Session #83 - Are some beers over-rated?

Yes, without a doubt.

Taking Ratebeer as an example, here is the current top 10:

Westvleteren 12 (XII)
Three Floyds Dark Lord Russian Imperial Stout (Bourbon Barrel Aged)
Russian River Pliny the Younger
AleSmith Speedway Stout (Barrel Aged)
Toppling Goliath Kentucky Brunch
Bells Black Note Stout
Rochefort Trappistes 10
AleSmith Speedway Stout
Three Floyds Dark Lord Russian Imperial Stout (Bourbon Vanilla Bean)
Three Floyds Dark Lord Russian Imperial Stout

It consists of 7 Imperial Stouts (2 of which are variations on a third), two "quads" and an imperial IPA. One only has 39 ratings...

Personally I don't like the top rated beer in the world (I much prefer the sint bernardus version) but then everyone is different...

There are the breweries that are the darlings of the craft beer world....hill farmstead, cigar city, lost abbey. Fanboys rating these beers can send them in to the top scores. The freshness of a beer impacts on its score, and as the freshest beer the majority of rate beer users can get is local to them, American beers are given a premium over beers from elsewhere.

When beers are limited more people want to try them for fear of missing out, and if they cost more pepole are perhaps more likely to view them through rose tinted specs (as they don't want to admit they've wasted money on a duff beer when they could have bought multiples of something decent for the same price).

The England list is a bit better - I've been lucky enough to try them all and generally agree, though the presence of Fullers and Sam smith's an only be attributed to the availability of these in America.Though even taking those out the beers are all strong, mostly dark and limited release.

Old Chimneys Good King Henry Special Reserve  
Thornbridge Bracia  
Fuller’s London Porter (Bottle/Keg)  
The Kernel India Pale Ale Double Citra  
The Kernel Imperial Brown Stout London 1856  
Samuel Smiths Oatmeal Stout  
Thornbridge Hall Courage Russian Imperial Stout  
Magic Rock Bourbon Barrel Bearded Lady  
The Kernel Export Stout London 1890  
Arbor / Moor Double Dark Alliance 

Outside of Ratebeer and in the general beer enthusiasts sphere, beers from he usual suspects can create a Twitter storm in advance of/ around the date of release meaning more people hear about the beer than otherwise would have. This is of course great for the breweries concerned, but I'm sure for every Kernel, Magic Rock and Thornbrideg there are other breweries in an area of low beer geek density (BGD) just quietly getting on with it producing beers which are just as good. Its our job as beer bloggers to seek out these brews and get the word out there!

So I'll finish by following my own philosophy and letting you know about Wiper & True based in Bristol. I've had 6 of theirs so far and not been disappointed by any. Fantastic fresh pale ales and IPAs packed full of hop flavour brewed in various locations around the South West. Yet to try their darker offerings but the consensus seems to say they're good too. Check them out. In fact just head to Bristol for a few days and see everything this great city has to offer!

This post was brought to you courtesy of TheSession, this month brought to you by Rebecca of the Bake and Brew. Cheers!

Apps for Boozehounds

Smart phones are ubiquitous these days and they've become a useful tool for roving (beer) drinkers. Not least having Google Maps to hand can help prevent walking in the opposite direction to where the pub is! I've assembled a collection of apps I use regularly below, no doubt people will be aware of some, but hopefully there will be others that come in handy.

Finding decent beer is often a challenge, especially when in unfamiliar territory. the first three apps are all beer finders of one sort or another.

Good Beer Guide is the venerable CAMRA publication now available in app form. It allows you to locate nearby pubs and "tick" pubs if that's your thing alongside all the content from the printed book in a much more travel-friendly format. Charges a small annual fee.

Craft Beer London is an app from journalist Will Hawkes covering decent beer bars, pubs and breweries all over London. One off purchase price.

Beoir Finder is a free app to find Irish Craft Beer all over the island of Ireland. Regularly updated (full disclosure: I'm a Beoir member)

For those whom reviewing and cataloguing beers consumed is a force of habit, both Ratebeer and Untappd have mobile apps.

Untappd (from repatriated Bristolian Lee Williams) allows check-ins via foursquare and awards to collect, whilst the Ratebeer app (designed  by site user Eric Kok)  is a great catalogue of beer information, allows offline rating and also has a places finder.

Aside from beer apps, there are some great apps for keeping up with beer news, or getting yourself organised whilst on a day out.

Train Times UK is indispensable for planning train journeys and checking current status of trains. You can find out whether you've time for another before heading to the station...
One off purchase price

Catch Notes (apparently its shutting down, disappointing!) is a handy app for making review notes, or if you're like me and have your best ideas whilst trying to sleep, handy for making quick notes if you can't find a pen and paper without getting out of bed!

RSS Demon is what I use as a blog aggregator, add whatever you want to read on there and posts autosync to your phone. Great for long bus journeys.

Pocket is another handy little app to bookmark and cache long articles/ blog posts for later reference. Thanks to Boak and Bailey for mentioning this one!

Dropbox is a great way of transferring files between phone and computer or vice versa. It saves having to use a USB lead to transfer those snaps captured whilst on the go.

Feel free to suggest other apps people should be using in the comments below.

