Perception and Beer

So i recently conducted a blind tasting with a few buddies of mine. Some industry guys and some beer enthusiasts. I believe when it comes to most "whales" a lot of it has to do with the perception you already have about the beer. Because BA gave a beer a 98 most people will go into the beer thinking that they HAVE to like it because of all the buzz around it.

The blind tasting consisted of a few "whales" and a few lesser known, and lesser rated beers.

only one person listed a "whale" as their favorite beer out of the bunch.
and one guy (who has said this beer was his favorite of all time) listed the "whales" last.

Its interesting how the brain can trick you into thinking you enjoy a beer just because everyone else does.

i'm not saying these beers don't deserve the credit that they do, i just think people should start trying beers first before they check untapped or BA to see what everyone else thinks.

I'm curious to hear your guys opinion about this

Cheers and happy brewing!
Sean

I agree. A great many people allow themselves to be influenced by the hype. Yet we all have different palates.

When I was in my pre-craft-beer phase, and living in Northern California, I got to spend a fair bit of time touring wineries in Sonoma and Napa. You know what I learned? I'm not nearly as big a fan of the "Napa Cab" as most folks. Give me a Zinfandel from the Dry Creek Valley and I'm a happy camper. They rarely rate as high on the Wine Spectator rating scale as the Napa Cabs, but they're what I like. My palate is different from Robert Parker's, and I'm okay with that.

When it comes to beer, I generally don't like barrel-aged beers much, and imperial stouts are almost universally too sweet and boozy for my palate. (This preference, frankly, is very good for my pocketbook though!) Most DIPAs are too sweet for me. That's not to say that I don't like malty, because a malty German lager works for me. But sweetness doesn't. I love bitter and I love sour, but I don't love sweet.

In fact, a lot of the uproar that you hear about certain beers (Pliny, Westy 12, Heady Topper, Dark Lord, etc) being "overrated" is because at the end of the day, they're just beer. There is so much hype around certain of those beers that you go into it expecting the beer to be mind-blowing, but in reality, they're just very, very good. So they get constantly called overrated, because nothing could live up to the hype.

But your brain has a bit of cognitive dissonance when you taste a "whale" and it's not perfect for your palate. If you know what you're tasting and all the hype surrounding it, your brain might trick you into believing you love it. But when doing it blind, your own palate actually makes the decision, and you find much more variance.

So you're right. We'd all be better served letting our own tongues make the decision and *then* seeing if the BA ratings agree with our tongues. If you find high correlation, then it's safe to use BA to help you pick out beers. If not, then you're just going to have to do your own [very enjoyable] research

I never bother with sites like BA and Ratebeer because I honestly think they're stupid. Now before anyone gets mad I'll say I think they're stupid for a number of reasons:

1. I have no idea of the tasting conditions under which the reviewer tasted the beer. As we all know many things can affect the flavor of beer (or any consumable for that matter). If you brush your teeth, drink or eat citrus fruits/juice, have eaten something, etc. This is one reason I never understood the logic behind beer flights. One beer can often drastically affect the taste of the next. Drink a Beck's then drink a Franziskaner for example and watch the hefe taste like prunes rather than the usual banana/clove/wheat taste.

2. Taste is subjective

3. Some reviewers are just plain obvious trendy snobs

4. No idea what treatment or storage/handling the beer they're trying was submitted to

etc. The list can go on and on. But as to the point of the original post, yes many people get mental impressions based on reviews or hype and allow that to affect their judgement. Biggest issue I have with that is how polarized the outcome usually is. You have those that immediate join the positive side of the hype and over praise a beer based on all the hype. But then you have those that don't see the hype in the beer and usually take a completely opposite, non-objective, response and unfairly slam the beer because it didn't live up to the hype they'd read about.

Both sides are not helpful. So yeah, I generally don't bother with beer reviews. If anything, I pay more attention here when people give their opinions on different commercial beers.


Rev.

I never check BA or untappd or any other rating. If I want a beer, I'll buy it. I learned a long time ago with wine and beer, ratings can be very deceiving.
I have a few cool things in my fridge, but I don't chase down special beers. I know a number of guys who are very into collecting/trading/hoarding and such. One of them is also very generous with sharing all the oddball/rare/whale stuff he gets a hold of. It is nice to have a friend like that.

Full disclosure, I still use ratebeer/BA ratings to at least get a general idea of what I am going to be buying. If its a really low rated beer, its probably bad (low as in under a 10, which basically means its part of the bottom 100 worst beers). I ignore the hype though. I know in the end I am going to like 99.9999999% of the beers I buy regardless of bad ratings. I'll go through some of my favorites on thing "wow is this guy an idiot".

