Is RB dead?

Am I holding on too long? Are the good old days gone and never to come back again. Most of the people I hung out with on RB don’t come around no more. New people don’t seem to stick around or get highly involved.

I am about to make a trip to Long Island, NY after having moved away almost a decade ago. Wanted to check out the local seen, its blown up since I left. Well, started looking at the map carefully and planning my trip. Realized that one brewery has been closed for over a year and no one on RB noticed. Another had moved locations, again no one cared. And most of the breweries have had basically one RB visitor in the years that they have been open .

So, am I kicking a dead horse, holding onto memories rather than experiencing the world. Is the old RB dead and the only thing left is to mimic Untappd? Is there just too much beer nowadays?

As long as I’m alive, RateBeer will never die. And the fact that I need to add so many new beers was at first an annoyance. Now, I realize that I am, in the words of Bill Belichick, the "next man up". Grow some balls, man up, and stop bitching. Cheers.

I don’t think it’s a secret that we have fewer active users then other sites. So, yeah, stuff gets overlooked, Untappd will have 100 rating for a beer before it’s even entered here, etc.

I think part of the problem is a user base that never really grew, while the beer world around the user base expanded exponentially. 10 years ago it was probably easy for a group of 5 guys in a region to keep tabs on 10ish breweries. Those same 5 guys can’t reasonably keep tabs on 100 active breweries.

Originally posted by blipp
I don’t think it’s a secret that we have fewer active users then other sites. So, yeah, stuff gets overlooked, Untappd will have 100 rating for a beer before it’s even entered here, etc.

I think part of the problem is a user base that never really grew, while the beer world around the user base expanded exponentially. 10 years ago it was probably easy for a group of 5 guys in a region to keep tabs on 10ish breweries. Those same 5 guys can’t reasonably keep tabs on 100 active breweries.

Originally posted by beastiefan2k
Am I holding on too long? Are the good old days gone and never to come back again. Most of the people I hung out with on RB don’t come around no more. New people don’t seem to stick around or get highly involved.

I am about to make a trip to Long Island, NY after having moved away almost a decade ago. Wanted to check out the local seen, its blown up since I left. Well, started looking at the map carefully and planning my trip. Realized that one brewery has been closed for over a year and no one on RB noticed. Another had moved locations, again no one cared. And most of the breweries have had basically one RB visitor in the years that they have been open .

So, am I kicking a dead horse, holding onto memories rather than experiencing the world. Is the old RB dead and the only thing left is to mimic Untappd? Is there just too much beer nowadays?

I’m still ticking!

I believe that this site offers so much more than untapped, which I see as a basic ticking site. We should be emphasising those differences, particularly with the travel aspect and places, I believe that more Countries should be split into regions, more development of styles and sub styles, more ratebeer events. We seem to have been pretty static in these areas for a while and I believe that this has cost us footfall on the site.

RB is probably dead in certain areas (parts of the US) but it’s alive and thriving in others ... London and parts of Europe. RB has always had a bigger European membership than BA will ever achieve.

Is BA dead ?

There’s twice as many beers on the database here compared to there ... largely due to the active European membership.

As for forums ... I gave up looking at BA forums years ago.

Unless you want to know what 85 random blokes top 5 favorit English beers are or their favorit porters, go to IPA ’s etc then it’s a waste of time.

I’d rather read 3 relevant forum posts over here than 300 bi monthly fillers there !

Is RB dead ?

See how many beers are on the database today and check again in a week.

RB won’t match Untappd for this bit will always smash BA.

there are 60 new Scottish beers added every month.


What i have lost is the trading. There a far wider range of beer available in UK than 10 years ago when i started.
So the expense and trouble of trade means i do less.

So i dont interact with quite as many people

But id say the biggest thing for me was the rise of Facebook and twitter

Im not there for social interaction with a whole range of people.
So dont hang in the forums as much. I just dont have the time. Though i miss them at times


But id also say theres WAY more interesting festivals. So time to do RB meets as well is harder to find, and the BEER selection at festivals has shot up. So the little bottles shares with RB crew has also fallen by the wayside


Plus of course the longer your in any club, hte more likly you are to have a Few friends you always hang with.


Saying that ive a huge thanks to say to all the people who were uber cool at Dark Lord day 2009 when i was over, TO all the friends ive met at Euro festivals

and to the People who came to share a drink with me in florida the last few years when ive been over

To RB not dead, but maybe a smaller part of peoples beer lives due to rise of other social media(not necessarily beer ones)


I know a few untappd users, who Treate RB as the Expert reference resource.
So we keep up good work

Yeah i speak to a lot of ppl who reference RB scores when deciding on beers to buy, or reference RB scores in other beer forums but cant be bothered being a member. In this regard its pretty influential, despite the lack of new members.

Ill always use it for a personal database / reference, i cant see any other site coming close for that.

RateBeer isn’t dead; in fact, it’s probably at an all-time high in terms of profitability. It has simply shifted its focus from community to business and branding.

The cannibalization of RBWG by the RateBeer Best awards and festival certainly didn’t help the community end of things, but no one carried Joe’s water on that more than you, Eugene, so sorry if I find it humorous that you of all people would start a thread like this. I’m not saying it was the sole factor or even a primary one, but it sure as hell doesn’t help from a community standpoint.