Ratebeer v. Beer Advocate

Better for what? Beer ratings? Pub listings? Witty banter? Self-aggrandizing ownership and obnoxious self-promotion?

Read both. Go with which one you like. Neither is better than the other for anything, other than your own personal preference.

-Steve

Neither one of them is worth one good beer for yourself.

nb

I use them both. I just want to cataloge the brews I've tried, helps me remember what I tasted when I tried that beer and whether or not I'd like to revisit it. They (like anyone or anything) may mis-categorize a particular drink (or just not put it in the category we think it belongs). And yes one of the sites owners has developed a big head; but I tend to not let those things get in the way of a useful tool. I like being able to break it down for myself, maybe I'll be wondering just what are my favorite IPA's or which Imperial Stout didn't curl my teeth...too many brews out there to remember them all...Each rating system has it's benefits; you'll just have to decide which one works better for what you want to use it for...

BEER ADVOCATE WEIGHTING appearance = 20% smell = 20% taste = 40% mouthfeel = 10% drinkability = 10%

RATEBEER WEIGHTING Aroma 20% Appearance 10% Flavor 20% Palate 10% Overall impression 40%

so you can see. some catgories have different weigted values. and some catgories cross over, some do not...Me, personally, if I had to drop one and keep one...I'd probably stay with ratebeer. It's easier to tell between the overall rating and the STYLE rating. The thing is to not let any rating produced by the site to change how you really feel about a beer.

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John Frum put down his beer long enough to post:

Beer Advocate has better forums, articles, etc.

Ratebeer has better and more complete ratings.

On Sat, 21 Jul 2007 21:40:27 +0100, John Frum wrote (in message ):

Thanks everyone.

What I really want to know is which is more authoratative in its ratings.

This is all part of reasearch I am doing for a book on US breweries.

They are both equally authoritative: that is to say, not at all.

Neither is trying to be authoritative. The reviews on each are by the public with diverging tastes. It's up to the reader/site user to decide on trying a beer based on reviews and rankings.

"Doppelbock" schreef in bericht news:Xns99764E725BD46doppelbocyahoocom@207.115.17.102...

Ratebeer is more complete on the beers - much more tasted, and the more as they are non-American. The European lists on Beeradvocate present large lacunes.

BeerAdvocate has still an edge concerning their beerfly's.

As to authorative - that is up to the (wo)man using it; you have to do the filtering and the conclusions yourself.

Definitely ratebeer. Beer advocate has a bad case of herd mentality and circle-jerking on the latest big bad hard-to-get beer, and from browsing reviews seems to have a lot more obviously ignorant people active.

...while Ratebeer has the ticker mentality run rampant; cogent, thoughtful reviews of beers are pretty much frowned upon, judging from the boards and the most prolific tickers. Considering the wealth of reviews that get posted from a single bottle of the rare beer of the moment (think 20+ reviews from one bomber), I think ratebeer is equally useless.

Both sites have the herd mentality, and neither should be used to gauge the "best beer" ratings; either could be used to gauge what the tickers are lining up for, however.

Witzel

Dave Witzel wrote in news:Xns997711699D0A7djwitzelnycroadrunne@66.250.146.128:

Your last comment is a bit backwards; if anything, the reviewers that write longer (either more poetic or technically descriptive) reviews tend to get a lot more credit and "props" from fellow members in the forums.

But RateBeer has a ton of stats available (unlike BA), which can lead to some users pursuing number-goals beyond just the total number of beers they've tried. In some cases that can lead to ticking, but certainly not as a rule.

Not all high-volume raters are tickers. Be careful about using that term as a blanket statement. Ticking = little to no notes, i.e., more focus is on the person than the beer. But if reviewing beer is a big part of one's life, it's easy to accumulate a lot of ratings even if one spends a lot of time evaluating every beer and takes decent notes. There aren't that many true tickers on RateBeer (or BA as far as I know), since both sites enforce minimum description requirements and take action when that policy is abused.

You're exaggerating a bit there (even in shared-bottle situations, it's rare for people to take less than 3 or 4 ounces, so even in extreme cases you'd not get more than 6 or 7 people on a single bomber), but this is certainly an issue that gets argued. Even more controversial is rating from single 1-oz samples at GABF. The question comes down to "how large of a sample size, and how many of them, does it take to get a 'good' rating?" The answers range between both extremes, and is different for every person you ask. How much it takes is for the individual rater to decide for him/herself. So the aggregate scores are from all sorts of sample sizes...from single small pours to entire bottles or draught pints to six packs over a period of days or weeks. Plus a lot of users of these ratings sites use them primarily as their own personal log...they don't necessarily see it as important to compare their notes with others, but just want a reliable place to store them.

Not really. Again, it's not about the tickers. What you mainly end up with on the "top" lists are a bunch of full-throttle beers that are bold, hoppy, etc. (Impy stouts, barleywines, DIPAs, etc.). It's not a tickers' top list, it's a list of the boldest beers with the sexiest, most aggressive aromas/flavors. Beers like pilsners, bitters, dunkels, etc. don't make the lists very often. And it's certainly a fine argument to say that's a bad thing. But you can't look at any aggregate rating and argue too much, because it is effectively made by the majority of your peers. Just because the majority may vote for a particular candiate (ahem) doesn't mean it's the "best" choice, but it certainly does reflect the people around you. What you take or leave from that information is entirely up to you.

Cheers, Ern

what is ticking?

Oops! Never mind. I didn't read far enough.

nb

Could you elaborate on that? What stats does RateBeer have that BA doesn't?

