For the polite sake of argument - by your reasoning the brewers of IPA's should be yanking them off the shelves after a few months when they've expired, but that is a widespread problem that we all deal with regularly and that solution is also a bit unrealistic. In an ideal world, yes, but not the one we live in. And I don't think most tickers have the sense to not tick/review old IPA's, IIPA's or others that go downhill after months in one's closet at home. Gotta get that tick.
I agree. Although I do like see a different color check box for the ones that i have "had" in the ranking lists, instead of just the ones i reviewed.
Agreed... however it seems many BAs seem to think 6 weeks is "getting old" as far as the style goes, and generally I can agree with this, but I'm fairly certain The Alchemist thinks/knows his brew peaks somewhere around this period of time since canning. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
I've had exactly one Heady (Which I poured into a mutha-fuckin glass). It was delicious and got me feelin plenty good knowatimsayin. I can honestly say I have no problem with it being #1. However, there are plenty of others that could also be there and I'd take no issue with it.
I dont see anything wrong with giving heady a 5 and therefore it being ranked the highest. Some people like reviewing some people could care less like myself. I only review once in awhile and if I think its warrented, either I really like something or its somehthing a lot of people have tried and I may have a different taste for it.
I happen to use the hads only and I assign thoughtful scores. In my mind this qualifies as a proper score. I am finding the reactions to the websites recent updates interesting. I guess the almighty reviewers who write shit think they are better than all the rest. Thanks so much for your time and effort. Have a cookie on me.
I do, but when I did my review I had to look at it. I don't mind sediment, but can't give it a 5 for looks. See you in a month at EBF. Really excited.
its not just about writing shit, its about evaulating 5 different numbers that go into a final score. its a completely different system. if the "had" system let me just choose 1-5 on each of the weighted aspects (appearance, smell, taste, mouthfeel, overall) and shoot out a score it would make more sense to merge. untill than, as thoughtfull as your "had" reviews are, its still not as accurate as a formal review.
No one is debating that. But, it's also fair to recognize that all the sudden the "rules" changed. Heady Topper didn't get any better. Westy 12 didn't get any worse. No one changed their opinions of any beers. The Bros changed the algorithm.
Not a big fan of the scoring system. Too many troll accounts doing things like this... http://beeradvocate.com/user/beers?ba=IPAyForHops However scores mean jackshit to me.... and jack just left town.
I'm well aware of the rating system and I don't necessarily agree that your 3.5 does not equal my 3.5 regardless of how it got there. If you want to think that you are better at this reviewing of beer thing than fine, but I’m not sure how the self-important nobs who have complained about the changes have any more credibility at reviewing beers than my cat.
Well wouldn't that be the bottle shop's responsibility to take old beer off the shelf? I couldn't see a brewery buying back their old IPA's because they weren't the one with the problem selling them. But yes, since combining the hads/reviews I can definitely see how that would effect overall score. The thing that I've noticed is that the ratings have went up...So for the sake of IPA's it seems that less hops(in the case of ticking old beer) is actually more favorable as I have noticed a few IPA/IIPA's go up in rating. Then again it is harder to get an average down after many reviews being combined with even more had's. So I guess I'll reiterate my previous statement. Before the change, I would much more trust reviews over had's for the main fact that they took the time to thoroughly review that beer, and in my head, who would want to write a review of say a really old heady for instance.
What the system needs for the hads is a place to put the best by or brew date of the bottle , I read the reviews a lot to see that a guy says this beer was 2 years old and sitting on the liqour store shelf
i dont think it has anything to do with being better than the other. i do feel that it is much easier to abuse the had system than the full review wihich requires more effort. (not thatthat cant be abused either but its much harder to fake a review) i hope more folks review their hads like u do. djbutters above shows a good example of the abuse
About that list...It doesn't make sense to me that a brew can make the top 100 with considerably fewer reviews than others. 29 reviews can catapult a beer into the the top 100? Really? Statistically, I would think that you would need more than that to be relevant. How many? I don't know. I only had 2 semesters of statistics a very long time ago, but 100 sounds like a good place to start.
The formula listed at the bottom of each of the Top lists is statistically well-founded, although you can debate what the minimum vote threshold should be.
And I think this is the biggest difference. People are naturally giving beers higher ratings when they simply score it as a "had." When you write a full beer review you are dissecting every aspect of the beer and will likely give it a lower rating. As your numbers above show, this isn't an opinion, it's a fact. Heady Topper has a 4.7 overall rating, I don't remember seeing ANY beer on this site ever have a score that high.
I'm unclear whether thats abuse or a reviewer who works on a system like: 1 - I would never drink again 2 - Avoid 3 - Okay 4 - Pretty good 5 - I would drink all the time You can argue that they aren't rating to style, but let's be honest and admit that there's an awful lot of styles that don't get much love around here regardless of how "to-style" they are.
A fact? Really? Based on the top 100 list you've generalized to every beer out there? Maybe Hads just accentuate the extremes and the Bottom 100 list just got lower on average. (BTW, many beers have had runs at 4.7 and above. For a while Ann was up there.)
I think it's also possible that geographics affect ratings. A good (and valid) statistical sampling would be taken from various parts of a large geographical area (not just a couple of states). Folks on the west coast may not appreciate a brew as much as folks on the east coast and vice versa. Some may be partial to their local brews which could be due to freshness, package formats, etc. What I mean is..I tend to hold more stock in a widely distributed product on the top 100 versus one that is only available within very limited boundaries.
Which is why: 1) the ranking formula factors in the number of reviews, and 2) the Beers of Fame list exists
Spot checking it looks like that you are correct in that the average score of the bottom beers did decline. I'm willing to bet that if I were to rescrape and compare that the middle quartiles had slight changes. If plotted it'd probably look like a reverse bell curve.
I took it as "I can't believe people here consider the rankings here as gospel." I use the rankings as a guide. Been burned by too many 88-110's that were more like 60-70's because of some fanboy like obsession for an average beer.
I'm almost certain Supplication was higher before the change. Also, I'm pretty sure some of the Armand'4s were higher before they were retired.
Be aware? DANGER! DANGER!! Heady Topper went to #1 on an arbitrary list after some arbitrary inputs based on arbitrary numbers caused the old arbitrary list to be obsolete, and creating a new arbitrary list based on arbitrary inputs derived from arbitrary numbers. If people let the ranking on a list determine their enjoyment of a beer, then they need to step away from the internet, and learn to think for themselves.
