Lindeman’s Lambics. Now with Artificial Sweetners!!

Reads 23699 • Replies 122 • Started Friday, April 2, 2010 1:21:59 PM CT

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Message AZeagle beers 11 º places 4 º 12:09 Mon 4/5/2010 Originally posted by joet My take on all this is that purism has absolutely no place in beer. While Whole Foods may have a beef with artificial sweeteners (even though saccharine is probably much safer and healthier than cane or even malt sugar), and consumers have a right to know what they’re drinking (even though it’s a government restriction and not Lindemans behind the labeling rules), the nature of beer - a product of a few core things with limitless variety and potential - defies purism. The Reinheitsgebot and more recently the UK’s Neoreinheitsgebot have been thoroughly defeated by the craft beer movement and modern science. We all know these purist restrictions cannot assure public health and don’t assure a good tasting product. The RateBeer Top 50 would be unnecessarily clobbered by purists taking a scornful microscope and applying outdated restrictions on the beers that comprise it. Many top brewers use dextrins, make sour beers without open fermentation, use flavorings and probably artificial sweeteners. Lindemans is a quality product and while it is very sweet, it still has many applications at the table as a dessert beer or apertif. If the argument is strictly beer, I agree with you, as long as ingredients are disclosed so that consumers can make an informed decision. Some people are allergice to certain artificial sweeteners. Whole Foods, and other stores, represent to their customers that they make sure that certain ingredients are not in their products, one of these ingredients is Acesulfame K (along with other artificial sweeteners). If a consumer is looking for a product that meets Whole Foods purity standards, they assume that if they purchase something at Whole Foods, it has been vetted. To represent a product as meeting those standards when it does not is border line fraudulent. The issue isn’t whether it is acceptable for Lindeman’s to put artificial sweetener in their products. It is. The issue is with disclosure. Put whatever you want in your beer, just make sure if people ask, you are honest about what is in there. I know that the importer has always hidden by "proprietary ingredients" as an excuse for not disclosing what is in the product.
Message joet P admin beers 2900 º places 125 º 12:11 Mon 4/5/2010 Originally posted by ¾ Originally posted by shawn14505 So how come you guys are still giving it a 92 overall rating? http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/lindemans-framboise/342/ people aren’t rating it 92 people are rating it 3.6 this is what happens when you rate on a 5pt scale and then try to adjust to a 100pt scale. Let’s stop this. We’ve confused people enough. The average is never going to be the score and it’s not my intention. NEVER. The 100-point scale was created here because of it’s industry utility and broad acceptance in the wine space among consumers and retailers.
Message 3fourths P beers 9492 º places 1576 º 12:25 Mon 4/5/2010 Originally posted by joet We’ve confused people enough. The average is never going to be the score and it’s not my intention. NEVER. The 100-point scale was created here because of it’s industry utility and broad acceptance in the wine space among consumers and retailers. I certainly agree, and have no problem using a 100pt scale if we’re also rating on a 100pt scale.

Message joet P admin beers 2900 º places 125 º 12:30 Mon 4/5/2010 Originally posted by ¾ Originally posted by joet We’ve confused people enough. The average is never going to be the score and it’s not my intention. NEVER. The 100-point scale was created here because of it’s industry utility and broad acceptance in the wine space among consumers and retailers. I certainly agree, and have no problem using a 100pt scale if we’re also rating on a 100pt scale. Huge HUGE problems with this. * People may very well take to a totally different rating style whereby 100 is perfect and points are taken off for imperfections. Robert Parker scores the vast majority of wines over 90 points. We would need to have some way to automatically retrofit all the existing ratings. * 90 points is not 90th percentile. It was never meant to be. Scores are different than point averages. They were never meant to be the same thing. * "I just rated this beer a 100. The three people before rated it 100. Why isn’t it the top beer on the site?"
Message puzzl beers 3258 º places 138 º 12:37 Mon 4/5/2010 Originally posted by joet Originally posted by ¾ Originally posted by joet We’ve confused people enough. The average is never going to be the score and it’s not my intention. NEVER. The 100-point scale was created here because of it’s industry utility and broad acceptance in the wine space among consumers and retailers. I certainly agree, and have no problem using a 100pt scale if we’re also rating on a 100pt scale. Huge HUGE problems with this. * People may very well take to a totally different rating style whereby 100 is perfect and points are taken off for imperfections. Robert Parker scores the vast majority of wines over 90 points. We would need to have some way to automatically retrofit all the existing ratings. * 90 points is not 90th percentile. It was never meant to be. Scores are different than point averages. They were never meant to be the same thing. * "I just rated this beer a 100. The three people before rated it 100. Why isn’t it the top beer on the site?" We are actually already rating on a 50 point scale, not a 5 point scale, the system just divides the total score (10+5+10+5+20 = 50) by 10 after the fact. Why not keep the same rating scale and rating format but display the final score as the number doubled rather than divided by 10? 7/3/8/4/15=37 = 74 rather than 3.7? Of course, the flaw with that system (and our current design) is revealed in that very example. 74 would be considered shit to most people, but 3.7 is quite decent, and as you mentioned, if we just switched to a pure 1-100 scale our scores would drastically change. The problem here is that the percentile in the design is now being called the score, but the score for Lindemans is a 3.58, NOT a 92. The 92 is a percentile and should really be listed as such.
Message kp beers 10877 º places 12 º 12:49 Mon 4/5/2010 Originally posted by ¾ I certainly agree, and have no problem using a 100pt scale if we’re also rating on a 100pt scale. You need a math refresher. Go study up on weighted averages and percentiles. They are two different things. The weighted average is a look at how an individual beer is rated. The percentile compares that beer to its peers, either within the same style or overall amongst all beers.
Message joet P admin beers 2900 º places 125 º 12:51 Mon 4/5/2010 Originally posted by puzzl The 92 is a percentile and should really be listed as such. No. It is not.

Message kp beers 10877 º places 12 º 13:00 Mon 4/5/2010 Originally posted by joet Originally posted by puzzl The 92 is a percentile and should really be listed as such. No. It is not. What is it? How is it calculated? Is the style score a percentile?
Message 3fourths P beers 9492 º places 1576 º 13:13 Mon 4/5/2010 Originally posted by kp Originally posted by ¾ I certainly agree, and have no problem using a 100pt scale if we’re also rating on a 100pt scale. You need a math refresher. Go study up on weighted averages and percentiles. They are two different things. The weighted average is a look at how an individual beer is rated. The percentile compares that beer to its peers, either within the same style or overall amongst all beers. thank you for the math refresher advice, it’s a suggestion that I will take very seriously my good friend. I admit I was mistaken thinking that my background in mathematics and statistics as well as my database work here on ratebeer would have familiarized me with the rating and scoring system of this site, but obviously I need a math refresher, and I thank you for bringing this to my attention. here I was so foolishly dumbfounded by the concept of score and percentile, which are very so clearly marked on the our beer ratings website, where percentile is called score and score is called weighted average.
Message shawn14505 beers 39 º 13:19 Mon 4/5/2010 No matter how you look at it, when an idiot like me clicks on the rating for Lindemans Framboise, they see that it has a 92 "overall score". Now being the dummy that I am (I freely admit that), this would lead me to believe that it is 8 points away from being a perfect beer. Or do you think the average person would read it differently?