Re-Adjusting Old Beer Scores

One of the 3 beers I rated on this website at the beginning was
BeRazzled by The Bruery. I rated it 4.65. I would rate it exactly the same right now But I was a little surprised (at first) how high I rated Wookey Jack...but then when I started thinking about it, I think it really is a great beer and deserves that rating...So what I'm trying to say here is that I think that at first sight we may think that we rated a particular beer really high because it was such a long time ago and we tried so many great (better?) beers in the meantime, but on the other hand what's wrong with rating many many beers above 4.5/5?

 

I've revisited some old reviews upon snagging another bottle of said beer - just for kicks, to see how/if my palate has changed, and how some of those older reviews stand up in light of newer benchmarks for particular styles. A number got adjusted down, a select two or three actually saw an uptick.

 

I'm still adjusting for drinkability...I went through my very first reviews for it-then I looked at extreme rdevs; then my top and bottom beers. I'm sure there are a lot that I still haven't gotten to.

I recently adjusted my nugget nectar score- You used to be able to review a beer separately based on the serving type...i.e...I rated nugget nectar 3 times-on-tap, by bottle, and on cask. I gave the cask a 4.9 and the bottle a 4.3. The BA system nuked 2 or the 3 reviews and only kept my 4.9 cask review. I lowered the score a little but kept the content.

 

Yes there's the drinkability but ALSO the verbal descriptions for the numbers changed too. I don't have the old terms in memory, but I think the same or similar wording would have given a higher score then than now.

 

+1, I love the (Better?) part of this response. I think back to my first Pliny, I felt the aroma was unbelievable, 4.5 I believe was the score but it was 2 days old and my first. Now when I have a Pliny regardless of age it seems to be around a score of 4. Now this raises 2 questions for me personally.

1. Are there better quality beers being brewed now than a few years ago?
2. Am I used to the aromas and now nothing impresses me?

The question of, "Is Pliny not as good as it used to be?" seems ridiculous as they've brewed it for 20 years. Sure maybe slight changes due to ingredients, etc., play factor, but its still an amazing beer.
So my opinion on 1: There are tons of beers being brewed now, as opposed to lets say 2 years ago, let alone 5, Im trying just as many mediocre beers as amazing ones just as I had a few years ago. The volume however is increased, Ratios of don't like it- Like it are the same, just inflated. Therefore I don't think the quality has increased I just think theres more breweries sharing their beers. Thus making them more common.
As for 2, The aromas are definitely more common, but give them the same score! Why cheat another brewery just because its been done before? You can't be bias.

Better is likely. There are better beers than Pliny being brewed, but Great Beers in general seems like a logical assumption. We should evaluate beers based on itself not its counterparts. Reflecting on this brought me to realize the right answer, for myself anyways, is re-rating a beer accordingly, not letting the first influence me as much as possible, and keeping the two in my journal. Drink on dudes!

 

Never have, never will.

 

I have done something similar when it comes to re-rating, but since I am fairly new to my beer tasting journey, I had to go back and try some a second time. After doing so, I realized that it was a much better beer than I had first rated it. My taste was just not mature enough to enjoy it the first time. My palette has changed since I first began drinking beer.

 

With the amount of reviews you have I wouldn't neither lol

 

I really need to. A lot of my older scores are way too high because I had less context. Some beers that I had so long ago are still worthy of their scores, but others (mostly IPAs and IIPAs and hyped beers) need serious adjustment.

 

I am constantly adjusting scores as a re-taste a beer as my palate matures

 

I revisit reviews every Friday night. Most of them fall, unless I revisit one that was a horrible bottle gone bad the first time around. La Fin Du Monde was a notable as being one of the few that actually went up when it was already crazily high rated by me years ago. I still love it obviously haha. Also updated detail is nice for me. My 2010-2011 reviews were only 4-5 sentences and lacked the huge sensory detail I can provide now.

 

Everything deserves a second chance!

 

I rarely update a rating, and usually only do it because I feel I seriously misrepresented a beer in the first place or I find that over multiple subsequent tries it just really sucks. You can argue that current biases are just as bad as old biases as well. It can be a never ending cycle. I try to go with the first impression and leave it at that. And yeah, sometimes it's a hoot looking at old reviews and ratings and I wonder what I was thinking, but there's something about keeping the original intact that seems more true than updating for various reasons.

 

I'm glad you replied to that. Listen guy from Vermont that has easy access to HT and all the hype. Time to branch out. How many California rare beers to you have access too? YES - HT is a superior beer but it doesn't stand alone anymore.
Take off your Ben and Jerry's t shirt and relax... Dude. Live a little and don't be so close minded.

 

I think that the stability of my ratings has increased as I've had more beers. I've been drinking craft/imports (Optimator-type imports) since '93, but only got serious in the last few years (650+ beers new to me in the last three years or so). Early on, without a lot to compare against and only having had a few styles, it is hard to have much of a sense of what great is. I will say that my re-rates are almost exclusively downgrades... other than Sculpin (the dreaded "old Sculpin" was what got my original rating).