Why do people review beers when...

If a bottle isn't dated and I buy it, shame on me, not the brewery.

 

Generally by taste. If it tastes Old, just assume it's old And don't rate it

 

I know bottle/can dating is more difficult that it seems, but if it is not dated, shame on the brewery. From my experience the risk of buying a stale beer is outweighed by the loss of enjoying good beer. A paradox for sure, but not a hill worth dying on for me. So I am all for rating stale/off beer, as it will highlight a problem when it occurs.

 

Maybe BeerAdvocate could add another field to the rating for age of the beer. The rating displayed could then be a 2-D chart of rating over time. This would allow the user to match up the age of their bottle to a point on the graph for a more accurate reference. I drew something up perhaps representing the what this might like for an IPA (green) and a RIS (red).

 

Touche!

 

If a brewery releases an infected beer, that *is* an accurate reflection of the beer. It reflects mistakes the brewery made. That it's still on the shelf is one of those mistakes.

Reviewing out of code beer i don't agree with. It's not the brewery's fault that the distributor and/or retailer aren't taking care of th ofe brewery's product, and for everyone benefit customers ought to take an interest in such things.

 

That guy gave it a pretty good score, 4.1/5. Most of his negative feedback was that it wasn't exactly to his preferences. Doesn't sound like a major complaint. And it tells me he must have a pretty nice growler to still taste good.

I wonder what growler he has!

 

Shame on both of you.

Brewers: Date your beers. Clearly and noticeably.

 

Well since I don't buy undated beer, there's actually no shame for me. There's so many different beers available in this area there's absolutely no need to gamble in that way.

What I do if I find an undated case of beer I'm interested in is not buy it, buy a different one instead, and then send the undated beer Brewery email telling them whose beer I bought instead of their undated beer and exactly why I chose the other beer. (We buy most of our beer by the case in PA.)

 

You're a better person than I am. I usually either (1) buy it and review it assuming it's fresh enough (brewery didn't provide any way to determine whether this is true -- maybe they think it has an infinite shelf life), or (2) pass it up and forget about it.

I'll start contacting breweries in these cases, too.

 

I review on Appearance, aroma, taste, mouthful and overall. Customer service doesn't figure into my score

 

By "in the wild" I just meant at a store (or anywhere that's not my house), and if these environments were indeed tightly controlled, the incidences of infected and "old" beers would be significantly lower (though likely not zero). And the farcical nature of reviewing old beer is gonna haveta be labelled an agree-to-disagree thing, I suppose, though the beer's freshness is still well within the control of the brewery (just ask Stone or any brewery who has pulled out of markets due to unresponsive sales numbers), be it in terms of dating or keeping shelf stock properly rotated, thus, for me, any old beer I buy is more than open to criticism.

Regardless, reviews still only provide very specific snapshots based within various individual contexts. People are gonna disagree with each others' opinions anyway, no need to police what they review as well.

 

This reminds me of the reverse, for example, people reviewing The Abyss, the Black Butte anniversary series, etc. prior to their "don't drink until" dates and giving them bad reviews. It's almost like ordering a raw egg and complaining that it was under-cooked. So yeah, it's stupid, and such reviews should not only be entirely disregarded, but they should be laughed at and mocked incessantly.

 

Infection is on the brewer. If I see the word "infection" all over the place in reviews it'll make me think twice about buying a beer. I will check for this when I'm buying expensive non-sour beers from breweries that do both and there's a distinct risk (unless I know they keep them separate).

Old date, no, you should not review and score that. Review for your own purposes? I guess, but if its going into the global score then that date might be damn important. Not true with all beers, but given that IPAs make up a hefty portion of what's reviewed here, it stands as a fair complaint.

If it's skunked, same as above. Not on the brewer or an accurate reflection on the beer.

In the end, I don't think it'll bring the scores way down. If infections are happening left and right, the beer does deserve to be dinged. If you bought an old bottle, that's on you.

 

Infected? Like we're all going to become zombies infeected?
Because that doesn't really sound cool.

I mean I like this whole zombie thing as much as the next guy. But I digress.

Sorry, I got to the bottom of the page and forgot what the forum was about.
Does anyone else do that?

 

At least with a review you can often find this bias out. How many ratings/hads are done like this, but we never know?

 

While I completely agree with your premise here, I think what the community keeps forgetting, is that this is a FREE Website! Just trust that the volume of reviewers will even this out in the end.