100 top beers according to some people

It's intersting to note that of the top 20, 11 of them are at

My Duvel and La Fin Du Monde made the top 33. I would put Delirium Tremens and Piraat in there somewhere, too.

-sw

Not at all, Beer Advocate and Rate Beer uses a system that over rates big beers and exceptionally expensive and rare beers such as Westvleteren 12. Westvleteren 12, is beer that has such a rep and is so expensive, that giving it anything other than a supper high rating, will negatively effect your beer aficionado rep with other beer advocates. And no one wants to think they spent $15 for 12oz’s of just ok beer.

What is it will all the imperial stouts and double IPS, strong ales and barley wines? Only one lager and its double bock. It’s all silly and has nothing to do with what really are the very best beers. Hell the best American IPAs comes from the northwest, but not one of the top IPA’s is from there. I could go on and on but I would sujest that you just ignore their supposed Top 100. Unless you are trying to find the worlds best imperial stout.

"Hell the best

That is your opinion. The opinion of all these Rb'ers and BA'ers seems different; Joris

And as I said I have little respect for their rating system, were every category of flavor is given a number. Under body, a five is max, no pilz will ever get a 5 as most people think that the higher number means more of it. So if a beer is not thick with an intense flavor and a smell that infects an entire room, it will fall short in three areas in the ratings. No pilzener will ever be top rated, no matter how good. Nor will any English bitters, not big enough to get the numbers. Only over the top beers get the ratings. Or beers that have a strong regional following. Notice micro brews from larger communities due better. Stone and AleSmith can do no wrong, as both rate beer and beer advocate have a very large following in San Diego. A beer out of Bellingham or LaConner has no chance in hell.

An over hoped monstrosity such as Stone ruination will always rank over a truly great beer such as Diamond knot and forget the poor English beers. Young’s apparently makes bad beer and Fullers cant make a bitter, if one were to follow the beer advocate ratings.

You're answering beside the question. Apart from that, you accuse the raters of prejudice, whilst you have quite a few of yourself. I have rated a German Kellerbeer at 4.1/5, a Pilsener from New Zealand at 4/5, and two English Premium Bitters at 4.2/5. I have never given 5/5 to any beer, and out of my top 100, 44 are lambic-based beers - because I just happen to love the complexity of lambic. Which, BTW, seldom exceeds 7% ABV, and are not at all beers fed to the gills with monstruous malt bills or ditto hopgifts... What is true, is that people will tend to rate high what they know best, as in my case with the lambic beers; but that is also due to a simple question of availability. I have seen extremely rare German and Belgian beers in a Seattle commuters supermarket, but where I live decent foreign beers are as rare as fountains in Hell. So, indeed, the only LaConner beer I've ever tasted only got 3.5/5, sorry.

Joris

Yes Joris and I notice that your ratings bare little resemblance to the final ones. You seem to realize that a 5 does not mean "lots of" but instead should mean prefect for style. If the average beer rater knew this I might still disagree with the results but I would not call the ratings worthless. But they are worthless.

Everyone has a prejudice and it should all even out, but it doesn’t on these beer rating sites were only the big are highly rated and the USA dominates and not even the whole of the USA at that. Speaking of personal prdudice what is you highest rated standard IPA? And what score did you give it?

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FWIW: in the IPA category, I gave three beers a 4.1 rating: Bièropholie Cascade (from Quebec); 21st Amendment "21A-IPa" and Bear Republic Racer 5, both from California (as you know). In the "Double/Imperial" IPA, I gave DFH Burton Baton 4.2, Norrebro Bryghus North Bridge Extreme (Denmark) and DFH 120 Minute IPA 4.1/5.

What prejudice does that prove? That I do not rate NW Coast beers high enough?

Joris

No I was just curious how high you rated that style in general. You see that is one of my bigger points, people over rate their favorite style and actually hold back a style they don’t care for. That is one of the reasons Pilz gets the shaft in these ratings. Americans think Budweiser when they pilz, so give low ratings to all pilzners. Budmillercoors deserves this treatment but not all the light colored beers should be damned over it and they are.

You don’t seem to have a style you constantly underrate, but the rating sites in general do. Like I said your personal ratings and the score on beer advocate are not similar to each other

Yeah, this is more of a list of big beer than of best beers. Granted the beers are all very good but somehow the list does not have room for excellent but lighter beers.

Bob Devine

"VW" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com...

Ah, fair enough, thanks. But. The idea behind sites as Ratebeer and Beeradvocate - at least that is how I see them - is trying to get as many different amateurs of (good) beer, from as many different backgrounds as possible, to establish together an idea about any (...) given beer. Of course, that is not gospel! You have to distill your own grain of gold out of all the sand. But I do maintain that all (honest) opinions are valuable at least to some extent, even when that danger of overrating 'big' beers is very real, and even when many are more enthusiast than knowledgeable. Do not say the listings are worthless - they might be imperfect. The result is larger than the sum of the parts. My point? Start giving your own ratings/ideas. If we have more people that can value "light" styles (I do not quite like that term, but it will do), they will increase in overall appreciation.

Cheers, Joris

VW wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com:

That, or it's consistently rated highly because it's a truly spectacular beer. It's one of the best beers--heck, best liquids--I've ever had. It's an absolutely wonderful beer. I think you'll find that people who think that's a great beer will slam other beers. I love Westy 12, but tend to find trendy bourbon/oak barreled beers crappy as hell. People have different opinions. That's sort of what those sites are about.

Ah, I see. These sites apparently conflict with your sense of yeeha- for-my-local-brew provincialism.

Yes, ratings on Ratebeer and BA should be taken with a huge grain of salt, but they are what they are. They're a compendium of the opinions of thousands and thousands of people who (A) like beer and (B) want to go to an online site to talk about/rate those beers. It's not a representative sample of the population, and noone with a brain would even pretend that the Ratebeer Top 50 is actually some kind of objectively-gathered best beer in the world list. It just happens that those thousands and thousands of beer drinkers apparently disagree with you on what makes a truly enjoyable IPA.

Unfortunately, apparently people without brains are included in the thousands and thousands (is that at least two thousand, or four thousand? ;-) who post at such sites. I've seen a sign at a liquor store proclaiming a certain beer "the best beer in the world." I was bemused enough to ask who could possibly have proclaimed such a thing. Turns out it just happened to be the top ranked beer that week at one of the above-mentioned sites. Was it a good beer? Certainly. Best beer in the world? No such thing. People do draw unintended conclusions from that data.

Where the heck is Carlsberg? Everyone knows it is "probably the best beer in the world"! :-|

Which, the Danish or the Canadian?

What ever, the fact that Rate Beer has LaConner IPA (dry hopped) ranked .01 of a point off of being the highest rated IPA in the world and Diamond Knot is rated 7th best has no effect on my point of view.Yes many agree with me but the rating system is still completely worthless.

The comments are worth reading and once you get to know the people doing the rating you can start taking advice from those with a proven track record