Being American: Is Timothy Taylor’s Landlord a bitter? If so, it oughta be on top. Ditto Hopback Summer Lightning, If I could get those two beers on cask at a pub here, I’d never leave..

I realize that this is an extreme example but don’t ratings like this go into their “best” lists?

That being said, there is an interesting statistical phenomenon that occurs with online ratings, where very good, but perhaps slightly less challenging entries end up with higher ratings than the arguably “better” or “greater” entries. This can be seen with Metacritic as well. The all time highest rated movie on Metacritic is The Godfather, yet number two is Superman II. Also in the top 15 are Rattatouille, Sideways, and Lord of the Rings. Not that these are terrible movies, they are good, but one has to wonder about the integrity of the rating system when films from the likes of Mallick, Kurosawa, and Kieslowski, all of whom are revered as geniuses who produced multiple masterpieces amongst people serious about film, don’t appear in the top 200.

I’ve also noticed that the Beeradvocate highest rated lists tend to heavily favor darker beers, probably because the spectacular lighter (in color) beers tend to be more polarizing, thus bringing their scores down. A great Gueuze or Double IPA will inevitably be all but undrinkable to a certain segment of the population (my own pet theory is that these flavors are too strong for supertasters – people with lots of taste buds), whereas fewer people have that reaction to even the most challenging stouts.