Comment by kodt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kodt | Hacker News Reader

I don't really understand their interest in RateBeer, RateBeer really does not seem that relevant today. 10 years ago it was very important in the craft beer scene. Now it seems like a dying community.

In terms of reviewing beers, most people have moved to using an app like Untappd. BeerAdvocate, another forum/beer rating site seems to have a more active userbase, but even that is becoming less relevant today as people move away from forum communities.

Is that data on RateBeer of use to them? Are they planning on pouring money into it to position it as a competitor to Untappd? I'm not sure what the goal is. If the fear is they will secretly skew review scores to favor their product lines, that seems hardly worth the effort, as I don't think enough people use the site to drive purchasing decisions to make a meaningful impact.

I think people need to be aware of which beer publications ZX Ventures owns, or owns a stake in, as that will help you identify marketing fluff pieces vs real reporting. The fact that they go to some effort to hide their ownership of several brands they have acquired is concerning to me, but I also understand it is not in their interest to promote that fact. Many people unknowingly buy ABI products without having any idea the beer they are buying isn't in fact locally owned.

I don't even care about other people's beer ratings. I just use RateBeer/BeerAdvocate to lookup ABV and caloric information.

Same. As a whole, the American craft beer drinkers are obsessed with really hoppy beers, which I hate. So the ratings are completely useless, because a beer I hate will be like a 4.5 while a beer I love will be a 3.3.

There's definitely an opportunity here for a better beer rating system. Get some equipment to analyze the chemical compounds of beers, automatically classify them and use it to recommend beers based on your personal flavor preferences.

Check out Untappd

Check out beergraphs.com, it has lots of different normalization lenses that might get you what you want. Founded by some baseball stathead writers, so takes a lot of the same approaches to data.

> As a whole, the American craft beer drinkers are obsessed with really hoppy beers, which I hate.

In standard American fashion, we are bad at subtlety. You want hops, we will make beer that tastes like you're chewing on raw hops. You want alcohol, the beer will taste like whiskey. While there are some exceptions (like Dogfish Head 90 minute IPA), this is the standard formula for American craft beers.

The Belgians on the other hand can really 'craft' beer.

> The Belgians on the other hand can really 'craft' beer.

Yeah they can. I think the last 3-4 six packs I've purchased were Belgian imports. They tend to have distinct flowery notes that I really enjoy.

Expressing a beer rating as an average has always seemed problematic to me because different folks' tastes in beer vary so much.

I'd rather have an app that looked at what I've highly rated and either paired me with users who highly rate similar beers, or just recommended beers those folks also rate highly that I haven't tried.

In practice, I just have a few friends that I know have similar beer tastes as me that I regularly swap recommendations with.

I use Untapped to keep track of what I liked, so when I'm buying it next time or in the store I can remember. All of the ratings consolidate around 3.5 or 4 anyway since people have different taste in beers (hoppy/creamy/fruity/etc).

One of the other issues that I've seen with Untappd and many of the other beer rating companies is that their ratings systems are heavily biased by the nature of their users and/or weird algorithmic quirks. I believe that this has caused some beer rating services to become fairly disconnected from reality: For example, the first 4 beers on Untappd's top beers list are discontinued Goose Island beers, and 7 of the top 10 are from the same two breweries (see https://untappd.com/beer/top_rated).

Disclaimer – I'm pretty biased in this assessment (helped build BrewGene, which provides a similar beer rating + recommendation service). Here's our top 5 for context:

  * Trappist 12
  * Heady Topper
  * Pliny the Elder
  * Sip of Sunshine
  * Pliny the Younger

(http://www.brewgene.com/content/top-100-beers. We have apps that are more modern if you're looking for better beer!)

Probably about the SEO, when you google most beers the RateBeer page will rank pretty highly.

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