Beers judged to best have high ABV on beer advocate.

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ed_brews_now

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If you look at the ratings of the top_beers as judged by the BeerAdvocate you will not that the beers at the top have very high alcohol content.

http://beeradvocate.com/top_beers

It seems to me is that what is judged best correlates to high alcohol content.
Can I come to the conclusion that what people like most about beer is the taste created by the alcohol?
 
There has been a trend towards higher alcohol beers in North America for years. Just about everything new that comes out is creeping up higher and higher

Is it a trend or is it the reality of North American craft beer? Dunno.
 
Higher alcohol beers have more flavor because they're made with more malt, that's why they tend to be rated higher. If they were being rated solely on alcohol content, you'd see a bunch of cheap malt liquors on there.
 
Higher alcohol beers have more flavor because they're made with more malt, that's why they tend to be rated higher. If they were being rated solely on alcohol content, you'd see a bunch of cheap malt liquors on there.

I'd say it has more to do with most limited release beers being either high alcohol or sour (almost all that aren't high alcohol on the list are sour), and all the tickers on BA giving them high scores because they're "rare".
 
I like a high gravity on occasion. But If I am going to be drinking several beers at a time (which I usually do) , give me something in the 4-6% range. Anything above that is too much in most cases.
 
I stopped rating beers in beeradvocate when people started messaging me about how much of an idiot I am for not rating a beer as they think it should be. Almost 90% of the top beers are rated higher just for the fact of how rare it is or how special and limited it is.
 
Ahem, don't ya know everyone nowadays has a phd in beer tasting?! I got mine from Wikipedia... you can too! :D
 
May be but I'll bet you'll find few even here on HBT that would argue with most of the beers on that list.

I would. Pliny the Younger is not the second best beer ever. Westy 12 is a good beer, but their blonde is a better beer. It just happens to be the rarest beer in the world, so it gets high ratings.

The rest are all barrel aged and big and specialty and that's why they're up there. It is reputation, not quality. Some are amazing beers, but the list is stupid and skewed horribly. Beer Advocate is kind of a joke.
 
I would. Pliny the Younger is not the second best beer ever. Westy 12 is a good beer, but their blonde is a better beer. It just happens to be the rarest beer in the world, so it gets high ratings.

The rest are all barrel aged and big and specialty and that's why they're up there. It is reputation, not quality. Some are amazing beers, but the list is stupid and skewed horribly. Beer Advocate is kind of a joke.

While I agree with you in general, Westy 12 isn't even close to the rarest beer in the world. If it were available like Roche 10 and Pannepot in the US though, no way it would be rated as high as it is.
 
I stopped rating beers in beeradvocate when people started messaging me about how much of an idiot I am for not rating a beer as they think it should be. Almost 90% of the top beers are rated higher just for the fact of how rare it is or how special and limited it is.

Seriously? Dude, you've got to keep doing the good work. I love finding reviews on there that start out "now I know that this is popular on here but...".
 
While I agree with you in general, Westy 12 isn't even close to the rarest beer in the world. If it were available like Roche 10 and Pannepot in the US though, no way it would be rated as high as it is.

The rarest beer in the world would be something that someone had only brewed 12 oz of.
 
While I agree with you in general, Westy 12 isn't even close to the rarest beer in the world. If it were available like Roche 10 and Pannepot in the US though, no way it would be rated as high as it is.

well, sure, but it is the beer that when people think "rare" they think of. I mean you have to buy it (legally) from a monestary in Belgium. It just strikes people as interesting and exotic.
 
No, its just because BA is full of beer snobs who don't really know much about beer...

And when you don't know much about something, you tend to think " Price = Quality ". Generally, higher ABV brews cost more. No one wants to rate a $5+ bottle of beer lowly.

That said, I will say that the beers I spend more money on, and consider a "treat", tend towards the higher ABV side. However, I really like a nice, solid American Amber (not AB's, I mean the style) more often than an RIS. But man, that RIS is nice on occasion.
 
I would. Pliny the Younger is not the second best beer ever. Westy 12 is a good beer, but their blonde is a better beer. It just happens to be the rarest beer in the world, so it gets high ratings.

I didn't mean the specific rankings. We could all argue to the end of time over "beer x is better than beer y". Just saying that most of the beers on the list are highly regarded by us HBTers as well.

You're right about PtY not being the second best though. Should be at the TOP in my opinion. :D
 
I'd say it has more to do with most limited release beers being either high alcohol or sour (almost all that aren't high alcohol on the list are sour), and all the tickers on BA giving them high scores because they're "rare".

Ding! Ding!! Ding!!!
We have a winner
 
Yea, you are absolutely right. Those are some damn fine beers. There are very few beers on that list that come in sub 7%. Some beers there are the barrel aged version of the regular commercial beer. Take the Barrel Aged Blackout Stout (Great Lakes) for example. I've had both and think the regular Blackout Stout is a MUCH better beer.

Overall, BA is good for the beer world. People are tasting beer and excited about writing about it. I think as homebrewers, we are starting to get over the go big or go home thing. We are starting to appreciate the subtitles of low abv session beers like Milds, Hefeweizens, Bitters and even Ciders. The high abv beers and the really rare beers just get a lof of attention over there. It is probably some of what the OP was describing. Higher ABV beers DO have stronger flavors. More malt, more hops (and more alcohol :drunk:). Lower ABV beers take a lot of work. How do you pack all of that flavor into a 3.5% Scottish 60/. I've tried. Its hard.
 
