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wineanddinosaur · 4 years ago

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In 2021, Who Are Beer Reviews Actually For?

The word “saturation” pops up a lot in conversations about the current American craft beer scene. It’s often in regard to hazy IPAs, but it can also apply to the industry as a whole. In 2020, the United States reached 8,764 for its brewery count. That’s almost double where we were in 2015, and more than four times 2010’s 1,758 total.

BeerAdvocate and RateBeer were founded in 1996 and 2000, respectively. DRAFT Magazine (R.I.P.), which regularly ran beer reviews alongside other industry and culture content, kicked off in 2006. At the time, reviews helped those interested in beer discover new brews and make purchasing decisions. They were all valuable navigation tools as options suddenly grew exponentially from a handful of mass-produced light lagers to riffs on European styles pouring from microbreweries all over the country. Reviews were worth the time investment, both in writing them and reading them, because people were still learning what different styles were and the beers being reviewed stuck around — one could read about a brew and then actually go find it.

Considering the staggering growth in the beer industry since then, though, it’s worth questioning: What’s the point of beer reviews anymore? Is that kind of time investment logical? When we’re speaking about professionally assigned, researched, written, and published reviews (compared to quick “4.7” ratings on Untappd), who are these reviews even for?

A quick scroll through Instagram, or through the “press release” section of industry news site Brewbound, is enough to confirm that, yes, every day is a fresh flurry of new releases from breweries across the country.

“We have a lot more breweries than we had five years ago,” says Brewers Association chief economist Bart Watson. “So there’s more to keep track of, but it doesn’t necessarily mean every individual brewery is putting out a lot more beers. Even if the average number of beers per brewery remains constant, we still have tons more releases.” Watson adds that craft beer’s business model has shifted in the last five years or so, too; it’s now more predicated on getting people to your taproom, a goal many breweries accomplish with relentless novelty and variety.

Writing and editing for outlets like Good Beer Hunting and Craft Beer & Brewing, Kate Bernot was an editor at DRAFT before the magazine shuttered. “Ten years ago, there were just fewer beers, let’s be real,” she says. “These small taproom-only releases were not the phenomenon they are now. People were having, I think, a more homogenous beer experience across the U.S.” Fewer beers and this more homogenous market of options, Bernot says, made it easier for reviews to reach readers and introduce them to craft styles they could actually find.

With so many breweries and limited shelf space to compete for, there’s a constant pressure to keep consumers excited. There’s the path of consistency, sure, promising fans they’ll be happy with the same core beers you’ve been brewing for a decade, but in the age of Untappd, with craft beer enthusiasts on a perpetual hunt for what’s new and now, releases that tick the boxes of limited, rare, and novel seem like a more surefire method. When Elysian Brewing opened in Seattle in 1996, says co-founder Joe Bisacca, there were only about 450 breweries nationwide.

“The rule of thumb was you needed a pale ale, ESB, stout, wheat, and maybe an amber or pilsner,” Bisacca says. Now, he adds, there are nearly 9,000 breweries packaging their beer, vying for retail accounts. “Innovation is a necessary thing to just get a seat at the table. If you don’t, you’re left out in the cold.”

Rob Day, senior director of marketing at Jack’s Abby Craft Lagers in Framingham, Mass., thinks craft beer has hit a peak in terms of pace. “I’m not sure people can release beers much faster or more limited than now,” he says. “We’re down to single-barrel batches and it’s such a small amount of beer to talk about and promote.” In Nashville, Jackalope Brewing Company CEO and co-founder Bailey Spaulding says that while it was prompted by pandemic restrictions shutting down their taproom for six months, her brewery’s team released 27 different limited brews in 2020.

While certainly not every brewery is churning out the same number of releases yearly — some are debuting even more — the very basic math of 8,764 breweries keeping consumers engaged with limited releases equals a constant deluge of beers nearly impossible to keep up with, especially for beer publications covering the entire country. Add to the equation that not only has the number of breweries, and therefore releases, skyrocketed, but the number of beer media outlets has dwindled. Jessica Infante is a reporter at Brewbound who has worked in the industry for almost 11 years. “There was plenty more beer media around than today,” she says of the scene five, 10 years ago. “There were lots of outlets to review products, and a lot fewer breweries making those products.”

