"Overrated!" - Which highly regarded brews are not to your liking?

We all know the feeling. You open a bottle of a beer that seems to be highly regarded on here, UT and BA. You pour it … and something’s off. Whether it’s the look, the aroma, taste or consistency - tell us about the highly regarded brew you didn’t like at all. Have you revisited it? Did you doubt your judgement - or everyone else’s?

I recenty had the Treehouse Haze and did not understand what the fuss is all about. It was good and all, but not at all mindblowing. I’ve had a lot of better NEIPA’s.
It was fresh btw.

Almost everything that exists purely because it’s following some current fashion or trend. Most kettle sours, most NEIPAs, and most Childrens treats stouts.

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Sours/Lambics. Dark Lord and other overly sweet imperial stouts. Coffee stouts where you taste coffee only.
I never doubt my ability to judge a beer. It’s always them, not me :wink:

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First Pliny I’ve tried was a disappointment. Second and third better, good bee but nothing too special. Also Abt 12 wasn’t that good.

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Treehouse generally speaking is over-rated. It is not significantly better than all the breweries pumping out haze these days. I got my doubts about Trillium too. Aslin is probably overrated as I had some mediocre haze from them. Other Half just makes the same beer over and over again now and gives it new names. The Veil is never worth standing in line for a while for. So basically, my answer is hypebeast hazebro breweries. That said, I still drink this stuff, but it is just beer. Don’t get me started on rare lambic…

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Thanks for providing a non-ridiculous way of saying “pastry stout”.

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To be honest, I’m a bit braindead today and I couldn’t remember the name everyone else uses nowadays - so just pulled something out of my arse! :smiley: Generally in my reviews I call them “kitchen sink stouts” as they seem to contain everything apart from the kitchen sink.

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Do you really believe that everyone’s palate is the same? Lol

When I´m going to a Hyped festival with hyped breweries (Like MBCC) I always trend to think that 1/4 of the beers reviews will be overrated…the ambiance, the place and your preconception that you are drinking the best of the best…makes people to increase the rating.

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The ones I could find when I quickly scanned my ratings, sorted by highest AVG rating, are these. The difference with AVG score is posted after the beername:

Toppling Goliath Morning Delight -1.00
Westvleteren XII -0.93
Three Floyds Dark Lord - Bourbon Vanilla Bean -1.14
3F J&J Oude Geuze Blauw: -1.03
Perennial Abraxxas Barrel Aged -1.38
Funky Buddha Morning Wood -0.87
3F Armand’4 Oude Geuze Lente -1.25
3F Framboos -1.14
Westbrook Mexican Cake Pappy Barrel -1.00
Hair of the Dog Matt -1.09
3F Armand’4 Oude Geuze Zomer -1.29
Prairie Bomb! -1.65

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  • Haze. I find a lot of hazy pale ales and IPAs aren’t to my liking because they have way too much green hop character. Nice big lovely fruit character up front, then WHAM a bunch of leafy green character ruins it.
  • Lactose is a mistake much of the time.
  • I am fussier about barrel aged stuff than many.
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I agree 100%, though what you call green hop, I would call onions and sweatsocks.

that’s a good method! Doing this, I end up with:

My list is: Dark Lord, Beer Geek Vanilla Shake (Bourbon Edition), Dreadnaught, Julius, Marshal Zhukov, Bissell Brothers Swish, Abstrakt AB:22, Aún Más Café Jesús, the Evil Twin / Prairie version of Bible Belt, and La Folie.

Westbrook Gose
It’s as if some chick drank a quart of lemon juice then pissed in a beer can.
:nauseated_face:

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Was thinking about this the other day? Is there a way to sort what you’ve had by how extreme the spread is between your score and the average?

Pliny The Elder. First bottle was what I based my review on and I reckon that I took its reputation into account. The few bottles that I had after never lived up to that first bottle.

I’ve liked most of the offerings I’ve had from Treehouse and Trillium, though I’m not sure they’d really be worth the trip out there just to head there - maybe for an experience as part of a larger trip.

Aslin is a touch inconsistent on some of their one-offs - they’re pumping out way too many different beers a week to really have the chance to dial in some of these recipes, especially since they haven’t had a taproom to do that sort of experimenting for nearly 2 years. The ones they’ve been re-brewing consistently for the last few years are almost always really good.

The Veil is good, but I would never, ever, ever want to stand in one of their lines under any circumstances. I pretty much only get their stuff when a random keg hits one of the bars I live near.

My problem is less with those breweries, but with the actual hype machine. I’ve had better hazebro beers in the at random breweries but they get no love or recognition.

The same probably goes for all hype that exists anywhere, but I’ve seen unscrupulous beerbros (not RB folks!) actually talked about inflating beers at a tasting I was at so they end up with better trade bait. The amazing thing is that the random (but apparently well known) beer they were working to swindle from someone else was probably just as inflated.

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Dogfish Head 60 Min and 90 Min
St. Bernardus Abt 12
Bells Hopslam

Pretty much every beer I’ve had from Surly. Nothing has been terrible but I’ve felt besides Darkness, nothing has really impressed me that much.

Heady Topper hands down.
Also Westvleteren 8.

You’re weird.