You just have to figure out a way to ignore the noise.

The loudest people saying its the best or the worst, are probably full of crap.

Theres definitely a lot of really fantastic beers in the world, but no one can say anything is "the best in the world". Since beer is so fleeting, it may be really good one time, and another not so good.

Theyve done similar tests with wine, tell everyone they have two samples of wine one is 10 dollar a bottle and another is 50 dollars when both samples are from the same 10 dollar bottle, and almost everyone will say the sample of 50 dollar bottle was better.

Blind tastings are the best. I love doing them.

every now and then i'll do them.
My wife sets it all up for me and friends.
She'll mark the glass with a marker and keep track of what she pours.

The results are always interesting and fun.

Ariza-Poet said:

Blind tastings are the best. I love doing them.

every now and then i'll do them.
My wife sets it all up for me and friends.
She'll mark the glass with a marker and keep track of what she pours.

The results are always interesting and fun.

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Go Cats!

It's a extract kit from Midwest. Chocolate covered BEVR nuts. I know it will be OK. This is my go to beer when I want to get laid

Yeah, any review that isn't completely blind (i.e., free of brand associations, hype, etc.) is useless to me. There is just too much bias, preconception, and groupthink going on.

That, and the usual adjectives that hoity toity tasters use to describe the beer never seem to help me understand--in any meaningful way--what the beer is like.

My policy is simple: crack it open, pour it, drink it. Like it? Take note, buy again. Same goes with wine.

I sometimes read a few reviews on Untappd after I've already entered my own, just to see how my impressions line up with the masses. But it's always post hoc, and the only reason I even enter reviews is for my own personal record keeping.

CCBsean said:

So i recently conducted a blind tasting with a few buddies of mine. Some industry guys and some beer enthusiasts. I believe when it comes to most "whales" a lot of it has to do with the perception you already have about the beer. Because BA gave a beer a 98 most people will go into the beer thinking that they HAVE to like it because of all the buzz around it.

The blind tasting consisted of a few "whales" and a few lesser known, and lesser rated beers.

only one person listed a "whale" as their favorite beer out of the bunch.
and one guy (who has said this beer was his favorite of all time) listed the "whales" last.

Its interesting how the brain can trick you into thinking you enjoy a beer just because everyone else does.

i'm not saying these beers don't deserve the credit that they do, i just think people should start trying beers first before they check untapped or BA to see what everyone else thinks.

I'm curious to hear your guys opinion about this

Cheers and happy brewing!
Sean

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I believe this phenomenon is know as confirmation bias. We want to believe that something is true so badly that we will trick our palate into believing it. I think BA suffers especially in this regard because they are accustomed to reviewing similar styles of beer. But give someone that enjoys overly hoppy or overly malty beers a balanced hefeweizen and they will probably not enjoy it.

There will always be trends in brewing and individuals who capitalize on those trends. Beer Advocate is just a beer fashion magazine. In my estimation, ranking beers is worthless to the consumer, since taste is so subjective. However, the reality is that the influence exerted by BA on consumer demand is jaw-dropping, and can make or break a brewery.

Fun fact: there are 4 lagers in the BA top 250. Four. Out of two hundred fifty.

I always like to try new things. Never really check ratings or anything. At the same time, I have been on untappd for years and have some close buddies who's palettes tend to match mine. If they like it, I probably will. I also have buddies who hate the beers I love, to each his own.

But I do have my limits, at least in terms of pricing and effort. I have about 5 nice bottle shops on my way home, thats it. I never go searching or trading for beers. My friends do and I get to reap the benefits anyway. And I'm not paying some of the prices I see, like for Cascade brewing. Same with Avery, love their big beer series but the prices are really creeping up there lately. Too bad, loved those beers

mattdee1 said:

Yeah, any review that isn't completely blind (i.e., free of brand associations, hype, etc.) is useless to me.

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thats interesting.
Thats hard to do though, and isnt realistic for some guy sitting at home alone or with a buddy having some beers. Or even sitting in a bar.
I guess you could ask the bartender for a random stout or brown or whatever.

Personally I love blind tastings. But it takes the effort of my wife setting it up and marking glasses and or making little cards.

I would like to see more blind taste reviews on youtube
like beer geek nation.

Ariza-Poet said:

I guess you could ask the bartender for a random stout or brown or whatever.

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I have a buddy that does this. Really interesting results. Especially when your at a really nice craft beer bar and you get some national distributed shelfie or even a "macro." He doesn't even specific a type, just any beer. Great way to hone your palette and usually get surprised by how you feel about certain beer companies you had a preconceived notion about.

