lmao. one of many, some variations on these guys - some want to be more loud/wacky/boisterous, some want to pretend to be quiet knowers.
lol, i just love hearing them start saying stuff they think sounds very meaningful and descriptive then the other guy (or girl) starts parroting it “yeah yeah its very macro”. all they end up really saying about this is “its good and easy to drink” and at 3:54 “it tastes like beer” without a twinge of irony.
these guys have an unlimited amount of cringe videos. here they are obsessing over numbers they read on the internet or imagined ie. abv numbers, ibu numbers, etc extremely vague things “pilsners are… really traditional”
“theapartmentbrewer” also pretends to be an expert in all things and is simply unbearable for me to listen to
a thought on these and all beer reviews, especially on youtube. its just a reality of people having unlimited ability to upload as many hours and hours and hours of “content” as they’d like, and it seems so insane to me to be doing these 10 to 20 minute reviews of A beer. awful genre of content.
i used to use ratebeer, but since it started having site issues ive just been keeping basic notes and “yes/no” in an excel file for myself.
Online beer reviews are 99% trash. That being said, I still do use BeerAdvocate and Untappd… but with pounds of grains of salt. Untappd in particular is what I use to quickly capture my own impressions for my own future reference, it’s quick & easy. I use my own data quite often because my memory is terrible, always has been and it’s getting worse. My reviews differ from many others in that I spread my scores pretty evenly across the entire spectrum between 1 star and 5 stars… and I don’t rate EVERY FRIGGIN IPA a 5! My bias is towards well-brewed traditional lagers. Follow me if you want at “dmtaylo1”. Or don’t. I wouldn’t.
Pretty much sums up my thoughts as well and I would lump in Zymurgy’s “Best Beers” issue as well. Most reviews simply suffer from Group Think bias and people just conform to the majority opinion without giving a second thought. Hmm…this beer isn’t very good but it’s got great reviews…I better give it 4-1/2 stars or look like a fool!
I would love Zymurgy to have a blind tasting review every issue. Get one beer judge to review a beer without knowing the brand name, style, anything. Maybe Orval one month and Natty Bo the next. Get an honest, unbiased opinion without any weight attached. Now that I would enjoy reading.
The long-defunct “Commercial Calibrations” section came close to this. Although the beers were sometimes hard to get, I liked seeing how judges worked through particular exemplars for a style.
@dave - i will follow yours. this is the difficulty of well… this hobby vs. say 2005. clicking on the “top 100” the last couple times has just been a list of bourbon barrel imp stouts/Imp IPAs rounded out with famous saisons/lambics etc.
also i checked just now - looks like ratebeer.com is actually dead. oh well
@megary - group think is a major major problem with homebrewing and craft beer and everything associated with it. honestly, if the label says “a stout with rich chocolatey notes and a touch of toffee” the vast majority of people will regurgitate that, and also not have much else to say that is less in your face-noticeable than that.
i “complain” a lot about things that bother me online and irl, and peoples reaction is usually “stop complaining, you complain too much”. but my response to that is that that only leads to stagnation and mediocrity.
i dont want to get stuck in a rut of brewing the same beers i always have, and i find it hard to discover what would be a great new style/beer as i definitely dont have commercial access to it, and the top beers lists rated are usually the same suspects its been for several years.
Anybody can try to sell their expertise and entertainment value on YouTube and elsewhere. Being concise, truly knowledgeable, and been tolerable for repeat visits is not necessarily what brings the clicks. Cannot blame them for trying…
I’m not convinced beer reviews do much good in any regard, regardless of who does them. I just don’t like listening to what other folks perceive in a beer, let alone one that I’m not drinking also. I got much more educational value from the BJCP study group tastings and subsequent judging that I’ve done.
I always thought that the commercial calibration column was a great way to learn to be or to hone your skills as a beer judge (along with judging competitions, of course). Especially when they had great judges doing it - Gordon Strong, Sandy Cockerham, Dave Houseman, etc… really good analysis and typically exemplary examples of the style being reviewed.
It would be more interesting if they would serve them objectively poor examples of the style to see how they differed in scoring when the beer clearly deserves sub-30 scores. Like a random beer from your local nanobrewpub that nobody goes to anymore because it actually sucks. But of course that could never happen in real life. Just a thought I had.
