Quitting/taking a break from writing reviews

I haven’t stopped rating, but rather am bad at taking the time to rate. Sometime I get more enjoyment out of rating a beer, but other times it is a real chore. And not just numerically, I mean a full on review (a score is easy). To write a review can often be time consuming for me, and I pretty much hate doing it on my phone (maybe if there was an app). When I am busy (very much so lately) it is even worse. Sometimes I just want a beer.

Now I am back logged by 20 or so beers I really want/need to review. And it is daunting. That’s a lot of time for me. Part of what makes it hard is that I want to try to be a NBW contributor, but the window often sucks for me. My wife worked all weekend, and at best I might get 6 hours of sleep. And that’s with no review. Throw in a review and I am for sure down an hour (not because the review takes an hour to write, but because I like to take an hour to drink the beer and review it slowly. Otherwise I would just drink the beer while doing chores.)

Not what you asked, but kind of the flip side to said coin.

 

I don't review very often any more for the same reasons, although largely for me is tired of the monotony of it. While every beer is technically unique most of them taste pretty similar. There are only so many times I can describe my beer as "notes of pineapple, grapefruit, mango, pine, bread, etc."
I'll still review when I feel like it but I no longer feel like I have to or want to most of the time.

 

The majority of my notes when it comes to stouts are same shit also. "Coffee,roast, dark malt ,etc. " it gets repetitive and sometimes i feel myself tryina pick up on notes that arent even there because i feel i should change it up.

 

I've always said that sometimes the way you feel about a beers scores has a HUGE part to do with the feeling it gives you and not exclusive to Taste / Look/Smell

 

Often anymore I more just make some notes as opposed to try to intimately review. The reviews are much less me attempting to dissect the beer and describe it but rather just a stream of consciousness of notes.

I've never been good with elaborate descriptors and painting a vivid picture of exactly what my senses are taking in, and at times, the pressure of trying to find the right words can detract from enjoying the beer overall.

My "reviews" might not be the most helpful for others looking to gain extremely nuanced insight on a beer. But I log for me. Largely to recount if I feel a beer is worthy of revisting, as well as to recount the experience it provided (or lack thereof).

 

I still haven’t grown tired of rating beers, but I don’t fret if i have a new beer and don’t have the time to take notes or review it there and then; a tick will suffice in the circumstance. i think it’s important for us to contribute to the miracle of aggregation, and help people determine from the “bad” and the “good”. Your point about a macro lager being a 5 after a long cycle on a hot day i really agree with though. even our own ratings of a beer at any given time are fluid, and we shouldn’t be bound to just drinking what we anticipate will be or know is highly rated or that we’ve given a high rating in the past. sometimes i just want a big cold can of tennants, no matter how many “better” beers are available to me. in sum, ratings good, but not to be worshiped.

 

Not so much quitting, as never started. Well, that’s not entirely true. I wrote a review (saison DuPont, I think) but then deleted it sometime later. I think you totally hit the nail on the head when you wrote, “considering that there are so many other intangible variables that would make your rating different every time. For example, a macro lager would feel like a perfect 5 to me after a 30 mile bike ride on a hot day, much more so than an award winning imperial stout. Ditto drinking relatively "mediocre" beer in the company of great friends and good conversation and laughter, vs drinking a highly rated beer by yourself.” I realized this myself very early on. I realized I didn’t give two shits about someone else’s reviews so why would anyone care about mine. In short, I think there is a very small group of people who have both the palettes and writing skills to be helpful and informative with qualitative beer reviews. I don’t count myself amongst that small group, thus I never review.

I think your great enjoyment of the beer now without reviewing is very telling. In many areas of life I think people are starting to realize that the constant documentation of what they are experiencing is ruining what they are experiencing.

Interesting thread and thanks for starting it.

 

I have not stopped reviewing but I 100% see this point and think about it a lot:

This is why I think the review is way more important than the rating. Regardless of score a good review should better describe the experience that is as important to me as the score.

I know a lot of people feel different ways on this topic but I think embracing the review part allows for clarity so while I still have energy I’ll keep adding them.

 

I go in waves. From fall of '21 to late winter of '22 I was into reviewing in a big way. I was reviewing one to several beers a day. Since then, I have reviewed a total of six beers over the last three weeks. My current hiatus is nothing new as I've had one or two other times since I joined BA where I had little to no interest in reviewing / contributing to the site. Sometimes that reason is rooted in my own situation, whether it be drinking less, not drinking, or saving money. Sometimes my decision is influenced by outside variables such as site changes.

I imagine I'll get back into reviewing, but with price points rising, I don't mind slowing down for now.

 

As this is a hobby we do what feels right at the moment. I have a vision of seriously starting reviewing, but I may be of the kind who needs to aggregate serious knowledge before even starting for real. Number rating and posting pictures with even some rudimentary analysis may help coming into the mood for reviewing, at least at times?

 

If you want to take the fun out of a hobby then make it your career. That's what rating and reviewing every beer equates to for me. Making beer drinking a job. I'll review sometimes if I feel like it, but for the most part I don't.

 

Losing out on a vacation is the tip of the iceberg. Parents are missing their kid's entire childhoods because of this shit. It's fucked up.

 

I got bored of it after a few years. It made trying new beers a chore to me. I got to the point where everything started to taste like something else. Plus, as I tried more and more beers, my opinions and tastes beers (good and bad) changed. Right now I just like using Untappd to track if I've had something or not. I'll make super basic notes if something is particularly noteworthy and that's that. I don't even score anything except for my favorite beers (which I gave all 5's).

 

Reviewing beers absolutely ruined the experience for me. For one, so many tickers out there. Two, I when I find a beer I like, I keep it around, rather than constantly searching for the new beer. Three, I found it pretentious, though at heart, it isn’t.