Now, it seems the fastest and easiest way for people to discover releases is social media, namely Instagram. Jackie, a Virginia-based beer Instagrammer known as @thatonebeergirl, says she mostly finds new beers via Instagram or email subscriptions with breweries and bottle shops. In Tennessee, Anita Carter, a.k.a. @nashbeerfluencer, says she also finds Instagram most useful. And in Florida, Jamal D., or @thehopcircles, says “Instagram plays a huge role in what beers I’m trying or looking to try outside of Florida. Before Instagram, I would just drink local beer or a new IPA on tap at one of my local bars.”

A beer journalist who now has his own beer and so has experienced beer reviews from both sides, Ale Sharpton points out that Instagram has an unrivaled ability to broadcast so many components of craft beer to so many people at once.

“Social media shows off different styles of beer, different cool artwork on cans, different things going on socially,” Sharpton says. “It brings attention to brewing, and what different brewing choices bring, good and bad. It’s helped with diversity, showing Black, women, Latinx, and underrepresented communities both brewing and drinking, so it’s bringing all these people into beer.” With a quick post of an image on Instagram, a beer can reach thousands instantly, power that a publication’s beer review just can’t boast.

Beer reviews may no longer serve a discovery and navigation purpose in an industry where, by the time you read a review, the beer it’s about may well be long gone. But that doesn’t mean they serve no purpose. In fact, there are two important jobs for beer reviews now: education, and helping breweries stand out to retail accounts.

Beer reviews have always been tricky because of their subjectivity. There are hundreds of beer styles, thousands of beers, and millions of beer drinkers; varying opinions and preferences abound.

“Everybody doesn’t have the same palate,” Sharpton says. “It’s not like buying a car, where you’d read reviews to find something concrete, like what has the best gas mileage. Someone could hate sour beers and give them a low rating, then a sour fan comes along and says, ‘What are you talking about? This is fantastic.’”

Social media and Untappd have democratized beer. People can find beers on their own feeds and develop their own reviews for themselves, feeling less of a need to rely on professional reviewers for suggestions.

“People who use Untappd don’t necessarily want to read reviews by ‘experts,’” says beer writer and author Jeff Alworth. “Indeed, while a number of influencers and consultants call themselves experts, there’s really no famous reviewer or tastemaker in the beer world (à la [wine’s] Robert Parker of 2000). Beer is the people’s drink, and people feel entirely comfortable in their own tongues.”

What even the most subjective beer reviews can offer, however, when written by professional writers and beer judges, is education. Infante says she thinks reviews can help consumers become more informed beer drinkers. Rather than reading reviews to find out what beer to buy, consumers might today be best served by reading reviews for beer they’re already drinking, to see how their experience tracks with that of the reviewer’s, which could help build a stronger understanding of their own palates.

Jamie Bogner is the co-founder and editorial director of Craft Beer & Brewing, which caters to professional brewers, homebrewers, and dedicated beer enthusiasts. Reviews are a big part of the magazine’s content. “For us, there’s a component [of our reviews] that’s about helping folks develop their own language around beer and understand the connection between flavor and language,” he says. “You can try this beer and read this review and as you’re tasting the beer, you’re understanding what it means when someone says catty or woody or bright.”

@thatonebeergirl’s Jackie says she uses reviews for this purpose rather than individual beer discovery. “[It]t is usually because I have already opened my beer and tasted it and I want to see what others thought of the beer and compare their tasting notes to mine,” she says. “Also, if it is a new hop or a new-to-me hop and I can’t pinpoint the flavor, I’ll read reviews to help me decipher what I’m tasting.”

Those who are interested in growing their own beer education are one of the major audience groups for beer reviews in 2021. Writing for both Good Beer Hunting, which focuses on business and culture, and Craft Beer & Brewing, which drills down into brewing, ingredients, flavors, and aromas, Bernot identifies the latter’s readership as “deeply invested in beer recipes, processes, and development.”

“They care about homebrewing and beer judging, so a beer scoring high with professionally trained judges, they care about that,” she says. “They use scores and reviews to calibrate their palates to certain styles, and to know they’re drinking something reliably good.”

