If you've been following this blog for the last few weeks, you may have noticed that something a little strange happened recently. For a long time, the number of Top 100 Beers I'd tried was steadily climbing, reaching 44 at the end of 2012. Then, a few weeks ago, it dropped overnight to 36, which was a major bummer. But after my last review, it had rocketed up to unseen heights- 51. So I think it's about time I fill you in on what's been going on.
As you may or may not know, I've been a big fan of beeradvocate.com for a long time. It's from their site that I get the list that I've been using to track down the Top 100 Beers of the world. Over the past few months, beeradvocate.com has been undergoing some major changes. Realizing that a lot of people didn't have the time to write full reviews of beers, the site decided to add a "Had" review option, in which you could score a beer you had tried without having to actually review it. For a while, the "Had" reviews weren't being included into the overall beer scores. Then things changed and, overnight, the Top 100 List looked entirely different. It was on the review after that change that my count plummeted to 36. So far, I wasn't a huge fan of beeradvocate's site overhaul. Then they did something even crazier.
After the review I posted on Monday, I went to beeradvocate to check my progess on the Top 100 List, only to find that the list didn't exist anymore. Beeradvocate had decided to make another major overhaul. Instead of a link to the Top 100 Beers, there was a link to the Top 250 Beers. Not only that, but many of the Top 100 Beers that had been on the list were completely gone. I went looking for answers and finally found a post from one of the founders of beeradvocate. As it turns out, the minimum number of reviews a beer must have to be considered for the Top 100 (er, 250) List has been switched from 10 to 100, meaning that many of the rarer beers have dropped off entirely. Crazy sauce!
So what does this mean for this blog? Well, beeradvocate.com was as much a part of me getting into beer as anything, so I'm going to stick with them on this one. While it's going to feel strange going after 250 Beers instead of 100, the raising of the minimum reviews means that these beers should be easier to find. So while this change seems odd, it's most likely going to lead to me reviewing beers on the Top Beers List a lot more often than I'm able to now. I'll also try to re-taste some of the beers that are on this new list that I never posted reviews for in the past. So we've officially moved on into a new era with this blog. Thank you for your patience and I hope you enjoy the new additions.
Walker
Top 250 Beers Tasted: 111
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