When will Heady Topper be overtaken as #1?

Those of you expecting ratings on this site to be to Beer judge standards are doomed to disappointment. The ratings on this site from my own personal reading are overwhelmingly judged to the taste of the reviewer. It's why I stop using most BA ratings for beer suggestions and started listening to the Alstroms.

 

Too many votes to be taken over. Unless BA decides to write a formula to scale the vote process.

 

A few points:

1. There are two variables that determine ranking on this website: rating scores and # of ratings. The weight of each is arbitrary. Recently (a few months ago), the equation was altered such that # of ratings was given less weight and this changed the top 250 fairly drastically. Does that mean that some beers got better and others worse? Of course not! So to consider this particular rating system representative of some kind of objective truth is, at best, misguided. In fact, the answer to the question in the title of this thread may be "when they change the ranking system again".

2. # of ratings is hugely significant. The more ratings, the bigger the sample size, and the more stable the score. Recently, a rater gave KBBS a negative rating and it dropped KBBS's overall score substantially. Ten raters could give Heady a 1/5 and it might move its score .01. That kind of stability vs. instability is hugely important for a variety of reasons.

3. No offense, but I have to laugh at the "I think (fill in the blank) is better than Heady". It is entirely irrelevant to the discussion. There is a tremendous amount of variability in the rating of every beer on this website. Because one person prefers a beer over another is meaningless re: where the beer stands overall.

4. And speaking of Julius, as of now, it is a "flavor of the week". Now, there was a time when Heady was a "flavor of the week" when it first came on the scene. The fact is though that for every Heady, there are a 100 beers that sink drastically in rankings after their newness is over. Maybe Julius is a rare exception (like Heady), but odds are it is not. Likewise, once more people have it, the ratings will inevitably drop as rareness and novelty jack up ratings substantially. So to say that Julius would be #1 if more people had it is again, misguided at best. I'll be convinced of Julius' staying power when it is in the top 20 five years from now.

5. I am a long-winded d-bag.

 

If Heady falls to number 2 or number 222 will that change your like or dislike of the beer ?

 

At that point, it would obviously be garbage, and I would have to drainpour all of the cans I just traded for.

 

Heady is worlds eaiser to get than KBBS to the point of really not being that hard.

 

As far as shaking up the rating system goes, why not set minimum # of ratings to qualify for Top 250, and only take the last few hundred ratings once a beer exceeds a certain number of ratings? That keeps the current 250 list up to date and not as subject to quantity.

A "Historical 250" could include all ratings from all of time for a beer.

 

I don't care whether Heady Topper falls to the #2 position on the top 250 beer list.

I do hope, however, that it's not surpassed by beer with only a few hundred reviews.