Paul Arthur wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@shasta.marwnad.com:

Though it sounds like a cop-out, it would be difficult to list all of RB's many stats/lists, as there are so many scattered all over the site. Have a look.

For example, every user has their own personal stats on the following: complete rating history bar graph (by month), rating distribution (bar graph), complete list of all beer styles one has sampled beers from (how many of each style, average rating by each style), complete list of all countries one has sampled beer from (how many from each country, average rating by country), and complete list of all US states & Canadian provinces one has sampled beer from (how many from each state/province, average rating by state/province). Plus stats on your overall rating across all beers, and how that stat relates to other raters of those same beers.

That's just stats for your own ratings. There are lists upon lists in the People and Ratings sections (and subsections) of almost any conceivable "top" or "bottom" list of users and groups and breweries and beers and places, etc. Perhaps more than the casual user is interested in on a daily or even monthly basis, and there's indeed so much that it sometimes can be difficult to find where a particular obscure stat is located. But there's quite a stat/list glut on RB...whether that's good or bad is up to the user to decide.

Cheers, Ern

Ah, I see. It's a lot more granular (and a lot more verbose) than BA. F'rinstance, if I look at my profile I can see that I've:

13 beer reviews 11 styles 4 countries 5 us states 3.82 average rating [some other stuff]

But there's no way to pull up a list of *which* five states that is, or which styles, or what my average rating within a style/geographical area is. I can see how that sort of thing could be useful.

Ernest wrote on 24 Jul 2007:

There are two sets of people on both sites: tickers, and people who have the taste buds and grey matter to write cogently on the thousands of beers they've had over the years. Ratebeer is set up to encourage "ticking", and threads in their forums/groups of them at beer events tend to foster that mindset.

Of course not all prolific reviewers are tickers, but when one has seen, firsthand, the ticking ways, it's harder to take the site seriously. And I kind of *like* Ratebeer.

(next section deleted as it, on further review, reinforces what I wrote anyway)

When I see multiple dozens of reviews based on the same growler of a beer -- and this is easy to track when you tie it to an event, such as Dark Lord Day -- or when you see a gathering of seven or eight huddled around pints of beer shared at a table at a Pizza Port event or a bar hosting a day of beers not normally available in the area... you tend to draw conclusions.

Again, naturally, there are those, undoubtedly like yourself, who take thoughtful notes when the situation presents itself and don't whip out the notepad every time they go out.

It's a herd mentality, in many cases. Scores appear to be defined by, well, what you said plus the difficulty in obtaining the beer. Someone, or some brewery, develops a reputation, so therefore every beer put out in limited release automatically becomes the best beer since Jim Cibak created the universe. Some awful messes get ranked really, really highly due to the difficulty and/or expense of obtaining them. It's distressingly obvious, and a big reason why any set of rankings will always always always need to be taken with a big ol' salt lick.

But I doubt I'm bursting anyone's bubble here.

Witzel

On the other hand, I can actually access my stats at BA. After translating my ratings to RateBeer talk, I discovered that RateBeer will only show me an average rating; the other stats are only available if I become a Premium Member.

Dave Witzel wrote in news:Xns9977C94E941D1djwitzelnycroadrunne@66.250.146.128:

I don't know that I'd agree with the "set up to encourage" part. I don't think RB *or* BA are encouraging anything beyond enjoyment of beer and the rating hobby itself. At least for RB, I can say that the people who run the site don't do anything to promote a particular rating style, ticking or otherwise. If the *member* discussions in the forums give you that impression, that's not the same thing. If the plethora of stats on RB give you that impression, I would disagree as I happen to know the guys who put all those lists together are simply stat geeks and just enjoy that stuff for the sake of it...if that has resulted in lower- quality ratings for the pursuit of collecting stats, that was certainly not the intent.

I've seen the "ticking ways" first hand quite often, and with some exceptions I can't say I have a particularly bad impression of it. You learn to ignore some raters who don't put in the effort. But I don't really think small-ish samples are the main problem...it's raters who don't pay attention or take much time to study the beer (or are very easily swayed by hype or others' opinions). And bigger samples aren't going to help folks like that.

That's often short-lived, though. It's happened dozens of times where some beer gets some wild attention at first, and as more people make the effort to find/try the beer, the ratings moderate. But then again, often this results in a new favorite that lasts a long time.

But why is this a bad thing? To me it seems perfectly normal that if someone uncovers a local gem, the collective would want to try it. This effect can bring a lot of attention to a particular brewery or beer, increasing sales and perhaps even a little press. Certainly, Dark Lord might have always sold out in one day even if RB or BA hadn't existed, but then again maybe not. Or take Duck-Rabbit Baltic Porter...this one has gotten high ratings from lots of experienced beer hounds from all over Europe, a beer from a small town in North Carolina that they might never have even known about if it hadn't been for this "herd" effect.

As for the bias for "any special beer" from breweries that are well-loved already, yeah...a few of those irritate me as well (not going to name breweries here). Que sera...

That's true for any medium, and I'm in full agreement there. I think the main thing one has to keep in mind about both sites' ratings is that they are by "amateurs", for "amateurs". The majority of both sites' membership are just ordinary folks who happen to like beer a lot. There's a few commercial brewers, many homebrewers, and even a few beer judges, but for the most part it's just a mish-mash of the beer-focused consumer demographic. My "top 50" certainly looks very little like the RB or BA "top 50", but I'm ok with that. 'Cause sometimes those top 50 beers actually ARE pretty freakin' good, and I'd probably never have known about them otherwise.

Cheers, Ern