The first beer review site I used was the Beer Advocate.  I used that to help me find different beers that I thought I might like based on others that I had tried.  I’ve learned since then that I am not a fan of high IBU beer styles, such as IPAs and/or double IPAs.  I seem to pay more attention to how the “Bros” rate a beer vs the total BA user rating.

Since October of 2013 or so, I have use Untappd to help keep track of the beers I have had.  One can see how my evaluations of the brands compare to others.

While I am also aware of RateBeer, I haven’t really used it all that much.

There is also the beer section at tastings.com; it doesn’t seem like it is a place where users can submit their own ratings for the beers.

What I find odd about the different places is the wide difference of scores depending upon which site is used.  Some beers are highly rated no matter which site is consulted, but others have quite different scores depending upon the style and brand.

One of my favorite beers is Levity Amber Ale from Odell.

• From the Beer Advocate, it gets a score of 85 from BA users, and 97 from the Bros.  This is on a scale of 1-100. (Maybe my opinion of the beer was affected by the high score at BA?)
• At Untappd, the score is 3.499 out of 5.  This is a pretty typical score.
• At RateBeer, it gets a score of 46 overall, and 62 for the style.
• I don’t see that this have been reviewed yet at tastings.

For a similar beer, Fat Tire Amber from New Belgium gets 82/82, 3.57, and 48/67 respectively.  It gets a lower rating from BA, but slightly higher ratings from Untappd and RateBeer.

Why such a big difference?  All of these places have hundreds or thousands of ratings that have come in.  One would think that the platform for the review wouldn’t matter, since the quality of a beer would all level out at all of the ratings systems as more reviews come in.

Now for other beers, such as Pliny the Younger or Pliny the Elder, these seem to get high ratings no matter which system is used.

For more in beer rating systems, see the Wikipedia entry.