I’ve come to a decision and committed it to my latest Hop Press post... I’m going to start rating beer. For a year I will ‘rate’ and enter the score into Rate Beer for each unique beer I drink. I started on Christmas Eve (I was going to start on 1st January as that’s the most logical starting point but I’ve had too many great beers over Christmas that I didn’t want to miss out) and will continue until the end of 2010.
I have my reasons: I want to be able to look back at what I’ve drunk come the end of 2010; I want to understand the rating process and how easy/difficult it is and the pros and cons of doing it; I want to see if I become obsessed with raising my total or if I get disillusioned and disinterested in doing it after a while.
I haven’t entered any rates yet but I’ll start soon – I have a few ready to go in. The Hop Press post also asks: if you rate, then why do you do it?
Good points about being able to track what you drink and look back at the end of the year. I have a second, private, blog for the same reason.
ReplyDeleteIt's an interesting point about becoming obsessed with your rating count. I've noticed (during the little time I've spent using ratebeer) that user rate count often means nothing about the quality of their ratings. Just the other day, I read a review from a user with hundreds of reviews, claiming the "C Hop flavour was massive", in a beer that I know for certain doesn't use C hops.
Quality over quantity, every time. Probably goes without saying though.
Can I ask, why bother? Are you gonna draw a graph with the data or something?
ReplyDeleteI ran in to the same issue when I spent time in the UK and was exploring the beer there. When I was given a large selection of beer for my birthday I wanted to record them but wasn't really qualified to provide accurate ratings.
ReplyDeleteI wound up making my own site for it, mostly just for fun, but a few friends and family have been using it as well. It can do comments and locations as well but I haven't added a UK portion yet.
Every drink I've had is recorded as well as the quantity and dates. I'd love some comments about if it is of any interest to you. There is a steep learning curve but it is useful.
You can see my drinklogs profile and click around to see what it can do.