P 
|
 
ou hear this all the time; especially this time of year. This years release did not live up to the release from last year. Sometimes people think the release this year is better than last year.
Prove it. Show me the collective score pitting one vintage against another.
There are beers like Anchor OSA that publically promotes that they change the recipe every year. Others like Sweetwater Festive or SN Celebration and Bigfoot appear to be dumbed down year after year. Or do they? Show me the numbers.
We need to be tracking the different vintages of at least some of these beers to see how they really are doing release after release. It requires no site software changes to have separate entries for the separate vintages. Collect the data now and then later maybe we can implement something like beer versions to clean up the brewery lists.
Why does a barleywine have to be British to be tracked by vintage?
(I’ll continue to beat this dead horse until it gets up and finishes the race.)
|
Reply 
Private message 
|
The problem is, unless you can cryogenically freeze samples of a beer, you’re always comparing an aged version of last years beer with a fresh version of this year’s beer. We know age changes the character of a beer... and this is just one of the factors that makes it hard to compare even similar beers.
For instance, how about the fact we are all drinking better beer all the time? Nevermind drinkers getting deeper and deeper into craft beer. How about the fact that brewers are making better beers for us to drink all the time?
I think there is no doubt that exciting new breweries are coming out with exciting new beers all that time. These new beers set the standard. Innovative brewers blow us away and then our favorite beers from yesteryear just aren’t as special anymore.
The $15 crocks of Old Crusty are pretty good... but compared to, say, Bourbon Barrel Angel’s Share... well, it just can’t hold up. So of course we say, it was so much better back in the day (in the more reasonable cheaper format ).
|
Post a reply
Private message
|
|
That being said... I’m a huge fan of integrating vintage information for all ratings!
|
Post a reply
Private message
|
keep beating the horse! We want vintage info!
(I might actually bother rating if we had vintage/version type organization)
|
Post a reply
Private message
|
Totally agree, but isn’t the reason the Fullers ( ) vintage is made, allegedly, with different ingredients each year and is therefore a different recipe whilst the SN Bigfoot etc are, nominally, the same recipe each year?
|
Post a reply
Private message
|
|
That comes up a lot, but recently I’ve seen a lot of beers that have been the opposite. DL 2007 was the best vintage since 2004, Captain Lawrence Nor’Easter Batch 2 blows Batch 1 out of the water.
|
Post a reply
Private message
|
Wines are made with the same grapes from the same areas every year, but there is natural variation in the product. A little more of this, a touch less of that, even if inadvertent, changes the profile. The same thing happens with malting and hopping, yeast attenuation, et cetera.
A local example is Schlafly’s Pumpkin Ale. It was great the first year that they came out with it, but the second batch had less pumpkin in it because two of the containers were broken in transit. They decided to make the batch that year with less pumpkin as a result; but because it is the same recipe but with a somewhat slight variation on it, it should be the same beer, but a different vintage. Personally, I thought this year’s pumpkin was nowhere near last year’s version. Therefore, a tab would be helpful when looking at the ratings, because I guarantee that next year’s batch will be back to it’s previous glory.
|
Post a reply
Private message
|
that’s good to hear, because I tried it for the first time this year and thought is was one of the best pumpkin beers I have had so far. It did not stay on the shelves very long here in nashville.
And to KP’s statement, we really do need to be able to track vintages in some way. I totally agree. If the admins are too busy, perhaps it’s time to unlock the doors and allow some help.
|
Post a reply
Private message
|
Fullers alternates between tweaked versions of the same recipe.
Bigfoot is the same recipe, I think, but I want to see the numbers.
Anchor OSA is a different tweaked/spiced recipe each year.
Even beers that are the same every year like Bigfoot do change. Recipes slowly evolve. Batch sizes change. Processes change. Hop and malt yields vary from year to year. Tweaks are made each year. The hop situation over the next few years will be the single biggest shift in recent history. It would be interesting to see statistics on Bigfoot to see if it is gradually getting better or worse over a twenty or fifty year span or production.
But a rating of fresh bottles of each vintage should be comparable. Ratings of a year old 2007 should be the same as a year old 2006. But is it? Is the 2007 holding up as well as the 2006? By having vintage and rating date you can compare equal aged bottles of different vintages.
Prove it. Show me the numbers. Eventually I want to see overlaid graphs of each vintage of Dark Lord that shows the ratings rising and falling over time. But we have to start collecting the data now to ever get there.
|
Post a reply
Private message
|
Although software would make it easier or neater, we don’t need any software change to begin collecting the data. All we need is policy change to be allowed to create different beer entries for each vintage of Dark Lord, OSA, etc. Eventually the software can catch up to present the data in a better way. But we need to start collecting data now if we are ever going to have anything to present.
|
Post a reply
Private message
|
I would say that the hardest thing about incorporating vintages is figuring out what to do with the ratings that have already been input into the system.
I would say that a vintage or batch number tab be selectable when rating the beer and organized thusly. Therefore, any previous ratings that did not have the tab selected would go into an "unknown or unselected" category as the catchall. This would cover anyone that either did not know what vintage or batch number they had rated.
Additionally, when putting a new beer into the system the tab dictating year/batch should be selectable in order to prevent a clusterfuck of mixed ratings (ie some ratings being by vintage, others by batch). Each beer should be designated one or the other when put into the system (or allowed to be changed later in case of error).
|
Post a reply
Private message
|
