RateBeer Best Awards for the year 2019

did i miss them? are they coming? are they not? i look forward to them every year!

They have not come out yet, but I understand they are in process.

Postponed to February 10th

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They are posted now, but pretty disappointing. I went to look at my local area and thereā€™s just nothing useful at all, and nothing is relevant to 2019.

Example -
Bottle Shop Oak Tree Discount Wines and Liquors

0 ratings in 2019, and no good rating since 2016 - shouldnā€™t this list have something to do with the year 2019?

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Yes, itā€™s very disapointing e.g. the supposedly top beer in County Durham UK for 2019 is a standard brown ale: https://www.ratebeer.com/beer/camerons-old-sea-dog/708546/
can only guess that it seems to be based having more ratings than others and one specific user rating it at 3.7 @Grumbo
compare that to this excellent IPA in 2019 with 3 scores of 4.0 and a 3.8 & 3.6:
https://www.ratebeer.com/beer/s43-big-dank/734017/223863/
Ratebeer just doesnā€™t have enough ratings for a meaningful outcome

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I think thereā€™s a reason why the awards are not being publicised on here and are also not obvious on the website itself. Just another crappy PR award that breweries and bars can promote to less knowledgeable punters.

Siren in Berkshire were celebrating winning best brewery tap. There are perhaps three listed on here from Berkshire. Big fucking whoopee. Also only 2 of the ratings are for the new tap room - the other shouldnā€™t count.

You are probably right. The number of reviews is way to low on many beers/places around the world to justify Annual Awards now on the websiteā€¦this will probably just cause more mockeryā€¦

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Yes, although I should balance my post by saying the best place in County Durham on ratebeer for 2019 the Quakerhouse in Darlington really is the best place in County Durham for 2019ā€¦ was in there with @Saxo and @Rasmus40 this week with brewpub beers available, atmosphere & music was greatā€¦ they had playing a Prisoners song fav band from my youth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoners). So some of it will be right, but with so few ratings it just gets unreliable overall

I liked it @danlo it was my =9th favourite Durham beer of 2019!! Donā€™t blame me for itā€™s win though, blame it on the lack of raters finding the at least 8 that I know of that were better!!

Distribution and volume clearly got the win for it, and it shows that any beer that gets itself into 'spoons network stands a good chance when out of region distribution by better brewers is limited so they donā€™t get over the minimum threshold (whatever that may be, 10 maybe, the winner had 14 reviews).

This beer with an average of 3.24 clearly shouldnā€™t be winning a county title, itā€™d be a sad reflection on a county if that was the best beer it made (and you and I both know County Durham does a lot better than that). But when we only have 1 or 2 active raters in so many counties, and so many counties that then donā€™t get many RB visitor volumes (like yours and mine) the brewers that get national will always be at a huge advantage over the many better local brewers who so much more richly deserve to be applauded (like Saints Row who made 4 of those 8 beers I had last year which were better than ā€œsalty dogā€).

But until we up the rating volume significantly (and I canā€™t see that happening, more likely the opposite) these awards will become more and more irrelevant. Maybe a good idea Ed would be to up the number of Darlington tours and bottle shares you do per annum (Iā€™m sure once youā€™ve painted the ceiling after the last one youā€™ll be allowed to do another!!).

Iā€™m just grateful that in Suffolk we do at least have Burnt Mill getting their beers well distributed and rightly recognised, otherwise them in Bury might have walked away with the win!

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Goose Island got Illinois brewery of the yearā€¦

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Well Best New Brewery in Florida is Sidewards a local one here in Orlando that I very much enjoy so Iā€™ll give props for that.

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Gebrande Winning somehow didnā€™t get a mention as best restaurant in Belgium despite being #3 in the world in the overall places list. RB Best is a joke.

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We didnā€™t even get a best new brewery in New Jersey this year, personally I would have given it to Source Brewing, but since almost all their beers only have one rating (mine) on here I guess it didnā€™t have much of a chanceā€¦

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If you ever want them to get more than one rating bring some over to me in NYC!

I missed that one, but it sums it up perfectly

This is something I might be able to do, should I need to be in the city in the near future I will let you know.

Where the hell is the link for RB Best?

https://www.ratebeer.com/ratebeerbest/2019

They made it almost impossible to findā€¦intentionally?

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Probably. Thank you Sir.

Leicestershire was won by a brewery with one beer and not many ratings which is why am now just a ā€˜tickerā€™.