The other major audience for beer reviews today? Retail buyers. Along with innovation and consistent quality, another necessary piece of the puzzle when it comes to snagging precious shelf space for breweries is storytelling: What are you and your beer all about? Bogner says we are increasingly seeing breweries build their reputations on strong reviews and medal wins at competitions to stand out from the crowd to buyers at stores, restaurants, and bars. And buyers can use professionally written reviews from trusted critics and judges to delve deeper than Untappd ratings on beer quality when making purchasing decisions.

“Trying to get your beer into a new account, reviews lend some credibility,” Jackalope’s Spaulding says. “That’s still a useful tool for us. A brewery might be trying to say, ‘Hey, we’re doing this new thing,’ where maybe they don’t need to have every single one of their hazy IPAs reviewed, but want to show off something else they can flex their muscles in. That’s where it’s helpful to have a beer reviewed well.”

Positive reviews and competition victories can help build legacies for beers breweries would like to make flagships (which subsequently erases reviews’ relevance). Elysian’s Space Dust IPA is No. 1 in the brewery’s portfolio, Bisacca says, with a huge volume compared to its limited-release beers. Reviews help beers like Space Dust grow into retail accounts and solid sales numbers, but then, as Infante points out, who really needs to read a review for a beer that’s been around for years, like a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale? The reputation is already there.

Still, breweries looking to build brand stories off their core beers with limited releases will want those positive reviews in order to portray consistency to retail accounts as well as consumers. Jack’s Abby pioneered the hoppy lager style with Hoponius Union. That brew’s been a core beer for the brewery for a decade now, so for many craft beer fans, Jack’s Abby devotees, and even retail buyers, reading a review on it would be unnecessary. But reviews can and do help build on Hoponius Union’s brand when Jack’s Abby releases limited offerings that tie back to that flagship, like the Kiwi Rising hoppy lager, Day explains.

The days of craft beer enthusiasts flipping through a magazine to learn about beer styles and find beers brewed in those styles to try via reviews are, for better or worse, gone. Beer reviews have not, however, lost their ability to help breweries develop solid track records nor their value in pushing drinkers’ palates and beer knowledge forward. Those two factors make reviews relevant no matter how many single-barrel releases or limited offerings bombard your Instagram feed on the daily.

The article In 2021, Who Are Beer Reviews Actually For? appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/who-are-beer-reviews-for/

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johnboothus · 4 years ago

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In 2021 Who Are Beer Reviews Actually For?

Beer reviews have always been tricky because of their subjectivity. There are hundreds of beer styles, thousands of beers, and millions of beer drinkers; varying opinions and preferences abound.

The article In 2021, Who Are Beer Reviews Actually For? appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/who-are-beer-reviews-for/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/in-2021-who-are-beer-reviews-actually-for

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miamibeerscene · 7 years ago

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Inside the Craft Beer Cold War

February 5, 2018

It’s a narrative that could have been lifted from the pages of a Soviet-era spy novel, complete with misinformation, collusion, embedded cells and double agents. It would make for one hell of a story if it wasn’t a reality in the world of beer.

A quarter-century after the end of the Cold War, Soviet tactics are alive and well in a new clash of world powers: Anheuser-Busch InBev and the collective resolve of small and independent craft brewers. We are in the midst of a Cold War in American beer. The fate of beer as we know it hangs in the balance and years of keeping up uneasy appearances as tension builds under the surface works to make that balance teeter.

(VISIT: Find a U.S. Brewery)

The Stakes

I know the comparison between craft beer and Bolsheviks is melodramatic, but the prospects of a grim beer existence dominated by a leviathan is a clear threat. Warfare has evolved and is taking on civilian casualties, encouraging apathy among consumers and promoting the “Illusion of Choice.”

The “Illusion of Choice” is the name for Big Beer’s fleecing of American beer consumers by leveraging their power to get retailers to serve beer offerings that look diverse but are actually all from breweries that have been acquired by Big Beer. The consumer believes that they have a choice, but in reality, any “choice” goes to support one company. Clandestine cells of actors – in this case, category captains for big beer wholesalers — work in plain sight to ensure this illusion is delivered seamlessly to an unsuspecting beer public. You’ll see the signs the next time you’re shopping for beer. Look closer at cooler and store shelves. Which beer choices are eye-level and front-and-center? When you’re at a restaurant, which beers are most visible on menus? Beer selection should be based on the preference of the beer drinker, not pushed on the public. It’s a battle for territory and occupying territory. They work on the “inside” but are taking orders from the Motherland.

