How would the beer world be different without BeerAdvocate?

More whales for me

 

There'd be a lot fewer threads about which beers are massively overrated (or how my local IPA is clearly superior to Pliny) and threads which are looking for validation that people are NOT alcoholics.

Also, I'd be blissfully unaware of the existence of beers outside Portland, which would probably have a very significant impact on my budget.

Oh, and Cantillon would still be sitting on shelves everywhere...

Down with BA???

 

You wouldn't have truck chasers and people camping out for 15 hours for a RaRe WeStY briCk!!! ( 1 of 7000 yo! )

I'd have a shitload more money, no UPS bill, and drink less.

 

Before this intraweb thing, we found beer mostly by finding it and drinking it. Beyond that, publications like Celebrator filled us in with openings and closings, and we talked to other people who gave us their opinions and news.

 

Probably be a whole lot less hype, a lot more regional bias, and much smaller lines at releases. In other words, you might not know about Dark Lord (or only heard about it in passing), but you would be able to show up at Alesmith and get BA Speedway without waiting in line overnight.

 

I'd have to drink a lot more crap beers in order to find the diamonds in the rough. BA gives me at least some idea as to a beers worthiness before I waste my hard-earned money on it.

Thanks BA!

 

I would spend more time on the Ultimate Metal forum.

 

I wouldn't know as many awesome places to drink, I probably wouldn't know/care much about sour beers, and I'd probably spend a lot more time drinking liquor over beer.

 

I love Beer Advocate and really appreciate what the Bros. have done for us all... that being said, I drank a TON of great brews from all over the country long before ever signing up on BA. Other than brewery only releases, Long Island/NYC gets brew from pretty much everywhere.

 

Hunahpu would be $10

 

I think there still would be, though the pace of growth might be slower. There certainly was a lot less 'experimental' stuff back then, but there also was much less of the trend-of-the-month type stuff. In my opinion, you would have seen less market/hype-driven releases, and more experimentally derived special releases.

I DO think that you would not have seen the explosive growth of 'extreme' beers (triple ipa, huge -bal stouts, etc), but more refining of styles. Once the hype train got attached to the "bigger is better" mentality, market desires began to have a greater influence over craft. Don't get me wrong, I'm not bemoaning the growth of big beers, at least to a point. But I do think there would have been less of a chasing-the-trend mentality. Hell, there have been "What is the next trend for 2013?" threads, which I think makes my point.

 

Another site would be doing it. This site fills a niche and there's 0 chance that nothing else would be filling it. A world without the Bros is a world where someone else is running the dominant beer site on the internet, but my guess is that little else would be different. (It's possible that some timing things here and there would be different, but most of the things that we love to hate about the beer scene are caused by indelible parts of human nature, not one particular web site.)

 

Without the Beer sites on the internet:

Russian River and their beers would be relatively unknown outside of CA.

The Monks at St. Sixtus would not have to restrict access to Westvleteren 12 on days it was for sale and there would be virtually no gray market for the beer outside of Belgium.

The Bruery would be relatively unknown outside of CA.

Jolly Pumpkin would not be distributed much outside of MI.

Cantillon would be a small specialty brewery whose beers were known only to a select few and were readily available on the shelves in the US. (Assuming it survived at all.)

etc.

 

I think BA probably helped facilitate the trading community which helped a lot of breweries grow their businesses much faster. In short I think (sites like) BA may have been the spark the beer community needed to really take off.

 

You are ignoring part of the OP or interpreting it too narrowly...

"what if no site like this existed"

 

Everything I was pondering after reading the original post is here except one: I don't believe there would be as much bile directed at BMC and other macro beers by as many people without BeerAdvocate. Take that as good or bad.

 

I would be a terrible homebrewer instead of just a lousy homebrewer

 

I wouldn't have two kitchen cabinets filled with glassware, including about 4 different size snifters, and tulips up the a**. This, of course, is in reaction to the photos on the "what are you drinking today" threads.
Seriously, thanks to the Bros. They have added some pleasure to my little world.