How I Learned to Jump to Conclusions

The final installment in this series is finally here. After looking at these lists several times over the past couple of weeks, I’ve come up with several conclusions about the “best” beers in the world.

Believe in the hype

Is this beer rare? Is it released once or twice per year? Is it very hard to get? Do I have to stand in a line for it? Is the beer only sold from one location? Would I have to trade lopsidedly just to get it? Was last year’s better than this year’s?

If the answer to more than one of these questions is yes, then the beer is worthy of being in the top 50. 

4 out of 5 dentists recommend...

IPAs. It must be true with how much the craft drinker apparently drinks them. In fact, there is an old saying, “Two IPAs a day, keeps the doctors away.” Sprinkle in something barrel-aged and something sour and you’ve got yourself a balanced diet!

Is it barrel-aged?

No?! Then I don’t want it. Seriously. “Normal” beers aren’t good enough to stand up on their own. They need to be aged in some sort of barrel to pick up some “spirit” taste like bourbon or whiskey. Otherwise, it’s probably not worth the time.

A full circle palate 

“Gateway craft beer” - Stouts and Porters - IPAs - Anything Imperial or barrel-aged - Belgian beers - English Ales - German Lagers. 

The typical journey of the beer palate. Allow for some discretion of course, but when I talk to other beer drinkers, beer geeks, brewers or industry professionals the story normally goes like that. Sooner or later you don’t need to be assaulted with aggressive flavors in beer. Your palate just wants something simple and full of flavor. It seems like the American craft beer geek isn’t there yet. 

Zymurgy - The odd man out

This is the only list that featured a good amount of “regularly” available beers all around the country. Therefore, it cannot be trusted. Boulevard Tank 7. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Lagunitas Sucks. Left Hand Milk Stout Nitro. Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald. Zymurgy is a homebrew magazine so I suspect that a majority of people who voted were homebrewers (1+1=2!!!). Seems like homebrewers enjoy the simpler things. That or they just don’t have the time to chase around whales all weekend because they are homebrewing.

All jokes aside, these lists are all opinion. Don’t forget that.

There is no best beer in the world.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love "Top Beer" Lists - Volume 2

I’ve never been more excited to follow up on a blog post. Originally, I was going to do this topic in two parts but I just can’t seem to fit everything into two posts (unless the second post is very, very long). How I Learned to Stop Worrying has now officially become a series of posts (looking at three posts right now). 

After I posted the first part of this series last week, I continued to dig to find more data pertaining to “user-rated” top beer lists or top beer lists that were essentially based off of opinion (wouldn’t all “top” lists be opinions for that matter?). I stumbled upon a site called BeerGraphs. This site utilizes the social media beer rating site Untappd, pulling data to create a ranking system for the world’s top beers. It’s fairly complicated as they don’t just take straight ratings off the site. Similar to Beer Advocate and RateBeer, a lot of other factors come into play. You can read about how they develop their metric here.

Surprise, surpise. Heady Topper tops another list

Beer Graph’s Top 50 lists breaks down like so:

American Double/Imperial IPA: 13

American IPA: 11

American Double/Imperial Stout: 9 (all are barrel-aged)

American Pale Ale: 3

Russian Imperial Stout: 2 (all are barrel-aged)

American Strong Ale: 2 (all are barrel-aged)

American Barleywine: 2 (all are barrel-aged)

Quadrupel: 1

Imperial/Double Red Ale: 1

American Pale Wheat: 1

Scotch Ale/Wee Heavy: 1 (barrel-aged)

Lambic - Fruit: 1

Pumpkin: 1

Pale Lager: 1 (Jack’s Abbey Hoponius Union which they self describe as an India Pale Lager)

Fruit Beer: 1 (barrel-aged)

There are a couple of things to remember about this list and Untappd in general. First of all, there were ample repeats in the top 50. I had to look to the top 60 eliminating ten repeats total in the top 50. Repeats are allowed on this list because Untappd’s beers are user-generated. Some users felt the need to separate some beers by year (ex: Bourbon County Brand Stout 2013 vs. Bourbon County Brand Stout). When I was a hardcore Untappd user, this was one of the things that frustrated me the most about the app.