A mock-up shows the independent craft brewer seal on packaging. (CraftBeer.com)

In an effort to fight back, the Brewers Association (BA), publishers of CraftBeer.com, embarked on an awareness campaign to highlight the Illusion of Choice, call for transparency in the marketplace and champion independent craft brewers and the beers they produce. In June, the Brewers Association released the independent craft brewer seal, a silhouette of an upside-down bottle symbolic of small and independent craft brewers’ role in turning the beer industry on its head. The intent of the seal is to give you, the consumer, a visual way to recognize beers from small and independent craft brewers when they’re sitting on a shelf next to beers from breweries owned by Big Beer. The independent seal goes a long way in helping you see who makes the beer you buy.

Many have remarked about AB InBev’s response to this awareness campaign being largely quiet, but that is misleading. The mega-corporation has pulled several pages from the Soviet propaganda playbook to muddy the intent of these efforts. If you think embedded cells, state-run media and Whataboutery is for Cold War history books, think again.

(LEARN: CraftBeer.com’s Big List of Beer Schools)

The Iron Curtain

Whataboutery or Whataboutism is a tactic the Soviets used to attempt to discredit an opponent’s position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving their argument. The tactic has had a resurgence in contemporary politics; it also a pretty common divisive tactic on social media.

Like the Soviets, AB used Whataboutism in their response video to the independent craft seal by offering other priorities craft brewers should be focusing on instead of independence. Parts of the script read: “We’re all beer, and we’re fighting this bigger battle which is wine and spirits … and we’re losing margin … There are clear threats from wine and spirits … as well as getting back to quality.”

Quality and competition from substitute goods are absolutely legitimate concerns for an industry, but the “threat” of wine and spirits and a call to focus on quality were points that were weaponized. Big Beer’s response was an attempt to distract and divide.

(INFOGRAPHIC: How to Choose the Right Beer Glass)

AB InBev’s strategy has gone far beyond Whataboutery by key individuals. 2017 was marked by further revelations of AB’s infiltration of beer media, and even beer rating sites, to highlight the lengths the company will go to further push the Illusion of Choice on beer lovers. ZX Ventures, the venture capital group that’s entirely owned by AB InBev, “quietly bought a minority stake in RateBeer, a popular beer rating website, last year,” according to the Open Markets Institute. “Brewers soon learned that ZX Ventures had also invested in other beer review websites including ‘October’ and ‘The Beer Necessities,’” writes Jeff Spross of the Week, in a recent article highlighting AB InBev’s strategy.

“This is sinister for rather obvious reasons,” writes Spross. “If a massive brewer can own a stake in a major beer rating site, it could well influence what beers that outfit recommends to customers in the first place. It wouldn’t even need to own its smaller competitors; it could simply and subtly steer potential customers from ever discovering those competitors to begin with.”

Round out these actions with the creation of AB InBev owned brewpubs embedded in strategic beer markets to go along with their purchased breweries, and you have a pretty startling view of the beer company’s efforts to distort the American beer-scape. The company has succeeded, despite pushback from local craft brewers, to set up shop in beer towns that include San Diego, Oakland, Anaheim and Denver, not to mention the purchase of Wicked Weed in Asheville, North Carolina.

It doesn’t take the CIA to see a pattern: infiltrate beer strongholds, break encrypted codes, act normal and try to win over the locals (okay, encrypted codes might be a stretch). The plan is to look normal, but the strategy is to squeeze out the independent neighborhood brewer.

(CHART: How to Pair Beer and Pizza Toppings)

The Thaw

This Cold War can’t last forever. Even the relationship between the US and USSR thawed.

The market for beer is not as free as you would believe.

As beer lovers, we did not ask for this war, but we have a part in it nonetheless. Beer can be anything we want it to be, but at its core, it’s simple and fun. Whether you like it or not, you as a beer lover are a pawn in this global chess match. The market for beer is not as free as you would believe, and apathy is not going to make it correct. Like most things, we must stand up and take action to see change, otherwise, nothing will. Sure, drink what you like, but don’t be naïve about your beer choices either. Look for the signs of the Illusion of Choice. They’re all around you.

