Constantly underrating beer?

I think what you are forgetting is that BA's mostly buy above average beers. One of the worst beers I have bought in the past year is Fat Tire. Is Fat Tire a "bad beer""? No, in the big picture, it is an average beer; but I like better than average beers, so I don't buy them if I know/think they'll be average.

 

i tend to start any new brew at 2.5. If there's anything I don't like, I downgrade it. If it is drinkable it moves to a 3. If I like it, but its not great, it gets a 3.5. If I love it and would drink it regularly, I give it 4. If it is outstanding, it moves up from there. I don't know that I have any styles that I don't prefer, but I do attempt to rank any beer in relation to similar beers in the same style.

 

Someone probably pointed this out by now but the BA rating scale is 1-5, not 0-5. If one thinks they are rating on a 0-5 scale but it's REALLY a 1-5 scale, then their ratings will skew low. Not sure if that's the case here but wanted to chime in just in case. Honestly, though, don't worry too much about it. Cheers!

 

I've been on Untappd since 3/19/13 (160 days not counting today--it's still morning here) and I've logged 447 beers (282 unique) since then, none of them retroactively before that date. That comes out to 2.79375 beers per day. First I want to point out I'll rate anything I've had 4-5oz. or more of so places that offer flights make it easy to drive this number up (whether intentionally or not). Second, I think I've put on 20 pounds since then. Third, DAMN I need to start drinking less!!!

 

The last time I had Budweiser was before the site implemented Hads. The beer could not inspire 250 characters to tumble out of me, good or bad.

 

Since you can't rate a beer below 1, the median should be 3, not 2.5.

 

You have never had a 5/5 beer in all categories? are you sure you like beer?

 

And "rare" beers or whales get higher scores because you cant get them.

 

My problem is that my ratings are sometimes swayed by existing reviews. "I didn't like this one very much...but it's rated in the 90s...i'll give it a generous rating so people won't see my list and judge me", or conversely "Hey this was pretty good, I enjoyed it...wait, it's rated in the 40s...I'd better chop off a point or two".

 

I'm sure there's plenty of that going on. I think a lot of ratings like this, though (where the score is higher than the written notes might suggest), could be the result of people rating beers in styles they don't necessarily like. Most BAs can recognize when certain beers are great representations of their style even if they don't like that style.

 

Interesting. I had the opposite going on when I started. Initially, lots of my reviews were +rDev. I'd say 75% or more. As time wore on, I started getting very close to the average score. Nowadays, I'd say 2/3 to 3/4 of my reviews are -rDev.

I'm not sure what to attribute this to, maybe some amazing beers over the years have spoiled me for the lesser rated beers, dropping my overall scores on most? Or maybe it's because this year's Nugget Nectar isn't as hoppy as last year's or KBS doesn't have as much barrel character or something along those lines ( )

Anyway, maybe your scores will change over time. I did find it interesting looking through your reviews, you have some fairly poor reviews for some beers which I would consider easy top 5s in their respective categories (lagunitas sucks, BCS coffee, sam smith oatmeal, union jack, daisy cutter, sumpin' sumpin', wookey jack, etc). Funny how palates work.

Dope

 

Damn straight, although I don't know what a whale is.

 

For one thing, people use rating scales differently, with some tending more towards the high or low side of scales.
For another, BA recently anchored the 4 rating with "outstanding" which, I think, most raters would see as a higher standard than an unlabeled 4 on their 5-point scale.
The recent addition of 1/4 point increments may have affected ratings too.
Finally, I think high quality craft beers are more widely available than in years past, so that a really good beer that would be rated as, say, 4 in 2013 may have been so exceptional 7 or 8 years ago that it would tend to get 4.5 or even 5 then.

 

It's that one beer you're always searching for. That you're fixating on getting a hold of. The term comes from Moby Dick.

 

There is some serious grade inflation in this school. A lot of the teachers seem to be giving everybody high grades as long as they're still alive at the end of the class.

 

I only review schwartzbiers.

 

Oh, thanks. I thought it meant something like a high gravity hop bomb. Well, I live in South Korea so pretty much any beer of distinction is a whale to me :-(

 

This again?

Dude...we get it.

http://beeradvocate.com/community/t...eer-made-us-elitist.93130/page-2#post-1365353
http://beeradvocate.com/community/t...ned-your-perfect-5s.95820/page-5#post-1464352

 

I'm in the same boat. As a relative newcomer to this (18 months in craft brews and 6 months on BA), I sometimes think that I rate low because I am a newby. That is, I do not yet really know what constitutes a great or an awful beer, so I tend to avoid the extremes. I guess, as I get "better" at appreciating and rating beers, I may re-review or re-edit some of my previous reviews. In any case, BA serves as a log of what I've tried and what I like (but I still try to be conscientious & honest in my reviews).

 

You really sit and research my posts? now thats funny!