Beer for thought

What can you say when someone gets it so right?

Friend-of-the-little-beers Stan Hieronymus takes on the ranking mentality of Beer Advocate and Rate beer. The beauty of what he's writing comes in using a recent piece by Malcolm Gladwell (on the stupidly one-size-fits-all way of doing college rankings) to make a similar case for beer. It's a different take on the whole "style" debate.

(Stan's post is here.)

What's less clear is how one could do a better job. Pandora's music algorithm is one model Stan thinks about.  But that's a pretty formal way of going about it! I think a more "wiki" way that is more tied to description than rating might work too.  Think of the difference between book reviews and the star ratings of books on Amazon.  Star ratings (even with short opinions attached) are kind of dumb for products like books--or beers--which people can approach in different ways and for different reasons.*

As Stan says, how do you compare a pils to an Imperial stout? Well, one way is to have knowledgeable people approach both on their own terms. Read and decide for yourself. Some movies and beers are objectively bad and people will likely agree. Some are good in different ways and will appeal to different people. My own model for thinking about this is Roger Ebert, who likes some movies I hate, and hates some movies I like. But I always like reading his opinions and get something out of it.

This is something he has written on, though I can't find it now.  But a good example is his passionate takedown of 3D.  Whether you agree or not, you know exactly what he thinks and why.  By the way, I think his is also a good model for "best of" lists, which I think have their place.  Yes, they are idiosyncratic, and that's a good thing. Make a passionate case, let others make their own passionate case for their own choices. If only more beer reviews were like that!**

Whatever you think on this, be sure to check out Stan's blog and the discussion underway there.

Notes:

* I think about this a lot because in my real job I do a lot of book reviews for academic publications, and I am on the editorial board of a book review journal.  In that capacity I worry a lot about the very anodyne, paint-by-numbers approach that most academic book reviewers use.  There are reasons for this, but it absolutely kills actual, engaged intellectual debate.  Which is the whole point.

** If only more book reviews were like that!