In this war of titans, here in your mission: Like a Cold War operative, trust no one, question everything. Use clues, like the seal, to decode your path. Throughout it all, you will encounter sympathizers, hardliners, separatists, double agents (maybe). But trust yourself. We’ve come so far with beer, don’t give it up by not being vigilant.

In 2018, we must rethink what it means to be a beer enthusiast. Decide what type of beer world you want to live in.

Andy Sparhawk

Andy Sparhawk, the Brewers Association’s craft beer web manager, is a Certified Cicerone® and BJCP Beer Judge. He lives in Arvada, Colorado where he is a homebrewer and avid craft beer enthusiast. On occasion, Andy is inspired to write on his experiences with craft beer, and if they are not too ridiculous, you might see the results here on CraftBeer.com.

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The post Inside the Craft Beer Cold War appeared first on Miami Beer Scene.

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vagrant-one · 7 years ago

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An overview of the Philippine beer market has to start with where it all began. San Miguel Pale Pilsen has been brewed since 1890 making it one of the oldest beer brands in southeast Asia. It is one of the top 3 best selling beers in the Philippines and is also exported internationally to a wide variety of countries. Outside of the Philippines it is easily the most well known Philippine beer brand and one of the most famous Philippine brands overall right behind Jollibee.

Among the younger crowd this beer is not as popular as the stronger Red Horse or San Mig Light, the Pilsen is seen as a drink for older folks.

The spanish San Miguel beer was actually originally an offshoot of the Filipino mother company but today the two companies are entirely separate though confusingly enough sharing the same name.

Taste and appearance

San Miguel Pale Pilsen pours a typical golden lager color and has a head that tends to disappear rather quickly. It is a pretty heavily carbonated beer.

The aroma is fairly faint and smells of light malt and bread. The taste is fairly clean with that light maltiness and the aftertaste to me has a slight bitterness.

I Find Pale Pilsen to be a non spectacular but highly drinkable pilsner. In the tropical heat one does not want a heavy tasting lager beer. But Pale Pilsen still has enough flavor to satisfy my taste buds. It is far more flavorful than many other Asian beers that are overall very watery and weak in flavor.

Availability

Pale Pilsen can be found pretty much anywhere all over the country. Supermarkets, convenience stores and little Sari Sari stores will all stock this beer and pretty much wherever you are you can be sure that a cold Pale Pilsen is not far away.

This beer comes in it’s iconic 32 cl short stubby bottle, a 33 cl can and the big 1 liter glass bottle best shared with friends. There is also a standard 33 cl glass bottle that is often referred to as “long”. For some reason these sell for more in some restaurants. Don’t buy them if that’s the case since it is the exact same beer as in the cheaper stubby bottles.

Price

A small bottle of San miguel will usually sell for around 30-35 pesos in a store and anywhere from 40 and up to over a 100 in bars and restaurants. Cans of beer are more expensive in the Philippines and Pale Pilsen in a can will be around 38-45 peso. The big litro bottle wil cost around

Trivia

On the back of a a stubby bottle of pilsen you will find a short promotional text. Since in the Philippines bottles are returned to the brewery and reused there are several different versions in circulation. The newest and most common one reads:

A truly satisfying beer with a refined, well-balanced flavor. Perfected, and brewed following over a century tradition of brewing excellence.

Brewing excellence!

An older less common version (and my favorite) reads:

A truly satisfying beer with a refined, well-balanced flavor. Perfected and brewed for over a century. The only beer that nourishes true Filipino friendships.

The friendly label

Finally there is a very rare version of which I suspect there are only a few bottles left in circulation:

Expertly brewed from the finest malt, hops, and other ingredients found throughout the world,

During 2 years in the Philippines I have only seen this one a couple times. Finding this one is way more exciting to me than the legendary happy horse (more on that one in my upcoming Red Horse review).

The rarest of Pilsens

The Verdict

If you are a fan of standard European style lager beers then San Miguel Pale Pilsen should be the first beer you try in the Philippines. For me it is the standard that I will compare other beers in the country to. Is that imported Heineken really worth the Extra Peso? For me the answer is often no since Pale Pilsen is a pefectly fine representation of the style. If I am going to spend extra on a any lager beer, domestic or import, it has to be significantly better or at least different in flavor from the trusty Pilsen.

