Six point scale for beer quality

Watch this space Peter. A lot of work has been going on over the last couple of years on CAMRA beer scoring systems. The result of that work will be released VERY soon.

This is actually fairly similar to the scale used by my local branch of CAMRA to score beer for GBG selection, which is a 0-4 scale, basically:

With half and quarter marks also allowed. Probably your "Pleasant" would be a 2.5.

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PeterE> 0 - Unfit 1 - Disappointing - Poor example 2 - Average - PeterE> Nothing wrong but no good points 3 - Good - The standard PeterE> one would reasonably expect in a Good Beer Guide pub 4 - PeterE> Exceptional - A bonus

Anything not a real ale is, of course a '0' by definition.

AndyC

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Anything not an RA simply doesn't get rated...

Fresh from the Leicester CAMRA website:

as used for at least 15 years to compile our GBG entries.

The reason for that extra entry was to give proper distinction between 'OK I'll drink this' and 'You should try some!" Or to put it another way on my scale what you would actually recommend as worth making the effort for.

Paul Shirley wrote

oh good we're back to the "all non-RA beer is sh*te" business :~)

many unRA beers do get rated by me, & lots of other drinkers (eg go see the excellent

egs of nonRA bottled beers I enjoyed recently - Black Sheep, Krusovice Dark (reminded me of Holden's Mild!) Dofish Head Raison d'Etre (I think it's nonRA), Bridge of Allan Glencoe Stout (OK, but bit thin IMO) Peter Fox (original poster) wrote -

yep, & a totally different opinion too - I had it somewhere in Norwich (not an Adnams pub IIRC) this year & it was delicious - a real beauty - chewy, malty, not too sweet, but with the right taste, body and smoothness of a brown ale that you almost never find. (but then I still struggle to find much else than bitter, bitter or bitter of varying strengths)

(BTW why were you skeptical about it being on as a guest in the first place?)

I hope yours was an "off" pint, cask or brew, rather than the norm now. cheers MikeMcG.

North Hampshire CAMRA selects its Good Beer Guide pubs on a very similar system:

All can be scored with mid values. Any pub scoring less than 3.5 would not be selected.

All members have small score sheets they carry with them and ratings can also be forwarded via our website.

There are also requirements for minimum numbers of visits by different people on a number of separate occasions. Plus a few rules regarding new landlords etc.

We also allow a small percentage of nominations outside of the system.

It works very well for us.

John B

In message , MikeMcG writes

That would be the effect of rating them all 0. Since we don't consider other drinks in GBG selection we don't bother rating them. The same seems reasonable for posts in a *REAL ALE* newsgroup.

The main point is that all users within the group interpret the scale as consistently as possible. Then you can realistically compare different beers in different pubs.

Surely if this scale is purely concerned with beer quality, then your '2' rating cannot be disputed by anyone else unless they've tried it from the same cask. Whether you like it or not is irrelevant, as '2' refers to a condition of 'average'. (And really, 'average' probably should occur at the median point of the scale, in this case 2.5, but that's an aside).

I think the problem that this thread highlights is that rating systems actually need to rate two different things. One is quality, the second is the far more subjective matter of personal taste.

For instance, it's possible for a beer I don't particularly like to rate anything between 0 and 5 - but point-for-point, that doesn't affect my opinion of it. I'd rather drink '5' quality Theakstons Best than '0' quality Woodfordes Wherry, but '3' Wherry will always beat '3' Theakstons, etc.

My own scale is based on taking a whole point rating from 0-10 for quality (which can vary from one pint to another), and a whole point rating from

E.g.

Fullers London Porter is a beer I rate 8. If I had a pint of this in almost perfect condition (9), then the overall rating would be 8.5.

BTN

Following on from MikeMcG's message. . .

Actually I was _sceptical_ which was just a hunch.

I had what turned out to be the last pint of it on Sunday evening to see if it had improved and it had. Much more bitter and taste in the roof of the mouth.. Found it was best half and half with GK IPA.

No. Average is where most people here start. The idea is to have a suitably large (but not unmanageable) range where we can quickly place a beer and perhaps qualify it later.

No. If you start out with the idea that you're compiling "my top 10 beers" then that *is* your personal preference. But most people here can taste more objectively than that. The reason for the _subjective_ labels (which I admit might confuse to begin with) is because that is how strongly you would recommend the beer to somebody else. That is the word you would use to sum up in a single word the treat in store for somebody to indicate the effort they should make to try it. (But of course one man's meat is another man's poison.)

if we're talking about GBG listing of beers/pubs then the presence of nonRA beers is irrelevant, obviously. but in that case why did someone bring nonRA beers into the conversation?

my point is that nonRA beers are not crap by definition - many beers, both foreign & UK brewed prove this IMO - give me a fresh bottle of black sheep (or many other beers) over cask courage best every time (same goes for almost every macrobrew RA, many regionals & sub-par micros)

well, IMO its reasonable to talk about *good beer* in ukfdra of which good UK RA is just a subgroup.

Personally I prefer the elegant simplicity of Lew Bryson's GOOD or S**TE scale:

Best regards, Paul

-- Paul Sherwin Consulting

Except that the group charter suggests that there should be comparison.

Simple labelling of non-RA compliant products as s**te does not suffice. (Irrespective of any level of truth to the statement)

In message , Steven Pampling writes

Which part of "I DIDN'T SAY THAT" is causing you the problem?

Which would be true, but since you're the only one who has used this word it's pretty irrelevent. As I'm sure you know CAMRA scoring systems are about the quality of real ale. Anything else isn't rated because it isn't real ale, which is why these drinks are 'not rated'..... only you have read this as 's**te'.

It's quite simple really

Mark

Its already difficult enough attempting a credible objective comparison of RA quality. We're trying to measure how 'accurate' to type (what the brewer designed *and* what we expect from a RA) each sampled pint is, not comparing different beer brands.

Comparing beer brands is a when the flowery language beer drinkers claim to despise is needed, 6 point scales don't work. The less common ground shared by the products, the less meaning any such comparison has - and that's why comparing different product sectors is suspect.

Don't work for whom?