I agree. Most of those sites, RB and BA specifically, consider high abv or rare beers to be far superior to any other brew. its really depressing. i mean, i used to write a beer column for a newspaper and when i suggested doing a "mix-a-six-less-than-6%" article, people flipped out because "nothing i like is less that 8%" or something to that effect. brewing a beer to excess and then making it rare is almost a sure-fire way to become popular these days.
 
I would tend to agree that higher ABV beers, or rare beers ought to get higher ratings. It's what sets them apart. In many cases, lower ABV beers, or common beers, are so much alike that it's hard to differentiate.

The problem is that they should be valued according to BJCP guidelines, so that they are compared to other beers of their type. But then you'd have great beers getting low scores because it doesn't meet the narrow criteria the BJCP sets up. It's a lose-lose situation.

I simply don't go there. I value people's opinions, but in the end, that is just what they are. I know enough about beer styles now to be able to pick out the ones I want to try. And I'll still pick up beer that likely rates low on those sites because I'm curious, and I understand that many people taste differently, or are inexperienced, or snobby.

The high marks for high ABV and rarity are the least problematic of the site's flaws. Those things are expected.
 
the whole 'it's more expensive so it's better' philosophy is wide-reaching, and definitely not exclusive to BA. It's commonly found right here, for example, in discussions about brewing equipment: "my gizmo2000UltraPlus is far more expensive than the regular gizmo2000, so it's necessarily better"
 
I always enjoy going onto RB/BA. Why? Well, I hate to spend money for beers I won't like, especially from some doubtful new microbreweries.

If the score is REALLY bad(as an example, 30 and lower on RB), then I just pass, but I buy from average to higher score. Because, well, I don't agree everytime with the ratings on some beers.

At least, now, RB also shows the percentile of a beer according to its own style.
 
Seems like a lot of hate around here for Beer Advocate. While I admit that I don't go on their website very often, I find their magazine to be one of the best beer related mags out there and feel it is the best $20 I spend a year.
 
Higher Abv= HIGHER COST

Also, higher abv makes it not a session beer, more likely to have more hops and malts to make it taste better.

And some, like me, do like the added flavor of alcohol notes... and not to mention, the alcohol. By the time youre done, how could you not rate it high
 
meh, if the beers were being reviewed objectively, there should still be a few lower alcohol beers on there that ALSO consistently score higher( because they are the best) the fact is they are a bunch of sheeps. I would LOVE to review every beer I taste, maybe just for my own self to go back and review my own reviews as my experience/palatte changes. But I can't there. Beers like Point Special and MHL would get some numbers from me...they don't like that.
 
Also, higher abv makes it not a session beer, more likely to have more hops and malts to make it taste better.

Well, this seems to be exactly how these people are defining what is a good beer and what is not. I have to disagree though, more of everything does not necessarily make it taste better, it just makes it taste more.
 
What makes one persons palate better to judge a sensory object than another persons?

Practice and training. The hardest part about tasting (anything) is being able to put the flavors into words. Also, you must be objective. Even if you don't like a style, you should be able to recognize whether it is a quality/inferior beer, and or a good/bad version of the style.
 
I'm sure we all went through a phase after we discovered that beer came in something other than 3.5% Bud Light cans where we drank as much crazy, high ABV stuff as we could. I'm betting that as more people graduate from the XXXTREME BEER phase, BA will calm down and become a more balanced site.
 
I'm sure we all went through a phase after we discovered that beer came in something other than 3.5% Bud Light cans where we drank as much crazy, high ABV stuff as we could. I'm betting that as more people graduate from the XXXTREME BEER phase, BA will calm down and become a more balanced site.

Ah, but this list is for the bestest beers on the entire planet! ;)
 
Personally I love BA and the work they do. I just have an issue with people who will drink something because of the rating it got on BA and not because they enjoy it. I know of people who really detest stouts but will actively seek out bottles of Dark Lord and rave about them. Weird.

Here is my favorite BA story. Through BA I traded a gentleman in California 6 Nugget Nectars for two bottles of Pliny. I threw in several homebrews with my Nugget Nectars hoping that I would get some feedback. Well about a week after I sent them out I got home from work to find a FedEx package on my front step with all of my homebrews in it. Included was a note that said, "I don't drink home made stuff."

Ah......snobbery at its finest.
 
Practice and training. The hardest part about tasting (anything) is being able to put the flavors into words. Also, you must be objective. Even if you don't like a style, you should be able to recognize whether it is a quality/inferior beer, and or a good/bad version of the style.

I agree with being objective when interpeting data. But my biological interpertation of taste is different from yours, which is different from the next person who post after me, which is different from the person after that, ect, ect, ect....which seems to me that being objective is impossible. There is no common denominator. I just find people who claim themselves to be critics of tastes and smells kind of a joke....the only opinion that counts is your own...your sensory organs (olfactory and taste buds) analyize the data differnetly than the next guy...My approach is to try something new all the time. Should I trust what some dude I never met wrote on BA, or just just say f it and get and buy every beer I see at least once? You only live once and only get it once in awhile.:rockin:
 
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