I have just rated 12 beers from a couple of nights out, 11 cask and 1 keg. Of those 12, I had to add 8 of them. That is 66.6% of me being the first rater, an unusual high percentage for me.
Do we have less raters in the UK these days and has anyone else noticed they are having to add more beers?
yes and no ā¦ we also have double the amount of breweries as 4 or 5 years ago and breweries produce a lot more different beers in this day and age when you contrast with older breweries established in the 80s for instance.
Iām adding beers almost daily now, usually ones that are announced on social media prior to their release (think Cloudwater, Verdant, Deya, Magic Rock, Northern Monkā¦ those sorts of breweries).
Donāt know about cask releases but certainly keg/can releases seem to be far more frequent these days, I think weāre just seeing more new releases rather than a drop in raters.
A while back one of the more prominent raters asked me why I was adding beers I hadnāt had which could also explain why youāre adding beers. I work on the basis that this place os a database - if I see a new Surrey/Hampshire/Berkshire beer or a new one at a beer festival I add it. Letās keep the database up-to-date. And if nothing else it means that someone else can rate it.
I do eventually get round to rating most of the beers I add but honestly thereās quite a few beers Iāve added simply for the sake of database completeness. I donāt understand or agree with the notion that thereās no point adding a beer if you donāt rate it. I doubt Iāve added any beers that ended up with literally 0 ratings ever, so my additions become useful eventually.
If Iām adding a beer Iām not rating itās because I have all the information on it available to me at that point in time. Someone else adding it in the future might not, especially if theyāre mobile/in a pub or whatever. Therefore itās better for me to add it now rather than get a potentially incomplete addition later requiring corrections/more admin time.
I try and add all beers I see although not always all the beers I see at some of the bigger festivals. I also try and add description and images for any beer I happen upon where they donāt have them.
I have just had a quick look at my last 100 beers. I had to add 24%. This is normal for me and been consistent since I joined the site.
The interesting thing was when I broke that 24 beers down. 4 - Keg, 5 - Bottle or Can, 15 - Cask.
That 15 in Cask surprised me. 63% of the beers I added I tried in Cask.
That made me think. How many of those 100 beers were Keg, Bottle/Can or Cask.
Well only 24% of the beers I rated were in Cask but that accounted for 63% of the beers I added.
So what dose this mean?
Well you could say people on rate beer drink less cask beer and therefore is more likely you will have to add it.
Or
You could say Cask beer (especially from smaller breweries) is drunk more locally. Lincolnshire only has 2 active raters. So itās natural for me to add more cask beer.
I think itās more of the 2nd.
Note: 7 of the cask beers I added were tried effectively at the brewery tap.
Most of my āaddsā are cask and often local, Shropshire like Lincolnshire only has two really active users, a regular visitor also adds beers too, cheers @WingmanWillis.
@minutemat does plenty of adding of beers, we are 'The Shropshire Two.
Iād say that as the cask beer is less likely to be bottled or canned then itās a here and now moment and pretty regional. Canned output from the like of CW, Deya, Verdant are easier to get hold of as a rule, can last a bit and can be delivered to your door (or thereās a taproom locally!).
The North West has plenty of visitors and not many raters too. @manvsbeer does a sterling job of adding beers and places up that way.
Iāll add beers I drink and try and get around to the places as well.
I scooped in a rather excellent Magic Rock/Port Street Beer house collab to celebrate the pub anniversary. Had to add it to the site, last keg in existence so the chap behind the bar said, so, in theory, unless itās in a backlog that beer will never be rated an rb again. āYou had to be there manā so the quote goes. Iām guessing thereās not enough of us to be there all the time, we try!
Itās all about new beers at the moment. Untappd has a huge user group and Rb doesnāt.
I think adding beers goes along with being a member, its inevitable if youāre visiting pubs / bars that focus on new releases, or buying online the moment somethings released. Sometimes ill check back on a beer i added a few months earlier and find itll have two or three pages of ratings, so the raters are there, though itās often the same names appearingā¦ more newbies would be nice but itāll be hard with the stigma of ABInbev hanging over the site now.
The one constant for me is Salopian, who i tend to be the first to try - often on Untappd too - within days of release, so ill add those.
I just wish more people added complete information such as description (where available) and a photo
Was at GBBF Winter yesterday. Of the 30 cask beers I tried, only needed to add 3 which was low (and thatās not because someone had been there earlier in the week adding them).
When thatās not the case I normally have to add a higher % than that, at Ely last month must have needed to add almost 60%.
It does seem that every time I have a day out I am adding around 50% of the beers to the site these days and beer Festivals would be a higher percentage for the more progressive Festivals.
As an Admin I can see that there are roughly 20 new English beers added per day during the week and between 40 to 50 per day at the weekend.
Isnāt this simply a worldwide trend, given what @theydon_bois said, that there are way more breweries now compared to letās say 5 years ago, that also produce way more beers than 5 years ago, while our community hasnāt grown equally fast (understatement) to cope with this sort of explosion of new beers?
While I donāt think it has a direct influence, if any at all, I would be interested to see how many formerly active raters / contributors to the site have quit or drastically slowed down. If you look at the top 50, or 100 or 200 raters (who arenāt necessarily the most active contributors, far from it maybe), have many people gone or not?
From a Dutch point of view, looking at the top 25 raters from The Netherlands it looks bad:
(1) Me > in doubt, for now rating in excel
(7) Caesar > quit
(9) Dutchdrebus > quit
(11) Countbeer > quit
(14) Christos > (nearly) quit
(17) Martinus (nearly) quit
(19) sic1314 > quit
(21) MrHangover > quit
(22) Vaiz > quit
(24) dEnk > quit
(25) DwarfeD > quit
Maybe they still contribute by adding beers but theyāve stopped rating anyway.
I check this from time to time using top raters list. Iāve checked before last takeover news and about 40% of 100-300 top raters are not active. As you go down the list that percentage will increase up to 80-90%.
Many more breweries in Kent these days, and not many active raters, so I add a lot of new Kent beers and quite often I am the only one to rate them due to being one off/seasonal brews or beers made just for a single festival.
Occasionally they arenāt even on Untappd.
Iām finding that the South East and North East are the least covered by Untapped, we are by far better covered covered in those areas. Untapped is very strong through the Midlands, Yorkshire, South West and North West where just about everything has already been covered by them.