I like to go to a good liquor store and buy several singles to try. Just grab whatever looks intriguing and give it a try. Some stores do a "build your own 6-pack" kind of thing. Caveat: some places use this as a means to get rid of bottles that have been on the shelf too long. You need to find a store that has good selection and turnover.

I've hit some bad ones, but I've found some that I really like, and some have become new go-to beers.

Sometimes you just have to roll the dice.

You see it with cars, computers, chocolate, clothing. They are selling an image, not the product. American style Macro Pilsner is a commodity, with no real difference, except for the image it portrays. The Macro beer commercials give me a good laugh. This is how I see them trying to segment themselves, even though they all taste like watery fizzy skunk pee:

Budweiser, the beer of firemen and construction workers, and maybe horse lovers.
Coors, the beer of outdoorsmen and campers, the I wish I was a rock climber but my belly is too big crowd.
Bud Light, the beer for fun-loving heavy drinkers and bar flies, cheap and available.
Dos Equis, the mysterious beer for people who don't know what good beer tastes like
Corona: The beer for people who wish they were beach bums, with a lime to cover the taste
Miller lite: Cheap beer, lower calories, for mass quantity drinkers and TV watchers, does the job.
Icehouse: Beer for cheapskates, that is hopefully so cold you can't taste it.

In the end, I can't really taste a difference between them, (and you would have to pay me to taste them.) And when it comes to those craft beers I like, I find myself liking them time after time. I can buy a bottle 6 months later, and I still like it. I have a dozen or so bottles that I would consider "go-to" if I see them.

There is no shortage of studies that confirm just how bad humans are at accurately judging, what we see, hear, taste, etc. It's because our brains are hard-wired to filter perception through both our unconscious and conscious expectations before considering any actual input. And often, when actual input conflicts with our expectations, our brains may disregard the actual input and just tell us what we expected to experience. There are some really cool experiments out there where scientists create expectations about something and then are able to completely manipulate the test subject's perception in a way that is completely contradictory to what the test subject has actually experienced.

So, for beer tasting, if you expect to like a beer because you know something about it, then chances are you'll favor it. A true blind test is the only way to know.

But with all that said... who cares if your perceptions are tainted? If you enjoy what you're drinking, and you can afford it, then prost!

http://www.dana.org/Publications/Brainwork/Details.aspx?id=43552

Just for some counter point. You can't always completely ignore mob-rating so to speak. There is always some truth mixed in with all of the noise.

If everyone posts reviews on Olde English 400 malt liqour saying it tastes like sweaty jock strap... more than likely it tastes like sweaty jock strap and probably is pretty gross (unless you enjoy malt liqour/sweaty jock strap).

If everyone posts reviews of Heady Topper and say its fantastic. It's probably pretty fantastic (if you like DIPAs).

Completely ignoring the mob is a mistake, following the mob completely is also a mistake. (if 500+ people rate a product on amazon with 1 star, and you buy it expecting a 5 star product, and it breaks, thats your fault, not the mobs fault)

A little over a year ago, I organized a small local homebrew competition. I entered two beers myself, and I accidentally mixed up the beers of mine that went into the competition. A DIPA was entered as a DIPA and a Saison.

The same judges judges those two flights. Completely different comments? Why? Well, it's impossible to say, but (1) the DIPA in the Saison flight would have been tasted by palates that were hit with belgian phenols, so their perceptions were probably altered and (2) when you taste a beer as a judge, you start with expectations based on style and those expectations are going to affect your perceptions.

I recently was reading a review for a west coast IPA I was going to buy, and looked at the ratings online, and one person actually gave it a 40 out of 100, saying "It was too hoppy and bitter. I don't like hoppy beers". So now I actually read a little deeper into the reviews to see if anyone has anything intelligent to say.
Regarding group-think, I can recall one college incident where some acquaintances tapped a keg of Bud Light and proclaimed "this is the good stuff, Who wants some Becks?" And the group of red-cup holders huddled around saying "Oh, Yeah, awesome, I always liked this Becks."

Spartan300man said:

I recently was reading a review for a west coast IPA I was going to buy, and looked at the ratings online, and one person actually gave it a 40 out of 100, saying "It was too hoppy and bitter. I don't like hoppy beers". So now I actually read a little deeper into the reviews to see if anyone has anything intelligent to say.
Regarding group-think, I can recall one college incident where some acquaintances tapped a keg of Bud Light and proclaimed "this is the good stuff, Who wants some Becks?" And the group of red-cup holders huddled around saying "Oh, Yeah, awesome, I always liked this Becks."