Other reviews and resources

Reviews on YouTube

Ratebeer

Beer Advocate

Difford’s Guide

The post San Miguel Pale Pilsen review – The Pinoy Pint appeared first on The Vagrant One.

#philippines VagrantOne

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johnboothus · 4 years ago

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11 Years of Untappd: How One App Gamified the Relentless Pursuit of Novelty

On Jan. 20, Gregory Avola announced he was stepping down as chief creative officer of Untappd, the online beer platform he helped found and then actively ran for a decade. This, Avola writes, is driven by a lifestyle change, and he will remain at Untappd’s parent company, Next Glass, as executive advisor. As when software developer Next Glass purchased Untappd in 2016, and then joined it with newer purchase Beer Advocate in 2020, this update is stirring up conversation and reflection on Untappd’s impact on beer culture.

Such reflection yields a mixed bag. In the 11 years since it launched, Untappd has facilitated a wider-reaching community in beer. It’s helped users find beers they otherwise wouldn’t, and, therefore, has helped breweries reach new customers. Some, however, feel that Untappd has fueled “ticker culture,” and that its rating system is a breeding ground for biased, baseless ratings that only favor hype beers and often hurt breweries. Beer’s relationship with Untappd might be complicated, but Untappd’s role has proven undeniably significant.

Foursquare for Beer

Avola created Untappd with Tim Mather in 2010. Perhaps surprisingly, he wasn’t all that into beer when he started working on the app.

“My main interest was in communities and building social platforms to connect people in different ways,” he tells me in a recent call. Avola and Mather used Foursquare as a model — which the press ran with — but, as Avola puts it, with more focus on what those check-ins could do. “No one cares if you’re checking in at a grocery store,” he says. “But people checking in at bars, saying what they’re drinking, that starts connecting people across the globe.”

Avola wanted to take the inherent social aspect of craft beer and grow it online. At the time, there were only BeerAdvocate and RateBeer, both representing an older generation in beer. Untappd arrived at the party hot on the heels of IPAs becoming a thing people traveled and waited in hours-long lines for, a ready and willing platform for drinkers to discover, share, swap info, and, by checking in that they were at those hype breweries drinking those hype beers, brag. In a way, and as was Avola’s intention, Untappd became a wide-scale, virtual tasting room where beer geeks could talk shop but, coming from different cities and even countries instead of different barstools, they could introduce each other to new brews. Avola says that at the time he was living in New York City and learned what Fat Tire was when Mather, living on the West Coast, checked it in.

The Next Generation of Beer Raters

Whereas BeerAdvocate’s pages were filled with long, thoughtful beer reviews, Untappd catered to a generation of beer drinkers that was always on to the next and wanting an app to keep up. This is why Untappd is credited with — or blamed for — “ticker culture.” After all, while Untappd was still in its infancy, The Alchemist was able to survive closing its brewpub after Hurricane Irene by pumping Heady Topper out of its production brewery. There’s no telling if this could have happened had Untappd been in its prime, fueling beer seekers to move on in search of a hot IPA they hadn’t already tried. Indeed, within a few years, the script had flipped. How to be a beer nerd went from having a discerning dedication to select brews to relentlessly trying every new beer released. The proof of your beer cred was in your Untappd portfolio, where millions of fellow users could marvel at the sheer breadth of hype beers you’d checked in.

“Ticker culture represents an emphasis on breadth of experience over depth,” says Alex Kidd, of Don’t Drink Beer. “The pour sizes seem to diminish, the style ratings seem to be heavily skewed as a result, and the check-ins seem to be a system of accomplishments predicated on consumption over contemplation.”

At best, it could be argued, ticker culture catalyzes beer sales by keeping drinkers motivated with the thrill of the hunt. At worst, it can be an arrow through the heart of brewers’ ability to create and diversify their offerings, since the haziest IPAs, slushiest sours, and most candy-packed pastry stouts are going to win ticks every time over a loving homage to an English mild. This can also hurt beer sales for breweries on an individual basis, if they decide to commit the cardinal sin of making the same beers and therefore lose luster in the eyes of tick-seekers.