Further Notes on JDW Autumn Fest

After my post earlier in the week I decided to go through rate beer in order to find out how many beers were new and was pleasantly surprised! By my count there are 28! I then decided to create all of the beers that weren't already listed and thought I'd post them here as a quick-find guide for those rating on the fly.

I'm not sure how many of these beers are aliases, the Cotleigh beer certainly is. You'll be pleased to see two retired beers have also been brought back into production. You have just over a fortnight starting on Wednesday 5th October. Happy sampling!

(Edit, you can now dowload the festival program here)

Adnams American Style IPA

Banks & Taylor’s Albion Ale

Bateman’s XXXB

Beartown Wojtek

Bell’s Kalamazoo Black Silk

Belhaven St Andrews Ale

Bend Eclipse Cascadian Dark Ale

Box Steam Piston Broke

Brains Dark

Brakspear Triple

Brewsters American Chopper

Butcombe Rare Breed

Caledonian Cossack Imperial Russian Stout

Coach House Whiplash

Cotleigh Commando Hoofing IPA

Evan Evans 1767

Everards Whakatu

Exmoor Hart

Fat Head’s Yakima Sun

Harviestoun Number of the Beast

Hereford Wyvern Warrior

Hilden Twisted Hop

Hook Norton Flagship Ale

JW Lees The Governor

Maxim Double Maxim Andersons Best Scotch

Moorhouse’s Pendle Porter

Mordue Red Rye Riwaka

Moorland Old Crafty Hen

Oakleaf 10 Little Acorns

Odell 90 Shilling

Okells Saison

RCH Firey Liz

Roosters Last Stand

Salopian Vapour Trail

Shepherd Neame Whitstable Bay

St Austell Proper Black

St Peter’s Golden Ale

Stone San Diego Session IPA

Thornbridge Brother Rabbit

Thwaites Daniel’s Hammer

Titanic Fit Out

Traditional Scottish Ales Taking the Pith

Tring Pudding Porter

Vale Long Dark Nights

Wadworth Octoberzest

Wells Naked Gold

Wharfebank Treacle Toffee Stout

White Horse Horse Rustler

Woodforde’s Kett’s Rebellion

Wychwood Ginger Beard

Ratebeer and why I think it is great

There's room for all kinds of beer drinkers in this world: Those that pop out for an occasional pint of a weekend, those that regularly go drinking with friends, those who sup at home or with a meal and yes, even those that see beer as a hobby in and of itself. Sometimes these "beergeeks" are looked down upon as being only interested in trying new things.Not so, say I and even if it were true is that necessarily a bad thing? People motivated to look for new breweries and try new beers are those who first get the word out to other people about beers worth trying. 

Most people like to share their recommendations of good beers and with the advent of the Internet its become even easier. A number of websites have sprung into being over the last decade or so whose purpose is to catalogue available beers and allow users to provide feedback on their thoughts for the beer. Ratebeer is one such site.

I found ratebeer by accident a few months ago when searching for info on a beer I was about to order from a mail order firm (I forget which now!). It seemed interesting so decided to sign up to see how it worked. After rating one or two beers I've become a frequent user and decided to splash out for premium membership to get access to some of the additional rating stats and give the site a hand in its running costs. I've never been one for making extensive notes on beer, generally remembering if I enjoyed a beer or not and a few choice details about it, but like how ratebeer allows you to compare your opinions to other peoples. Reading through tasting notes also helps you to identify the flavours you are picking out in a beer that you can't perhaps identify. Certainly cheaper than a tasting course!

Ratebeer also gives the rankings of beers by style and overall. This can sometimes result in "extremeophiles" getting imperial stouts into the top 50, but in general the top beers are very good beers. There's a forum for socialising with other memebrs and a whole host of other features I'll let you discover for yourself.

Through ratebeer (and the fact that he posted the BSF beer list on his blog) I met Craig. I learnt of the bottle tasting evenings that he runs on a fairly frequent basis and managed to get myself an invite. I'd met Craig at the Great British Beer Festival this year, but it was not without some trepidation that I approached his house. I needn't have worried as Craig's friends and family are all great people and on arrival I was greeted by around 25 beers spread across the table. As there were so many of us it was a "big bottle" evening and I had brought along some of my own contributions.

We started the evening as we meant to go on with the 12.5% O'Hanlon's Special Reserve I had acquired at Beer Ritz a few days before. After that I was swiftly introduced to both Tactical Nuclear Penguin and Sink the Bismarck before other beer lovers began arriving.

Nineteen beers later and it was time to call it a night. (I had to leave shortly after 10pm, but allegedly some stragglers were still there at 2am!) Communal beer drinking experiences are very rewarding and by sharing beers we were able to try a greater range and some very rare ones than we would otherwise have been able to. I look forward to future tasting events. I recommend you give it a go even if you aren't planning to review the beers on ratebeer.  Big thanks to all who brought beers along and special thanks to @sevarity who brought along some homebrew and tasty cheeses.

Vote for Edinburgh for the Autumn #Twissup and I'm sure Craig may bring a few interesting bottles from the back of his cupboard to share! 

For this event alone I consider my membership of rate beer a good thing and there's a whole hoist of other events regularly advertised that I may one day get along to (when I'm not stranded on a small island...). For those of you already on ratebeer, look me up either by clicking on the thingummy over there (points to the right) on my blog or searching for Stephanos on rate beer. Those of you who haven't yet looked at the site, go take a look its a great resource!