How objective are you.....Be Honest

by definition taste and judging is subjective; its like you're trying to divide by zero

but i guess it comes down to why you are reviewing it in the first place. Many people do it for themselves, as a record. If i hate IPA's and just dont like the style, but continued trying them because i'm open to trying to things, I wouldn't be surprised if my IPA scores were sub 3.0s. I would get very confused if I rated a beer a 5 but i actually hated it.

 

I review for myself only and not to win any races, or to impress anyone and I figure no 1 reads them any way. So your only cheating yourself if you review any other way than honestly. Then you get into the debate over reviewing to style. Then you get to my pet peeve and that review places, so many are over rated its funny. No way we have 1000's of world class places, I been to most of them, there are not all that, if you dig?

 

That is a really hard question. The answer is not very. You bring your experience and your own personal taste with you. Then, are you perfectly knowledgeable about the styles and what makes them good or not? Were you cooking when you tasted the beer? In a bad mood? No one can ever say they are completely right about anything. BUT - in the case of a beer review, you can tell enthusiasm from petulance, you can see a willingness to be wowed and take it at face value. Beer is one of the most exciting new creative processes on the consumer horizon. I look forward to every beer. I want to like it all. Maybe my ratings are too high?

 

I think often times people open a beer and start their review and compare it to the best beer they've ever had regardless of style, cost, ABV. etc. it is one of my pet peeves on this site I think people don't make apples to apples comparisons as a result most of the top 250 beers fall under big double ipas, barrel aged stouts, or extremely rare sours etc. while I would agree there is more to a huge stout or DIPA it doesn't make it a better beer than a delicate hefeweizen or a traditionally lighter style like a pils.

 

I'd say fairly objective. It's tough with AAL's because we all feel the style sucks, but some of these beers, I guess, are good representations of the 'style.' I have rated a lot of Imperial, Bourbon Aged, and Russian Stouts pretty highly despite me not liking those styles, same with things like BCBS and Utopias. I have given a few beers pretty that I enjoyed because I know there are much better beers within the same style, too.

I'd estimate that if a beer is of a style I really like, I'll rate it .25-.5 higher than I might have otherwise, and the reverse is probably true of styles I'm not particularly fond of.

 

My #1 rating criteria: Would I buy it again? That's basically my 4. Two beers I have at 3.75 are Abner and Speedway Stout. They are both very good but I don't need to drink either one ever again. Neither is "outstanding" to me.

 

I can't control what I like, but I can control an honest evaluation of a brewer's intentions and judge the qualities that are intended to be there, and not ones that were not intended. For example, I would not complain if an IPA wasn't malty, and if a stout wasn't hoppy. Being objective isn't difficult, but one should be slightly educated about each style before offering reviews.

 

I believe I am astoundingly objective. My belief is subjective, of course...

 

I am far from the best reviewer on this site. I keep my criteria simple:

1 - Offensive flavor, and I would never drink this beer again
2 - Not my thing, but I would re-visit this beer again sometime
3 - Good beer, but I wouldn't buy it for myself again
4 - Great beer, and I will buy this again
5 - Best beers I've ever had, and I'd slap family relatives to get another bottle

I've probably given out more 5's than most people (honestly 30-40), but these beers were perfect to me for one reason or another. This simplistic rating system makes it easy for me to know what I thought about each beer. I could go back and give more granularity as there are some 4's I liked more than others when forced to compare, but I think this is a relatively fair way of looking at things without being too unfair to the rating system.

 

Throw me in with the "I-review-for-myself-only crowd". I like to think that I am objective about my own reactions to a beer, however, I can recall a couple times when I have bumped my overall score by .25 or so points because everyone else seemed to think that they were awesome beers. *cough Sculpin cough cough West Cost IPA cough*

 

I've just stopped rating beers. If I like it enough to drink it and if I can say "I'd buy this again", then that's good enough for me.

 

I review for myself, so try to remain objective as possible. Mainly to get a sense of beers that I would and wouldn't buy and try again. In general, anything that scores below a 3.5 is a beer I wouldn't re-visit.

 

The disparity in scores may not indicate petulance. It may be an objective reaction that simply does not match the conventional wisdom. Personally, I don't let the score determine whether I find a beer worthy of another visit. If I do or do not want to buy it again, I put it in the notes. This has more to do with where I find the beer fitting within the style, whether hype it comes with is justified and whether the taste bears out the cost. I try not to review anything in styles I'm generally not interested in. I might give it a rough score as "had", but also try to filter out my personal prejudices against the style. My 4 is a measure of what I consider to be a benchmark for the style, so I've had a few 4+ ratings where I said I would not buy them again. I always try to review at least the second time I try a beer, if circumstances permit. If I have a multipack, I try them at different temperatures, let one sit for a while in the glass, try different glassware. Even with that, I continue to be surprised sometimes how different a beer might taste after a review. For example, I added a note on Headwater PA that a particular bottle tasted more like grapefruit peel than the one I reviewed earlier (and even that was already after trying 4 bottles from different batches). The last time you brushed your teeth, the toothpaste you used, that fried chicken you had for lunch, a drop of Tabasco on a sandwich may all affect the taste, not to mention having more than one different beer in succession. No need for a visceral reaction to skew the scores.

 

It boils down to if I like it or not; not because of its particular style. I write reviews for my own record and its meant to be useful for myself (I hope its useful for others as well). For example, I recently wrote a review on NG Strawberry Rhubarb. There were some things I liked about the beer and other things I did not. But when I drink this beer again, I'll revisit the review and see how my thoughts are different than what I wrote. Do I like it better? Does it taste the same? Am I picking up other flavors that I did not note the first time?

In addition, while I believe I have a good memory of what beers I drank, I like to keep track of them; like others BA's said, it's a good way to know what beers to avoid or buy again.

 

I try to be objective, but I can guarantee sometimes my reviews lean towards subjective.

 

I review for myself however I try to be open and understand what's going on in the beer. If its a style I haven't had before, I will give it a couple honest tastings. I'm
Not a huge fan of Belgian whites, however I compare it the best I can to see how close to style it is. I don't like the flavored it has, yet if it has them like they're supposed to then all the better. I'm a fan of IPA's Stouts, barelywines, etc. I try to review as fair as possible.

 

So you're asking for objectivity on objectivity?

 

I always try and be objective but some of the brewers I've met have been assholes and I hate their beer because of it, though I'm trying to soften on a few.

 

There's no such thing as objectivity when giving an opinion. You're going to inevitably draw from your own experiences and your own knowledge base derived therefrom, thus making every opinion necessarily grounded in pure subjectivity. Even each of our approaches to some ideal of "objectivity" are gonna be colored by what we think that means. Anyone claiming pure objectivity (implying leaving any and all preexisting biases at the door) is just fooling him/herself...