The other thing that frustrated me again tied into the fact that the beers are often user-generated, meaning users can add beers in at their leisure. When a user adds a beer, that user defines the style (as well as the alcohol by volume). If the user adds in the wrong style, that beer is then forever defined with the wrong style. King Henry is a great example of this. Goose Island defines this beer as an English-style Barleywine. On Untappd, it is categorized as an American-style Barleywine. Is this THAT big of a deal? No, especially since the beer is barrel-aged. HOWEVER, there is a unique difference between an English-style Barleywine and an American-style Barleywine. For someone who has spent the time to learn the difference between the two, this could be incredibly annoying.

Untappd actually has a list of top beers on its website. The list is 36 beers long, with one repeat (Russian River’s Beatification) so for scoring purposes this will only be counted once.

Untappd's highest rated beer.
The name explains why.

Untappd’s Top 35 beers list:

American Imperial/Double Stout: 18 (17 are barrel-aged)American Imperial/Double IPA: 6

American Wild Ale: 3 (all are barrel-aged)

Russian Imperial Stout: 2 (are all barrel-aged)

American Barleywine: 1 (barrel-aged)

Quadrupel: 1

Lambic - Fruit: 1

American Pale Ale: 1

American Strong Ale: 1 (barrel-aged)

Root Beer: 1 (Small Town’s Not Your Father’s Root Beer)

NOTE: One of the entries in the list was categorized as a Gueuze but I included it instead as an American Wild Ale. It appears on several of the lists as an American Wild Ale so it just made sense to lump it in with that style. Furthermore, I personally don’t consider this beer to be a Gueuze due to production methods BUT this post in not meant to be an argument of style differentiation. 

The final numbers I’d like to bring to your attention are again from the website Beer Graphs. If you do some clicking around, you’ll find a list that ranks the highest average rated beer styles overall on Untappd. These numbers are from 2013 (I couldn’t find anything more recent) but I suspect that if there was a current top 15 styles list it would still be very close to this list. In order:

Imperial Double/IPA

Imperial/Double Red Ale

American Imperial/Double Stout

Imperial Oatmeal Stout

Russian Imperial Stout

Belgian Quad

Imperial/Double Black IPA

Root Beer

Flanders Red Ale

Gueuze

Imperial/Double Porter

Milk/Sweet Stout

Cyser ( A type of mead)

Irish Dry Stout

American Wild Ale

Breaking the statistics down by percentages:

Beer Graphs:

IPA (Including Imperial): 50% (Jack’s Abbey’s beer was included in this statistic)

Imperial Stout (Including Russian): 22%

Barrel-Aged: 34%

Untappd:

IPA (Including Imperial): 17%

Imperial Stout (Including Russian): 57%

Barrel-Aged: 67%

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love "Top Beers" Lists

Zymurgy, a popular homebrew/craft beer magazine, came out with its annual reader’s poll list of the top 50 beers in America. It’s an interesting list. Check it out here if you’d like.

The thing that strikes me most about the list is that it’s comprised mostly of “hoppy” beers. By that I mean beers in which the balance in the aroma and flavor are shifted towards hops (not to mention a scale tipped slightly towards hop bitterness). I decided to break down the list even further to see exactly what the numbers are:

Note: All styles are categorized using Beer Advocate     

The third beer on the left is considered the best
"commercially available" beer in the United States,
according to Zymurgy readers

American IPA: 16

American Double/Imperial IPA: 12

American Double/Imperial Stout: 4 (3 are barrel-aged)

American Pale Ale: 3

American Wild Ale: 2 (all are barrel-aged)

American Porter: 2

Russian Imperial Stout: 2

American Black Ale (Black IPA): 1

American Pale Wheat Ale: 1

American Strong Ale: 1

Saison: 1

Milk/Sweet Stout: 1

Oud Bruin: 1

American Amber/Red Ale: 1

Quadrupel: 1

Scotch Ale/Wee Heavy: 1 (barrel-aged)

Wow. 28 out of 50 beers are either an IPA or an Imperial IPA. Add in sub-categories of IPA, American Pale Ale and beers that are “hoppy” for their style and you get 34 total. 

