Higher Ratings VS Better Beers

So , as some of you might know , I keep a close eye on the Top 50 beerlist .

I can’t help but noticing, that the medium score of the beers go up . To get into the top 50 , a weighted average is needed , from about 4,15 .

Last year , the Nr 50 had a score of ( give or take ) 4,10 .


What do you guys think ? Are beers getting better and thus more beers get a higher score, resulting into a higher average of the top 50 ones ?
Or do people just hand out more point than before ???

Saturation.

There are way more beers in all quality levels nowadays. This pushes out previous top 50 entries. The same can be seen on IMDB, there are hundreds and hundreds of movies right outside the range of top 100 that are pretty much on par score wise as the bottom part of top 100.

I suspect there is some skill in getting the sort of beer that panders to the tastes of those liable to give high scores in mainly those hands. But there’s also a fair bit of skill in making it and in knowing the market.

There are still a few dinosaurs on the top 50 list that wouldn’t be there today if ratebeer weighted old scores less than new scores.

Beers are certainly getting better and we have more variety of good beer than ever before. But raters are probably less impressionable as they were 10 years ago when Stone Russian Imperial Stout got its big scores. Today, I don’t believe anyone would find it exceptional.