“I don’t want to be an old crank who decries ticker culture, but I really can’t imagine what positive impact it could have on anything,” says beer writer Will Gordon. “The most obvious downside,” Gordon continues, is too many people “stumbling around juggling flights and phones in their mad dash to overrate beers that are either too sweet or too sour.”

“Ticker culture is negative, full stop,” says Gage Siegel, founder of Brooklyn’s Non Sequitur Beer Project, citing people buying cases of beer just to flip and festival-goers trying to cram in 100 different beer pours in three-hour time slots as less-than-ideal results. “Ticker culture certainly doesn’t start or end with Untappd, but I’d say they did a lot to normalize it [and] make it easier to participate in.”

An Inevitable Evolution in How Drinkers Engage With Craft Beer

The ticker-culture discussion never happens without mentioning Untappd, but it’s important to clarify: The app did not create ticker culture. It has aided what could be considered human nature in an industry exponentially exploding with new options every year. One could get bogged down in a chicken-or-egg quandary: Do breweries continuously push the envelope to meet the demand of tick-hungry Untappd users, or are tick-hungry Untappd users tripping over themselves to keep up with the constant deluge of hop innovations and wacky adjuncts? It’s a two-way street, and Untappd provides the platform for everyone to talk about it.

“Untappd serviced ticker culture, but I feel comfortable saying it would have happened anyway,” says beer and spirits journalist and author Tara Nurin. “Across any number of industries … younger generations are more peripatetic. … It’s about what’s next, what’s new, and that plays out very profoundly in beer.” Nurin has mixed feelings about the way Untappd has arguably “gamified” beer. On one hand, it’s a great push for people to try new things. On the other, it could disincentivize people revisiting brews.

“I do think the novelty effect can be harmful to breweries,” says beer writer Carla Jean Lauter. “The pressures of ‘newness’ have led to some of the proliferation of extremely similar beers (e.g., having eight IPAs on tap at once) to try to give something new, rather than to just provide the best.”

Subjective and Unqualified: How Ratings Affect Breweries

Whichever side of the fence one falls in the ticker culture debate, one specific aspect of Untappd’s rating system that helps propel it is especially murky: the subjectivity. Even the industry insiders we spoke with who generally like the app acknowledged that the ratings are far from uniformly trustworthy. Many users skip actually commenting on their beers in favor of punching a number of “caps,” from zero to five. These ratings are obviously completely personal and often offer no explanation, yet, as Siegel points out, they’re considered by beer buyers at stores and bars as well as consumers weighing their beer options. The problem is, what a “3” or a “4.5” means can vary wildly from one person to the next. There’s no agreed-upon metric.

“I’ve just never put faith in numeric ratings of beer,” Lauter says. “In Untappd’s case, there’s also the twist that many people for a long time treated the reviews as their own personal tastes. ‘If I don’t like pineapple on pizza, and I order a pineapple pizza, I give it one star just to remind myself: Yep, still don’t like that.’”

The range of expertise among Untappd’s millions of users may range from from zero to cicerone, but on average, these ratings aren’t coming from people with beer-judging criteria. In some cases, this can be great, as it levels the playing field for anyone who’s enthusiastic about beer. It can be not so great but harmless if you remember to take rankings with a grain of salt. Or, it can do a bit of damage to some breweries.

“Some people develop an over-inflated sense of self because of their amount of check-ins, and they think this makes them some sort of expert despite the fact that they have no formal beer education,” says Paulina Olivares, Sacramento Pink Boots Society chapter leader, who notes that this issue isn’t exclusive to Untappd. Olivares says she’s stopped rating beers on Untappd unless it’s a “5.”

Of course, subjectivity as a concept also isn’t something Untappd created, but for all of its positive features, the app has become such an authority, and the microphone it therefore gives to biased, careless, and/or ungrounded opinions can now in some cases actually affect whether a brewery’s beer makes it onto shelves. A beer might not get a high rating from the Untappd masses because it isn’t hazy or dank enough, even if that wasn’t the brewer’s intention, and many retail outlets take those ratings into consideration. They could therefore decide against selling what could be a perfectly great beer. And this can create pressure on breweries to stick to what lights up the ratings board on Untappd.

