Up the Min for Top Beers by State

I'd like to suggest that the m value used in calculating Top Beers within each state be bumped up from 10 to 100 or something close to that value.

A value of 10 basically leaves the top 50 by state looking like more like the Top New Beers List than like the Top 250 beers. This small m of 10 puts an undue emphasis on very local offerings from a very few popular breweries and does not really represent the beers of a state (at least in the case of PA).

For example, in PA, those of us who are reasonably local to a popular brewery such as Tired Hands (which does not bottle or distribute their beers) don't need to be told they are popular and their beers are only easily acquired by visiting the brewpub. (Which can be problemmatical for non residents unless they are willing to travel.) Similarly I already know that Bullfrog is doing some popular beers over in western PA but that is about 400 miles away from where I sit and not a casual journey and again someplace doing beers that are hard to sample without lots of hassle.

Thus the current m for calculating Top beers doesn't enable the list to provide much information to the casual or serious beer consumer that isn't also easily obtained by looking through the forum for that state. Nor does it offer much benefit to many travelers who want to pick up some of the Top beers in a state to carry back to their home state. Very few want to go to a difficult location to find and fill up a lot of growlers. Many more want to go to a shop and buy bottles or a case of beer to carry home.

 

Good idea!

 

Sounds like it might be working out. And that bit about DFH and DE seems from here a bit more reasonable outcome, so long as new places stand a chance of getting on the list, than having the PA list dominated by places like Tired Hands which is good beer but is mostly brewpub only operation and not easily found outside one part of the Philly burbs.

Let me know if you want a bit of user testing for the mid Atlantic states region.