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Saw a review online for a restaurant once that was 3/5 ratings. The said the food was phenomenal but the restaurant was too far from their house.

iijakii said:

Saw a review online for a restaurant once that was 3/5 ratings. The said the food was phenomenal but the restaurant was too far from their house.

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Phenomenal food and service, visited while traveling. 1/5 for not being in my garage.

iijakii said:

Saw a review online for a restaurant once that was 3/5 ratings. The said the food was phenomenal but the restaurant was too far from their house.

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1/5 stars
Widget packaging was beat up, I assume from shipping. Works perfectly but packaging was beat up so I am giving it 1 star.

Back in the day (late 1970s), I won many a bar bet for friends by blind tasting and identifying correctly Bud, Bud Light, Miller, Miller Lite, Old Style, and in other bars an occasional Busch, Hamms or Olympia. The bar would usually set up a line of 2 oz shots, and typically I was blindfolded and the marks got to put the beer in any order with occasional attempts to trick. I didn't bet (there's some gambling addiction in my family). I was usually awarded with a Guinness or a Wild Turkey or both for my services. I don't think I could do quite as well now, but then I've quaffed very few of the above since.

I trust my tastes.
I trust some others' tastes. For instance, I trust a Bros review, particularly Todd, on Beer Advocate.
I trust crowd rating when the number of raters gets high on BA or untappd, but haven't liked Rate Beer.
There are some caveats:
I heavily downgrade for AVB. There's a linear rise in ratings for every increase in AVB. Some of my favorites are high gravity, but my tastes are scatterbud when plotting for AVB.
I moderately downgrade for wood. I believe too many online points are given for wood when many wood beers don't work for me.
Coffee? There seems to be no correlation between my tastes and others. Drinkers who like coffee in their beer like beers with coffee (SWMBO). Those that don't like coffee in their beer don't like beers with coffee. Me, Redhook Double Black Stout is a world class stout, Sixpoint Three Beans is very good, most are meh, and some of the worst commercial beers have been coffee beers (some of them with wood). Pepper might be getting that treatment from me soon.

Hard to get?
Supply and demand is a *****.
Had a Pliny gifted to me. Superb price! Great beer. I still preferred my Plinian Legacy, but my value of my babies are off topic.
Westvleteren 12. Great beer. I still preferred St. Bernardus Abt 12 and Val-Dieu Grand Cru. This Westv cost much more. Therefore Westv is not worth the price. Brewing Westv is another issue.
I have a craft and foreign beer drinking friend who now lives 2 miles from a store that regularly gets Heady Topper. He cannot get near to the store's entrance on Heady days. He has not had a Heady. No beer is worth Star War type lines. This is not a fair analogy because I won't do the line thing for Star Wars, Black Friday, The White Album, und so weiter. (OK, I did get peer pressured into lining up around the block for Lizstomania, and, without pressure, I made a couple of beer runs to get Point Bock. My Datsun 610 Wagen packed cases efficiently.)

Fishin-Jay said:

There is no shortage of studies that confirm just how bad humans are at accurately judging, what we see, hear, taste, etc. It's because our brains are hard-wired to filter perception through both our unconscious and conscious expectations before considering any actual input. And often, when actual input conflicts with our expectations, our brains may disregard the actual input and just tell us what we expected to experience. There are some really cool experiments out there where scientists create expectations about something and then are able to completely manipulate the test subject's perception in a way that is completely contradictory to what the test subject has actually experienced.

So, for beer tasting, if you expect to like a beer because you know something about it, then chances are you'll favor it. A true blind test is the only way to know.

But with all that said... who cares if your perceptions are tainted? If you enjoy what you're drinking, and you can afford it, then prost!

http://www.dana.org/Publications/Brainwork/Details.aspx?id=43552

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WORD!

I think some ppl may adjust their own likes to whats rated also.
Like me with Sours I just dont like em no matter how high they're rated
or how much my wife loves them despite her never seeing one single rating.

But if i just followed the masses if you will, i'd read the high ratings and figure,
"this is what an awesome sour tastes like so I'll acquire the taste for it without enjoying it and at some point I will enjoy it."

granted I'll continue to sample sours with my wife, but never am I swayed by reviews of them, I still dont like them.

But I'll definitely look up reviews of BA Imperial Stouts because its by far my favorite style.

I don't agree with some and HIGHLY agree with others, but for the most part the actual review and descriptors really help me out and are usually pretty good.

mattdee1 said:

Yeah, any review that isn't completely blind (i.e., free of brand associations, hype, etc.) is useless to me. There is just too much bias, preconception, and groupthink going on.

That, and the usual adjectives that hoity toity tasters use to describe the beer never seem to help me understand--in any meaningful way--what the beer is like.