That’s 68% of the list!!!

It got me thinking...what about the other top beer lists? How do they compare? I looked no further than two of the most popular beer websites on the planet: RateBeer and Beer Advocate. Let’s break them down:

According to Beer Advocate, Heady Topper is the best beer
in the world. This guy agrees.

Beer Advocate Top 50:

American Double/Imperial Stout: 16 (13 are barrel-aged)

American Imperial IPA: 13

American Wild Ale: 6 (all are barrel-aged)

Russian Imperial Stout: 4 (3 are barrel-aged)

Lambic - Fruit: 3

English Barleywine: 2 (all are barrel-aged)

Quadrupel: 2

American Pale Ale: 2

Old Ale: 1 (barrel-aged)

American Porter: 1

RateBeer users have rated this the number one beer
in the world. 

RateBeer Top 50: 

Imperial Stout: 32 (19 are barrel-aged)

Imperial IPA: 7

Sour/Wild Ale: 3 (all barrel aged)

Quadrupel: 2

Belgian Strong Ale: 2

American Strong Ale: 1 (barrel-aged)

Fruit beer: 1 (Kuhnhenn Raspberry Eisbock. Beer Advocate lists as an Eisbock)

Lambic - Fruit: 1

Barleywine: 1 (barrel-aged; North Coast Old Stock Cellar Reserve Brandy Barrel. Beer Advocate lists this example as an Old Ale)

For the sake of my observations (which will be laid out in a future blog post), let’s make the following simplifications:

• Beer Advocate’s “American Imperial Stout” and “Russian Imperial Stout” classifications will be combined to match RateBeer’s “Imperial Stout” category.

• RateBeer’s “Belgian Strong Ale” will be compared to Beer Advocate’s “Belgian Dark Strong.” “Quadrupel” will also be grouped in with these styles.

• RateBeer’s “Barleywine” in the top 50 will NOT be compared against Beer Advocate’s “Barleywines” in the top 50. North Coast Old Stock Cellar Reserve Brandy Barrel is number 48 on RateBeer’s list and they have it classified as a “Barleywine” when Beer Advocate has it listed as an “Old Ale.” 

• RateBeer’s “fruit beer” in the top 50 will probably be thrown out as well since Beer Advocate classifies this beer as an “Eisbock.” (Gotta love the never-ending argument about style classification.)

• Lambics - Fruit will not be included in any “barrel-aged” statistics. Barrel-aging is essential to this style of beer. The styles of beer that I reference “barrel-aged” statistics for don’t require barrel aging for that particular style. For example, neither “American Wild Ales,” “Sour/Wild Ales” nor “Imperial Stouts” need to be barrel-aged in order to be classified as such.

There will be some interpretation on my end based on my palette and what I’ve tasted. I haven’t tasted all of the beers on these list, but I have sampled quite a few of them. Those interpretations will most apply to the Zymurgy list.

Again, I’ll save my observations for my next blog post. I want the information to sink in before I start commenting on the lists. 

I will, however, leave you with an interesting breakdown - the percentages of beers from each list that fall under these 3 categories: IPA, Imperial Stout, or barrel-aged beers.

Zymurgy:

IPA (Including Imperial): 58%

Imperial Stout (Including Russian): 12%

Barrel Aged Beers: 12%

Beer Advocate:

IPA (Including Imperial): 26%

Imperial Stout (Including Russian): 40%

Barrel Aged Beers: 50%

RateBeer:

IPA (Including Imperial): 14%

Imperial Stout (Including Russian): 64%

Barrel Aged Beers: 50%