How to rate a beer

One question we often get asked is, “How do you rate a beer?” It is a good question and there are of course many different schools of thought on how this should be done. At the end of the day, no matter how you rate or judge your beer, the most important factor (if you are drinking for pleasure as opposed to judging) is DID YOU ENJOY IT?

Methods to Judge or Rate a Beer

1. The 5 Star Happiness Factor
   This is a pretty simple method really. It is based purely on how much you enjoyed drinking the beer.  It is based purely on how much you enjoyed drinking the beer. Just drink it and then give it a star rating that suits your feelings about it.
   1. Would rather drink wine
   2. Not bad but had better
   3. Great lawnmower beer
   4. Loved it, want more
   5. Heaven in a glass
2. Simple scoring
   Again, this one doesn’t take much effort. Give each beer a score on a sliding scale from  1-50 or 1-100. The advantage here is with a wider range you have more room to score similar beers a few points higher than another.   You can make this more interesting by making the score out of a topic, instead of just a number, like 5 canaries in a coal mine out of 7. Use the hashtag #randomratings
3. Complex judging and scoring
   If you become a real craft beer snob like us and you want to be able to rate your beers, against other similar beers, brews you have tasted previously and also against the style, then you need to come up with something more complex (so you sound like you know what you are talking about). On We Love Craft Beer, we use what we call the Better Beer Rating Method. This rates a beer based on 5 different criteria but because it can be hard to remember what you are judging (especially after a few beers) we have tried to make it as simple as possible to remember. For that reason we have used the first 5 letters of the alphabet because if you can’t remember those, you are in BIG trouble. So this is how we rate a beer.

A= Appearance. What does it look like, what colour is it, is it cloudy or opac,  what is the head like?
B= Bouquet. What does it smell like, what can you pick up, what is the body like?
C= Characteristics and complexity. What can you taste, what flavours are dominate or lacking, what is the mouth feel like, is it well balanced?
D= Drink ability. How much do you like it? Would you drink it again ? (This is your happiness factor)
E= Equality. How does it Compare to other beers in this style that you have had before?

One of the issues with the simple scoring method or happiness method is, you can give the wrong impression to others with your feedback. For instance if you don’t like Stouts and you where asked to judge the best Stout in the world, and you gave it a 3/10, most people would think it is not worth trying and the brewer would be disappointed to get that sort of review.

One advantage of using a more complex judging system is that you can rate the beer based on it’s qualities rather than just if you like it. For instance you could score it a 10/10 for Equality, which would indicate it is a good representation of the style, but give it a 5/10 for drinkability because it is not something you would normally drink.

If you want to rate and review your beers and keep track of them, then you should probably download the We Love Craft Beer App. 

The app will allow you to use the 5 star rating method or the more complex  DowBetter Beer Rating Method.

Not only can you rate your beers, you can also find out how other people are rating theirs, and the app will even recommend beers for you based on your ratings. You can even use it to find craft beer venues near you and access special deals from venues. So what are you waiting for? Download it now.

What ever way you decide to judge or rate your beer, you need to remember one thing. ENJOY THE BEER !