | 4.27 Belgian Tripel | 16 | 0.91% | 4.25 Imperial IPA | 103 | 5.85% | 4.23 Imperial Porter | 11 | 0.62% | 4.22 Bottom Ten (at least 10 ratings): American Porter | 28 | 1.59% | 3.88 American Blonde Ale | 29 | 1.65% | 3.88 American Lager | 22 | 1.25% | 3.87 Cream Ale | 10 | 0.57% | 3.86 Pumpkin Beer | 16 | 0.91% | 3.83 Fruit and Field Beer | 42 | 2.39% | 3.8 American Amber / Red Lager | 13 | 0.74% | 3.67 European Pale Lager | 28 | 1.59% | 3.38 American Adjunct Lager | 47 | 2.67% | 3.25 Light Lager | 14 | 0.8% | 3.22
I see some mostly expected trends showing up in people's top rated, though I didn't have Dubbel an my bingo card, @detgfrsh. I almost did a poll for the highest rated with the options: Any form of IPA Any form of high-ABV stout Some form of German lager Some form of other lager Anything else Just to see how out-weighted the top two options would be. But then I wanted more "other" options to see how those broke down. Maybe the poll could be: What is your highest rated style that isn't an IPA or big stout? I'd predict something like barley wine stepping into the lead for that one, but maybe not
I was a little surprised the same beer was so high in my list. But, in an opposite, but similar concept to some lower-rated beers I thought would be higher, I think my high-ABV hazies are skewed to the newness of them when I was reviewing a bunch of them, especially Aslin offerings from about a decade ago.
At the top for me, almost tied: American Imperial Stout Russian Imperial Stout American Barleywine Least- American Adjunct Lager Keep in mind though, I have had more AA Lagers than my three top styles combined. (Sticking to the 10 or more convention)
My highest are: English Barleywine American Barleywine American Imperial Stoutˋ Imperial IPA my lowest are: Low alchohol beer Light Lager American Adjunct Lager Herb and Spice Beer Chili Beer
That’s the other I thought of mentioning, though maybe not enough versions for enough people to meet the arbitrary minimum ratings requirement. Mine is obviously Old Ale. But Grodziskie is trying to work its way into the conversation (only 4 official ratings by me). Though "smoked beer" (to include porters) sits in position 7 for me (at 4.06). Interesting, but I can see how spiced/spicy beers could end up at the lower end for people.
