Scoring: What do the numbers mean to you?

Almost none of the style guidelines are remotely archaic or based on standards from hundreds of years ago. However, if ratings don't adhere to any style guidance then they lose a lot of their value as a tool for other people to discover new beers the might like.

But the issue of whether a middle of the road example should be a 3 or a 3.75 or whatever doesn't really have to do with the style guidelines. The idea that they "deserve" a 3 only makes sense of we assume that commercial beers are normaly distributed along a curve from terrible to stellar. But that's not really what I observe. It's more like a cluster of the vast majority around the good-great region (maybe 3.75-4.25) with outliers at the high end and a long scraggly tail stretching down the low end.

This is because the market does a decent job of punishing bad beers so they are removed from production fairly quickly.

 

I'm no expert on the various guidelines but based on the winners and the fact that they regularly add new styles i get the impression they're keeping things current. And the style guidelines here are mostly reflective of contemporary expectations for the common styles or are sufficiently broad to allow for a fair bit of creativity.

 

Maybe, just maybe, with all of the rating styles that we all seem to have that a true score for a beer in most of the popular styles (where the law of large numbers of raters is at work) is achieved by happy accident. This likely isn't true for rarely seen styles, or for styles that tend to be divisive (sours, wilds, rauchbiers, etc.)

 

I think the ratings for popular styles are definitely the most useful. The further away from the broadly popular styles you get, the harder it is to make sense of the ratings.

As some quick examples I found, the number one ESB has lots of mentions of citrussy hops and comparisons to ipa/pale ale, the top 22 american brown ales feature some kind of flavor additions/barrel aging and #23 still features rye and chocolate malt so it's not like it's trying to be traditional, the #1 Kolsch is 7.5% abv and features Nelson hops, the top of the American porter list has a ton of flavored beers,and the English barleywine list is dominated by stuff aged in spirits barrels (from american brewers).

So what exactly is a fan of those styles supposed to do with these rankings?

 

Why?
I don’t know why it isn’t a linear scale with plenty of bad beers (Coors Light, Stella, Corona…) with scores near 1 or worse.
As is, we’ve crammed all the decent beers into a small range and really have no way to distinguish them.

 

Pilsner Urquel doesn’t interest me and doesn’t impress me. I find that type of beer style boring and only drink it if that is all that is available. It is t clear why I should give it a very high rating.

 

I think I agree with you

 

Wait, there is no such thing as archaic guidelines. A German Dunkel needs to taste and smell like a German Dunkel, not a dark lager with tropical fruit taste and aroma. There is a reason why most beer styles are timeless - because they are consistent over time and you get what you expect. I'd be pretty unhappy if I bought a German Dunkel that was loaded with Mosaic hops. That said, our fearless leader @Todd has expanded styles on BA to accommodate some "modern" interpretations. Prime example is the India Pale Lager (IPL) and Milkshake IPA. That said, I agree that maybe there needs to be more "modern" beer categories, i.e. "Modern Dark Lager". Cheers!

 

You shouldn't have rated it at all.

 

I totally get that. I really don't like Saison's that use Brett yeast. I rarely drink them because I don't enjoy them. That said, when I do review one on occasion, I try to be as objective as possible based on the fact that Brett yeast is something that is intentionally used in the style sometimes. As a general rule, I avoid rating them because I just don't like them. That's the advice from BA - don't rate a style that you know you don't like (and I'll add that you can't be objective about).

 

Gotcha. Thanks for clarifying that. Some beer styles do get moved to a "historic" category if it is all but dead. There is some fun when breweries start making some historic beer styles like Kentucky Common or Lichtenhainer because you can get a sense of how beer has evolved over time. You have to be the explorative type to chance them, which some understandable aren't.

 

There is nothing wrong with chocolate malt in a brown ale. That's how you get the color and nutty flavors.

 

Nice stats post!

As was mentioned, maybe it’s a style you don’t rate. If going in you don’t like the style and know you won’t give it a high rating that implies no Czech Pils/Pale Lager can get a 5.

 

Well its not linear because a beer rated a 4 is not twice as good as one rated a 2. Most people would probably rate that 4 beer as something like 100 times better, or more, than that 2 beer.

Hell, a 4.75 beer might be considered twice as good as a 4 beer to some people.

But also, there's just not going to be a uniform distribution of beers across the whole scale. Maybe if we could somehow capture every single beer brewed on earth, including all the half assed homebrew attempts and gifted beer kit brews and what not, we would end up with something approaching that nice even distribution across the scale.

We're generally rating commercially available beers. That means that theyve already been subjected to a fair bit of selection and refinement. Clearly bad beers get made, infected beers get out into the world, and plenty of us consider many super popular commercial beers to be pretty gross, but even as an AAL hater I can't in good faith say they deserve to be rated too much below a 3. They may be bland and flabby, for my tastes, but they are generally at least inoffensive.

Plus, while those beers dominate sales, in terms of total number of brands the kaleidoscope of "craft" beer labels absolutely floods them out.

Aha, I'm no brewer but that makes sense to me.

In any case, it took 22 listings to get to one that didnt emphasize additions of things like coffee, chocolate, or maple or highlight the time spent in spirit barrels. And I'm confident enough in my beer style awareness to know that none of those are remotely traditional (whether we're harkening back to merry old England or just to the foundations of the modern american craft beer scene in the late 20th century) for a brown ales.

I'm sure many of those beers are enjoyable to drink. I'm also sure that if I'm craving a brown ale it's not because I want a 9+% abv beer that tastes like bourbon soaked French toast.