Do you drink 'Outstanding' beers on average?

You've stated that you don't use the rating system correctly, so..... there you go. Use 3 for average beers.

 

For what I drink regularly, yes. I've always said "drink best" as far as what you find to be the best according to your taste (as opposed to buying beer based on some other ideology).

 

Until recently I would agree with you about being cautious around the 85 mark, but County Line IPA from Neshaminy Creek (http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/29021/82161/) has me rethinking everything I know about ratings.

 

That's so funny! I actually talk that beer up a lot, it's excellent. I just traded a fresh six pack of it for a fresh six pack of zombie dust actually. It's very good and the double IPA(shape of hops to come) is gonna be the next big IPA I think.

 

Many of the new ones I try will be lower rated but if its a repeat purchase its most likely because I felt it was above average. Too many awesome affordable beers to buy something just ok more than once.

 

I try to, yes.

 

Right! Whether anyone else agrees doesn't really matter .

 

Yes

 

I'd say most of what I drink is a 90 or above on this site. That doesn't necessarily mean more expensive. You can get really good stuff for cheap. If I happen to come across an "outstanding" beer at the store I'll snatch it up real quick.

 

I've spent the last year tasting beers with BA ratings of 88 or above. A few stinkers snuck in but mostly top notch beers. Now all my favorites fall into this group, so when I repeat I'm still buying the good stuff.

 

Whenever I take my first sip of a beer, I pause and say, "Outstanding!"

So, yes.

 

In my opinion, Founders Pale Ale, New Holland Mad Hatter, Dark Horse Crooked Tree, Central Waters Glacial Trail, Capital Mutiny, O'so Hopdinger, and other beers of that sort are between 2-3.5 for me. Below 2, as I said, I reserve for infections, vast stylistic deviation or ignorance of style, and actual serious issues with beers.

 

I can almost bet at least 2 of your three options are true. I still think it's impossible to have much better than a 2-5 scale for ALL beers, since the base rating is 1, and if you rate on attribute, there are very few craft beers out there that are just horrible across the board. I'm not sure I've given but 2-3 < 3 rating on "appearance". I think most here find good beer on this site and might have a slight bias (be it local, reputation of brewer, or existing ratings). I am also pretty sure what you find is that ratings slowly decline with number of ratings to a more proper medium.

 

Yes, my average rating is well above 3.0 because there are just about 150,000 beers in the database and I don't have time to drink them all. So I focus my attention on the most highly rated beers. (I'm very fond of the Beers of Fame list because they are typically highly rated for good reason and I can find usually find them without a lot of fuss.)

Also I've found that a large number Breweries actually do know if they've brewed a poor beer and they simply don't take the trouble to distribute it or to brew it again.

Finally the idea that there should be a true score average of 3.0 is mistaken since neither the distribution of beers nor the distribution of what I spend my money are close to being normal distributions with a mean of 3.0. If the Bros really wanted the average to be 3.0 they'd statistically adjust all the ratings so that all styles had a mean of 3.0 and that all raters ratings were adjusted until they had means of 3.0. That's not likely to happen so there's very little possibility that the mean of the ratings will become the "lets pretend" mean of 3.0.

 

Has anyone ever looked into how ratings change over time? It seems like beers are judged by all ratings in their database. That County Line IPA beer seems to be on the rise from a mediocre 2013. 2012 and 2014 have been solid. I would love to be able to look at ratings from just a certain time frame.

Beers do change over time. Maybe a IPAs past scores are holding up its rAvg a little too much, when in reality, that beer is average. Or maybe a beer struggled early on, and got better. We just may be looking at that overall BA score and rAvg a little too literally.

 

I'm spending hundreds a month on this "hobby". Damn right I will be buying great beer as much as possible. I'll take a chance on something ok if the store has a make your own 6 pack section or if I'm a bar I'll try a pint of something new. I know what styles of beer I like and that with some research has helped me pick out winners over 90% of the time.

Then again the term "outstanding" when it comes to beer has a different definition to some. NJ has a ton of awesome "shelf beers" and new releases to keep you more than occupied without having to chase and trade for whalez bro.