As Avola points out in our call, this is rating culture. It happens with everything from restaurants to dry cleaners on Yelp. And yes, it even happens to Untappd itself in the form of one-star, “this-app-sucks” reviews in app stores based on one-off experiences with little context. Avola says he understands that it’s frustrating for breweries to see their beers rated poorly, beers they put a lot of effort into. These subjective rankings, though, are a by-product of Untappd’s main goal to help people share what they’re finding and drinking. The downsides of this are something Avola says really can’t be policed, but that he hopes can be mended as Untappd continues to evolve.

A Platform for Visibility, Discovery, and Nostalgia

On the flip side of the biased ratings are some of Untappd’s key tenets. There is community on a global scale, more relevant now than ever as most beer drinking is done at home, and poised to only become more crucial as beer culture and even beer retail grow online. There is increased visibility, discovery, and access between users and breweries.

Plus, as many users report, Untappd is a helpful tool for tracking one’s own beers: It’s less about a rating for others to see, and more about actually being able to organize and remember brews you loved and brews you didn’t love. This becomes increasingly helpful as the number of options in craft beer only grows and styles bloom into sub-styles and hybrids year after year.

“I do feel like more and more people are using it just to keep track of what they’ve drank versus tracking ratings,” says beer Instagrammer Valerie Delligatti, who appreciates being able to remember what she’s sampled from breweries to (pre-pandemic) bottle shares.

This is even a helpful professional tool, as beer writers can track and sort brews they try and report on, something beer writer and “former semi-professional blackjack player” Mike Pomranz values, noting that even if it weren’t free, he’d pay Untappd for this feature. Checking in beers creates your own library to refer back to whenever needed. “When I check in beers … I am thinking about what I’ll want to know later,” Pomranz says. “So, someone asks me for a good IPA in Arizona. Well, I haven’t been there in a while, but I can filter IPAs produced in Arizona and then sort those by rating, and then read my notes and boom, I have the perfect beer ready to go.”

This also creates a sort of scrapbook for craft beer lovers. “I personally love the nostalgia of looking back and remembering where [I was] when I had a certain beer,” says craft beer drinker and wellness coach Amanda Steele. “That’s kind of my favorite thing about Untappd.”

Beyond this core tracking function, Nurin notes that by the same token as Untappd possibly deterring users from returning to beers in favor of trying new finds, it can just as easily be a conduit for users to remember beers they love. While we spoke, she scrolled through her feed and found promos poised to remind users that a beer they loved once is on sale, or a bar they forgot about is doing a great happy hour. Speak with enough users and it becomes clear: Untappd has definitely, if inadvertently, provided a stage for ticker culture and its disadvantages for breweries. But it’s also achieved its goal of creating a virtual community for beer drinkers, and it’s proven itself quite the handy tool for tracking a whole wide world of beers.

The Future of Untappd

All that remains is to see how Untappd continues to evolve, especially in this new, increasingly online chapter, and how beer culture will evolve alongside it. One safe bet is on Untappd increasing its attention to international markets: In 2020, the app saw growth in European cities where it saw declines in the U.S.

In December, Next Glass also acquired digital beer magazine and event producer Hop Culture; according to Hop Culture founder and now creative director at Next Glass Kenny Gould, we’ll be seeing further integration of Next Glass acquisitions Untappd, Hop Culture, Oznr, and Beer Advocate, playing to the unique contributions each of these has made to beer culture. “I think we’ll continue to see the development of a digital craft beer community,” Gould says, “with more content, sales, and connections happening online.”

The article 11 Years of Untappd: How One App Gamified the Relentless Pursuit of Novelty appeared first on VinePair.

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wineanddinosaur · 4 years ago

Text

11 Years of Untappd: How One App Gamified the Relentless Pursuit of Novelty

Foursquare for Beer

Avola created Untappd with Tim Mather in 2010. Perhaps surprisingly, he wasn’t all that into beer when he started working on the app.

The Next Generation of Beer Raters

An Inevitable Evolution in How Drinkers Engage With Craft Beer

Subjective and Unqualified: How Ratings Affect Breweries

A Platform for Visibility, Discovery, and Nostalgia

The Future of Untappd

The article 11 Years of Untappd: How One App Gamified the Relentless Pursuit of Novelty appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/untapped-impact-craft-beer/

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