My policy is simple: crack it open, pour it, drink it. Like it? Take note, buy again. Same goes with wine.

I sometimes read a few reviews on Untappd after I've already entered my own, just to see how my impressions line up with the masses. But it's always post hoc, and the only reason I even enter reviews is for my own personal record keeping.

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This is the only reason I use Untappd, too. I taste so many beers that it's hard to keep track of what I like and what I didn't - with exceptions, of course.

The app simply helps me to recall what I liked so if I come across it again I know whether or not to order it again. I don't really need to know that somebody else can taste candied orange peel that was sitting on a bourbon aged barrel for three days and then picked up with the brewer's dirty left hand.

But, if you can taste that stuff - more power to ya.

MaxStout said:

I like to go to a good liquor store and buy several singles to try. Just grab whatever looks intriguing and give it a try. Some stores do a "build your own 6-pack" kind of thing. Caveat: some places use this as a means to get rid of bottles that have been on the shelf too long. You need to find a store that has good selection and turnover.

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Yeah, I learned this the hard way.

I've been meaning to set up some blind taste tests like somebody else mentioned. My wife offered to do it for my buddies and I.

I'm thinking of doing some IPAs and session IPAs (separately) to see which of the ones we like we can identify, and how we would rank them drinking them in this manner.

For example, my favorite session IPA is Firestone Walker's Easy Jack. They are also "local" to me so that my weigh into my perception even though I am self-aware of this fact. I've had many other session IPAs and I hold Easy Jack as the Gold Standard but I would love to know how I would rate it blindly against a few others that I liked as well.

Kealia said:

Yeah, I learned this the hard way.

I've been meaning to set up some blind taste tests like somebody else mentioned. My wife offered to do it for my buddies and I.

I'm thinking of doing some IPAs and session IPAs (separately) to see which of the ones we like we can identify, and how we would rank them drinking them in this manner.

For example, my favorite session IPA is Firestone Walker's Easy Jack. They are also "local" to me so that my weigh into my perception even though I am self-aware of this fact. I've had many other session IPAs and I hold Easy Jack as the Gold Standard but I would love to know how I would rate it blindly against a few others that I liked as well.

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If easy jack is local to you, I wonder how much freshness plays into that.

Ur blind test may solidify it as ur favorite but others my be older.
Or maybe not but it's a possibility.

Speaking of BA: A lot of people who rate beer on that site have no clue what they're talking about. A couple examples of times when BA ratings grind my gears are:
1. somebody trashes an excellent English-style ale for not being hoppy enough compared to their favorite American-Super-Duper-MegaTrillion IBU-Uber-Cascade IPA (It's a new style....I'm pretty sure it's in the 2015 BJCP guidelines.)
2. somebody rates PBR higher than 3. (Everyone correctly thought it was macro piss beer, and a sub-par one at that, until it became trailer park chic to be seen holding a PBR can in the early 2000s.)
I used to like BA a lot more back in the day. As "craft" beer has become a bigger thing, I feel like BA has gone downhill. Plus it seems like The Bros have become a bit *****ebaggy and pretentious. They should leave that to the wine snobs.

Gerry_P said:

Speaking of BA: A lot of people who rate beer on that site have no clue what they're talking about. A couple examples of times when BA ratings grind my gears are:
1. somebody trashes an excellent English-style ale for not being hoppy enough compared to their favorite American-Super-Duper-MegaTrillion IBU-Uber-Cascade IPA (It's a new style....I'm pretty sure it's in the 2015 BJCP guidelines.)
2. somebody rates PBR higher than 3. (Everyone correctly thought it was macro piss beer, and a sub-par one at that, until it became trailer park chic to be seen holding a PBR can in the early 2000s.)
I used to like BA a lot more back in the day. As "craft" beer has become a bigger thing, I feel like BA has gone downhill. Plus it seems like The Bros have become a bit *****ebaggy and pretentious. They should leave that to the wine snobs.

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To be fair to PBR, when there's nothing else, it's better than the other macro-urine beers. I "grew up" on miller where I am from and PBR is the only one that has a smidgen of flavor. Also almost always a bar that has nothing else will at least have 16oz cans.

Not that it's "good beer" but it's the best of the bottom.

ArkotRamathorn said:

To be fair to PBR, when there's nothing else, it's better than the other macro-urine beers. I "grew up" on miller where I am from and PBR is the only one that has a smidgen of flavor. Also almost always a bar that has nothing else will at least have 16oz cans.

Not that it's "good beer" but it's the best of the bottom.

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Ha yeah I hear ya. Don't get me wrong, I've downed plenty of PBRs and still have one occasionally. But when it comes to cheap beer, I'm a Schlitz man all the way.