Beer Ratings

The Rating System Explained

While I have never been reticent to laud a great beer or skewer a terrible one, I have always been uncomfortable with the concept of rating a product that, like beer, so thoroughly depends upon an individual's tastes. To this end, I have always placed a greater emphasis on a description of the colour, aroma and flavour of a brew than on a judgemental rating system.

If, for example, I were to write off a beer with a score of 4 out of 100 because I found that it was extraordinarily sweet for its style, I might unintentionally put off a potential drinker who prefers sweetness to style adherence simply because that person read the number instead of the review. Thus, I am not the guide who tells you, the reader, what to drink. Rather, I provide the map with a few suggested stops.

Alas, a book such as this is expected to provide some sort of rating system, and for that purpose, I have fallen back on the same practice I use for my personal notes. The ratings run from one to four stars, with a half star being reserved for a brew with some serious technical flaw such as yeast contamination, and four stars being a virtually unattainable standard.

The four star system is not a perfect one and it differs greatly from the common route of scoring out of 50 or 100. For example, the four star fails to note small differentials of taste which would be glaringly obvious in a score out of 100. The latter system, on the other hand, does prompt one to wonder what benefit there is to knowing that Beer A scored a 76 while Beer B merely rated a 74, or a whole two percent worse.

One quirk to the four star system is that it is more difficult for a beer to gain stars when it has a high original rating than when it starts low. The effect this oddity has is that the one-star tier becomes very crowded while the four-star level is, in Canada's case, bereft of inhabitants.

Which brings up a final point about the rating system, namely, its inherent toughness. The beers in this book have been evaluated on a par with the best and worst brews the world has to offer. This means that competition is much broader than just among the beers presented here and, as such, the evaluations more stringent. True, there are no four-star beers in the following reviews, but that does not mean that there are none in the world.

The Rating System

* Standard but unimaginative and, therefore, unlikely to inspire

** Well-brewed and worthy

*** Thoroughly enjoyable, what the brewer's art is all about

**** A classic in every regard, a world-beater