New Stat: User's Average Score?

Don't rank a beer you haven't tried?

 

Look at my reviews/hads. I have tried a few beers. I do respect the opinions of my friends and I am inclined to try beers they like than those that are crap. Rarely do I love a beer that most people tend to hate.

The real question is, who give a flying fuck what I drink, what you drink. I do not have to drink, think, or have the same opinion as anyone else. Enjoy beer, respect beer, discuss. You don't need to influence me or others to have a similar beer experience. We each have our own journey.

 

This and a personal deviation used to be here. Hopefully they come back again.

Jeff

 

That's the wrong attitude. Until you have tasted a beer, you shouldn't judge it. Suggesting that reviews typically suggest the beer is very good, is okay, but saying that a beer is great without tasting it for yourself and being able to discuss the attributes of why it is great (in your opinion) is poor understanding of beer. Let's look at one of your reviews:
"Pours a hazy orange color. Thick off-white head. Good retention, amazing lacing. Smells like... I don't even know. Hops, but better than I could imagine hops smelling like. Cigar City beers smell so good. Tastes not quite as good as it smells, but almost. Very floral and citrus like. Lots of grapefruit. Has the power of a DIPA, but feels much more subdued. In a good way, of course. Rich mouthfeel with a good amount of carbonation.

My favorite regular IPA. The smell and taste are just too good for the competition."
You failed to really pick up the actual characteristics of taste and smell. "Smell like...I don't even know. Hops, but better than I could imagine..." doesn't help anybody. Characteristics of hops range from sweet, lush, and subtle to bitter, dry, chalky, resinous, and overpowering to grassy, rind, piney, citrus, lemon, grapefruit, orange, mango and so on. You need to explain that in a review and to a potential customer, because if they like IPAs and you don't ask what characteristics they typically enjoy, you could sell them on a dry, resinous, grapefruit, piney, in your face IPA when they like soft, sweet, lush, crisp, juicy, orange/clementine-like IPAs. Saying "hops" doesn't mean anything and if you're willing to give a beer a 4.88 out of 5.00 (0.66 points highers than its average), you should be educated enough to tell us why.
Food for thought.

 

I think this is useful, at times, and i'd like to see it again.

 

I wrote that review a while ago. Maybe I should go back and rewrite all my old reviews. Not being able to pick out how you feel about different hop flavors doesn't mean anything about whether or not you're able to say you love a beer anyway. Looking at old reviews of mine and posting them on here has nothing to do with the conversation.

If it makes you feel better, I'm going to delete my review of Jai Alai and review it again later today when I drink it, since I have a few cans in my fridge. I just drank one last night too, and I can guarantee you that it's still just as good as when I last reviewed it.

 

Because I already tried Wild Blue, and it was the worst swill I ever drank. Because I like the taste of big IPAs and I highly doubt that Heady Topper, with all of its rave reviews, would be a bad beer. I'm sure it might not be my favorite IPA ever, and I might even be disappointed if I have it, but I know it will be at least decent.

I mean, do you just buy random beers and try them before you judge them? Come on, we all know you don't.

 

Ummmm vision? The fact that I can see.... and read the consensus of upwards of thousands of other reviews?

 

So, you tried the beer, then judged it? Good, that's how you know you don't like Wild Blue. And yes, I do just buy random beers to try them. Usually, when I go to my local bar/store, the first thing I do is look for a beer I've never had before. I have never once looked up a score on either BA or RB before buying a beer. I don't read reviews very often either, and when I do, it's generally after I've entered my review and I'm curious about what others thought.

 

I have witnesses to the fact that I do, indeed, buy random new beers to try. I mean, how else will I know if I like them or not? The reviews tell me how others feel about them, but that doesn't affect how my tongue will react (check some of my rDevs for reference).

 

I will vouch for him here. Dude drinks some random ass stuff.

 

I don't agree with the "general philosophy" that we should try to hold to a 3.0 average.
If all I drink are superior beers, I don't feel the need to rank some low just to keep my average near 3.0.
That's my philosophy and I'm sticking to it

 

I dunno, I can't see myself really critiquing someone's beer ratings or following someone who's just right on the money with their scoring all the time. I read the ratings and reviews when I want to try something new or verify something I've had, and I'm more interested in a descriptive review than whether someone typically rates low or high. I'm a high-rater, by the way.

 

The question should be, "don"t you buy random ass beers just to try them?" Who doesn't do that, I'm baffled by those who don't.

 

Well, if the worst a beer can possibly be scored is a 1, and the best it can be scored is a 5, doesn't it mean that most will be around 3? I drink a fair number of very good-to-excellent beers, yet, when we had our average score on the site, mine was around 3.5. I suspect it would be lower now, but not because I'm drinking a lower quality of beers (in general), but because the more beers I try, the more similarities I find beers to have. There's only so much brewers can do with 4 base ingredients, so it seems that a lot of beers are going to be very much alike, thus more beers being closer to the "average". Or something.

 

good idea, but what would be just as handy is "average score for beers in this style"

 

You do see that by not trying and rating the lower quality beers that your score only reflects an average for you? In other words if you drank/rated all the lower quality beers your scores on the higher quality beers you have already tried would go up, not down.

 

My bad, I wasn't real clear. I do drink a fair bit of crap as well (Ticker gotta tick yo!), so they probably bring my average down a bit. That said, I find that a lot of beers that people give high scores to, I like as much as they do, but I tend to score closer to my average. Because, as I said above, the more you try, the more near the middle most beers will be. This is making me thirsty, I'll go grab an average beer.