The Great 2008 Beer Ratings Adjustment

By on October 6, 2008 @ 6 PM (1 Comment)

We just recently posted our 100th review and to celebrate we decided to look back over all 100 of our previous reviews. What did we find? Well, besides the fact that we really, really love beer we found that we dropped the ball on a few of our ratings.

Most of the ones we dropped the ball on we rated too high, though a few we rated too low. Many of these “too high” ones were early reviews where we just didn’t have a lot of beer experience to rate against. Some were too high because they were the first ones of the style we tried and as we tried more we realized we were just big fans of the style. For some we got a little too crazy focusing on one thing, like how a beer tasted on a 105 degree day with a plate of BBQ. Whatever the reason, we decided to fix it and get it right. For all of these we tried another bottle or sometimes many bottles and came up with the revised rating.

So, here’s a complete list of what we changed and why we changed it. We feel pretty confident as we go forward past 100 that our benchmarks are set and we won’t miss many from now on. When we do, we’re confident you’ll let us know. And if you want to know more about our rating system just check out our explanation of what the ratings mean.

Adjusted Beer Ratings: The Up Elevator

  • Trappistes Rochefort 10 – went from a 9 to a 10. We weren’t going to give out ratings of perfect 10s until we had 100 beers. This one moved up the list, plain and simple.
  • Foothills Sexual Chocolate Imperial Stout – went from a 9 to a 10. Again, we always felt it would be a 10, we just needed to get to 100 before we could give it the true rating.
  • Duck Rabbit Baltic Porter – went from a 9 to a 10. This was the last of a small set of three beers that went from a 9 to a 10.
  • Paulaner Hefeweizen – went from a 7 to an 8. The more we tasted the Paulaner Hefeweizen the more we realized it was at the top of the hefe pack. And trust me when we say we drank a lot of it this summer.
  • St. Bernardus Abt 12 – went from a 7 to an 8. This one suffered a little bit from expectations going in to the initial rating. We were expecting more chocolate and coffee and were surprised by mostly dark fruits. After another one though we really began to appreciate it for what it was and realized it was in fact a solid 8. This has led us to a bit of a BeerFathers rule – we always try to buy two bottles of any given beer and we just drink the first one, then rate the second.

Adjusted Beer Ratings: The Down Elevator

  • Paulaner Salvator Double Bock – went from a 9 to an 8. We fell in love with this beer the moment we tasted it and still love it. But this was an early beer for us and we’ve tasted a lot since then. Love the double bock style, for sure. A solid 8, but not quite worth a 9.
  • Ayinger Jahrhundert Bier – went from a 9 to an 8. This is another beer we did early on that we liked a lot. We realized after multiple tastings since then that we went a little too high for a helles. It’s probably best in class for that style though.
  • Young’s Oatmeal Stout – went from an 8 to a 7. This is a good solid beer, but it’s another we did early on that was one of the first stouts we did. We realized we loved the stouts and this is a great one, just not quite worth an 8.
  • Flying Dog In Heat Wheat – went from an 8 to a 6. Don’t get us wrong, we really like the In Heat Wheat and it’s probably the beer that turned us into hefeweizen lovers. But we’ve done a lot of hefes since then and we started to realize that there were better ones, especially the ones from Germany. The In Heat Wheat lost a few points when we realized it didn’t hold up quite as well when it warmed.
  • Red Stripe – went from a 7 to a 5. We really dropped the ball on this one, probably our worst offense. There’s just no way a Red Stripe should have rated a 7. It’s a solid, middle of the road beer and we were temporarily blinded by the fact that this has become our go-to beer for BBQ because it has some nice molasses flavor to complement it. A hot day and a lot of BBQ make this beer seem a lot better, when stand alone it’s just a good middle of the pack beer.

Questions or comments on our adjustments? Just let us know below.


1 Comment (Add Your Comments)

  1. Buttle says:

    You’re going to have a hard time keeping all your ratings “in sync” ;). I don’t do number reviews and still want to constantly tweak my old ones because I don’t completely agree any more. I do like that “two bottle” rule, though I don’t always adhere to it.

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