Heady Topper #1 or #29?

It should be around number six.

 

It is number one on this website given the current set of parameters. Make it whatever number you want. Bottom line is that Heady is a damn good beer.

 

I can't say Heady is my number 1, nor would I put it at 29...let's just all agree, it falls somewhere in the middle!

 

I think this is an interesting question and am glad you posed it. I don't know what the answer is and am curious what others suggest. I wonder what the influence of the Bros score on the beer (or any beer for the matter) is. In other words, how many people feel an influence to rate a beer higher or lower because of the Bros ratings? Again, I haven't thought much about this and I don't eve review beers myself, so take this with a grain of salt.

 

On that list, it's almost all Imperial Stouts as the top beers. Here it's seems a little bit more evenly rated.

The number each beer is rated at means less to me, than it being on the list. I treat as a list of awesome beers I can rely on to be high quality.

I'll rank the beers myself and decide which one is best.

But I think we can all agree that Heady Topper is one of the best beers in the world.

 

I visit both sites but I have to give the nod to BA in regards to their "top" lists mainly due to sample size, no beers with 33 reviews should be in any best of lists

 

Do people pay attention to those ratings (or put more stock in them compared to any other reviewers' score?)

 

I rarely even look at the Bros ratings. I will read over other reviews to get a better feel for a beer before I buy it. The rating score by the masses is generally more along my lines of thinking.

 

I would imagine that they do. I think people in general are greatly influenced by what others say, though few will ever admit this. If a whole bunch of people are saying something is good, there is some social pressure to agree it is good. If a whole bunch of people are saying something is good and a person (or two people in this case) that are perceived experts in the field also say it is good, then there is even more pressure to say it is good. Kind of like a "well if THEY say it's good then it probably is" type thing. Certainly this is nothing the Bros. created, they are reviewing beers just the same as anyone else, but again because of their perceived intelligence about beer, I bet their opinion pulls a lot of weight.

I have always been interested to see how scores for beers change after the Bros review it. I wonder if scores start to hover around where they scored it after they submit their opinions. All speculation obviously, but I am curious.

 

Some of the differences on the two lists are because of the number of reviews for a beer. Heady has a lot more reviews here and if people in general like the beer it will move to the top of the list because of that. Where on the other list the total number of reviews is much smaller so in theory the top beers will have been around a lot longer and received high scores over a longer period of time. Here a beer will require more ratings with a high score to make it into the top list instead of there where the top list is always changing. Also how the actual reviewers on the site rate will make a difference. Here it seems that people score based on site top lists where there people tend to rate based on the individuals top list. In the end it makes for two different lists and that is a good thing.

 

I always thought it was a bit unfair to compare beers of different styles.

 

Well it's not #29 anymore. Just moved up to #28

 

Yes, you really should judge by style. Overall rankings are misleading, other than that any beer rated in the top 100 (out of... 10,000 beers worldwide?) is a great beer. But if you love IPA's... Heady is typically #1. I know guys who hate hoppy beers, love stouts... for them Heady is isn't in the top 200 and BA Dark Lord, Hunahpus, Darkness etc are in their top 5. One could infer that because Heady, a DIPA, is #1 on this site - that it is so good that it not only is beloved by hop lovers, but also crosses over and impresses some of those who don't necessarily love the style.

 

I have found that if the Bros really like a beer and the masses don't, the beer is usually better than the overall rating would indicate.

 

Beer Advocate takes the number of reviews into account (fairly significantly) and so a beer like Heady with a very large number of positive reviews will easily beat a beer with a very small number of super high reviews (like Mornin' Delight). An even better example is Pliny vs. Bourbon Vanilla Dark Lord...the review average of BVDL is higher than Pliny, but the huge number of reviews for Pliny factors into the weighted average and puts it higher on the list.

Not sure the other site does this. I would guess not.

 

Great beer is like the beatles. Not everyone loves them but the ones that do say they're one of the best bands of all time. Lists will have variations of where they land due to personal preference but consensus tends to bring them at or near the top of most lists. My favorite band of all time, The Dismemberment Plan, will be on very few top 100 lists of all time, but #142 for one of my favorite beers of all time, Hoponius Union, doesn't shock me or affect me.

 

Ranking are based on subjectivity and hype but all I can say is when I get off work today

I will be drinking a fresh Heady topper and vastly enjoying it whatever number it is ranked LOL

 

So, my first thought was going to be coming here and pointing out that while there are several intervals between #1 and #29, the actual divergence in the rating is likely pretty small in the grand scheme of things. This phenomenon is especially pronounced the lower in the list you go, where #250 is all of 0.01 points different from #219. At the top (and bottom), where there are going to be fewer beers based on a standard bell curve, the divergence is a little more pronounced, with 0.22 points separating #1 and #29 on the BA top 250.

The other thing I would note is that Heady Topper has a whopping 4.70 score, which is wild, given that it's a rather ugly beer if you're being honest with yourself. I will never understand how people give Heady a 5.0 on Appearance--the funniest part is when you see reviews that score a 5.0 for Appearance, but then completely gloss over mentioning anything about how the beer looks, like they're trying to avoid the elephant in the room.

So the score seems like it's probably a tiny bit higher than maybe deserved (don't get me wrong, not saying Heady is anything but a fantastic beer), and I suspect that the limited distribution combined with the fact that it's The Alchemist's only beer provides for a little score inflation. Account for that inflation, and the gap between #1 and #29 is even smaller.

So ultimately, I think the gap is not as big in reality as the impression given by comparing their rankings.

 

Just to clarify, there are plenty of beers on the BA Top 250 list that have a very low number of reviews...they just have a higher amount of "ratings". It looks deceiving when you look at the top list, but if you clicked on something like KBBS you'd see the 123 ratings really only has 24 reviews. Something like Atrial Rubicite only has 29 real reviews.

They may say there is a 100 "review" minimum to be on the top 250 list, but I am pretty skeptical about the "quick ratings" system in general being included in beers' ratings/ranks. I fear that there are some people that do these quick ratings to inflate a beer's ranking/rating for trading purposes, or simply to say they've had it, even if they haven't. You see a lot more 5's and 4.75's now with the quick ratings, whereas if a full review was done, they may have ended up giving it a 4.43. Obviously this could have happened before with someone writing a fake review, but think the option of the quick rating leads to more people doing it.

For the record, I'm not against the quick rating system at all and think it is great for people to individually keep track of their Hads, but I am skeptical of it having the same weight as reviews. I'm also aware of the fact that some of the "reviews" on the other site are terrible and short.

Personally, I look at the lists every few months just to see if there is anything on them that has popped up that I haven't had and could obtain. You could also just look at the trading forums though and when you see 100 posts looking for the same beer in a 2 day span assume it jumped onto the top 250 list.