As I’ve stated elsewhere, my ratings are very subjective. In the same way that you take movie reviews with a grain of salt, so you should with beer reviews. My preferences are completely different to the person sitting next to me, so it would be stupid to assume my impressions are canon. I’m not a professional taster and therefore there is plenty that I’m missing or misinterpreting when I drink a beer. I’m working on improving this, but for now, my verdict on a beer is based purely on my brutish impressions. And whilst I know what I like (Pale Ales, IPAs, Stouts, and Porters), I am careful to judge a beer based on its style. This means that although I’m not too fond of Saisons, I’ll still score the beer based on whether I think it’s a good example of a French farmhouse summer ale.
I’m a firm believer that beer is a heavily social drink, and therefore company, setting, and mood can greatly affect your perception of it. That is why I have attempted to provide a context for where and when I am drinking.
Lastly, my actual score is not made up of different ratings on various qualities (e.g. 3/5 for aroma, 4/5 for body, etc.). Instead my rating is a scale where 1 is a terrible beer, 5 is an okay beer and 10 is the sort of thing songs are sung about. As a guide to the way my taste buds work, below is how I scale various commercial beers.
1 – VB/XXXX/Fosters
3 – Crown lager
5 – Cascade Pale/Coopers Pale
7 – Little Creatures Pale Ale
10 – ???
Whenever I revisit a beer and my opinion changes, then I will update the review of the beer to reflect this. I also encourage others to leave their impressions of the beers in the comments. Beer is social, and so should its appreciation be too.
A Quick Pint 