Highly Rated Beers: Truth or Fiction?

@Roser the beer experience is subjective. Just dig the beers you love and forget about the ones you dislike. You will be happier!

P.S. You dislike MO, we cannot be friends .

 

all my reviews are usually way higher then the rDev, I've noticed..... I attribute it to just liking most beer overall.... but when it's nasty, I usually grade pretty harshly. I guess I just might be an unstable person.....

 

I tend to deviate in excess of the normal regulation on many beers. Enjoy the unique experience of your own palate.

 

Lol! You're talking to the wrong BA! I don't get the hype behind Lunch. I enjoyed MO a hell of a lot better!

 

I stopped rating beers some years ago, so take this as one person's opinion and nothing more.

Focus on consistency in rating beers and less on how your ratings correspond to others' assessments. We're all different in the way we review. If you're a harsher judge, that's okay, so long as you apply that high standard to all the beers you rate. In other words, strive for internal consistency and you'll be fine.

 

I have to agree with the OP. You would think that beers would fall on a bell curve, with the majority in the middle (3). But it seems like almost all beers are 3 or higher. Even pretty poor beers tend to get a 3+. I think it skews the system. My ratings are all over fit deviation. When I review a bad beer I give it a bad review. When I taste a great beer I give it a great review (but no 5s yet). Some people throw out 5s left and right.

 

Most of my reviews tend to be below the rDev. I tend to base it off a score of 3 being OK and anything above 4 leaning toward world class. For me scores above 4 are only for what I consider an elite beer for it's given style. It does appear to me that most people tend to rate a little high, but to each their own.

 

You seem to have calibrated yourself. Now you can look at ratings and guess your opinion is about 15% lower. Your welcome. Every ruler is arbitrary. You just need to know what it means. Inch, centimeter, cubit...

Doesn't matter who is wrong and who is right. I kind of agree with you that they use the Harvard grading system. It's hard to get an A but nobody gets worse than a B.

 

I don't review anymore, but I will say this. Some people rate beers higher than they should because of the hype, and some people rate beers lower than they should because beer doesn't live up to the hype.

 

Roser:

It's good to be iconoclastic in some regards. I, for one, received a very scathing smattering of replies for my review of Founder's Backwoods Bastard over two year ago (I did not change the rating despite criticism, however). You'll find that the mob is a potent force in many democratic institutions - the internet is no exception. Just go with what your palate tells you and ignore any criticism, especially since the matter at hand (reviewing beers) is entirely subjective.

This being said, I agree with many of your ratings. I prefer balanced beers to the unbalanced slop that many reviewers consider "good beer" (see many west-coast IPA's). I strongly suspect that there are also regional biases (again, see many west-coast IPA's). Your reviews actually give better information as to the quality of certain beers, given that your opinions are not prejudiced by mob sentiment.

I hope this helps.

 

Well, just yesterday I gave KBS a 3.88 - definitely a good score, but deviating far below (-16.2%) its 4.63 rAvg.

Then again, I *don't* rate ridiculously high. If I ever give something higher than a 4, then chances are I'm really damn fond of it.

 

Beer is like food: everyone's taste is different. That being said, I try to rate a beer in my head before looking at its BA score. Hard to avoid on the super-hyped stuff, but I try to form an opinionbefore looking at everybody else's.

 

I'm with you on at least one, Enjoy by is highly overrated.