Ratebeer.com

[Brewsmith]

Anyone here use Ratebeer.com? I've looked through the site several times before, but I only signed up a couple weeks ago. I'm listed as, oddly enough, Brewsmith on the site. It's a great way to evaluate the beer that you are tasting, and the other tastings mostly have good input. I'm going to try to use it with as many beers as I can get my hands on. Anyone else use it to rate beers or figure out what or what not to buy?

 

[Kai]

I use it. It's great.

"Oakes" is one of my favourite tasters.
I've only rated, like, 20 beers - but I'm working on it.

 

[Professor Frink]

I spend a lot of time on it, but I've yet to sign up to post. I'd really like to get good about judging beers, I've been pondering doing BJCP.

 

[Brewsmith]

I need to do more tasting first, but I'm also interested in doing the BJCP thing.

 

[brewt00l]

I don't post on the forums but I have been entering my tastings...admittedly, inconsistent at best. The feedback value from the overall score approach seems fairly on the mark in many instances.

 

[landhoney]

beeradvocate.com fan here, not that ratebeer is bad but I like it better. I post every so often there. I check occasionally, but not as much as BA.

 

[the_bird]

When I try something new, I'll always zip over to Beer Advocate for a bit and see if the impressions that I'm picking up are matching what other people are noting. It's really nice to maybe point me to some flavors that I'm overlooking.

I know it would be redundant with those sites, but I think it's be pretty sweet if we could have that kind of setup here with the commercial beer reviews. I mean, there are lots and lots and lots of folks here that I know well and whose judgments I trust, and I'd love to see people's opinions consolidated in some way. We're kinda doing that with the beer-of-the-month thing, but it's still not quite the same (speaking of which, I need to hit the Celebrator soon).

 

[brewt00l]

I just noticed one of my favorite locals is the #1 best beer bar!!...and Monks is #3. Hard to imagine that but hey, Matt deserves the props!

http://www.ratebeer.com/RateBeerBes...est+Beer+Bars+2008&file=bars_places_2008b.csv

1. Capones Restaurant Norristown, Pennsylvania Gold

 

[slim chillingsworth]

i love ratebeer. i've met some great people and discovered some fantastic beers through it. i just hit my 500th rating a week or two ago. link is in my profile.

 

[Funkenjaeger]

beeradvocate.com fan here, not that ratebeer is bad but I like it better. I post every so often there. I check occasionally, but not as much as BA.

Yeah, I think the BA reviews are often a bit better - on ratebeer, there are a lot of one-liner reviews, whereas on BA people seem to go more detailed, often breaking it down by appearance/smell/taste/mouthfeel/drinkability. After all, I'm not just after the overall rating, I am much more interested in hearing how people perceive the various aspects of the beer to see if my senses agree with them, in which case reviews that are little more than more verbose versions of "this beer is good" don't help much.

With that said, BA is annoying because you have to be logged in, and it is often pretty slow to perform a search... So 9 times out of 10, if I'm looking for a quick review, I go to ratebeer first, and then if I want more detail I check BA.