Is‘Not My Style’ Guy REALLY Ruining Untappd?

Or do geeks like Allagash White too damn much?

I found a new brewery since we last talked. They are called Hello Friend and they are out of Berkeley. Alright, well, they aren’t exactly new. It’s a side project from the Rare Barrel.

I was happy to find something interesting while taking a chance on a new thing. Sometimes you can get bored and it makes you take chances.

Yeaaaah, a risk paid off!

Not sure if they are knocking my socks off, but they are very close to being off. It’s good beer and I can recommend all three of these:

I was able to get them at my neighborhood bottle shop but if you’re in California you can get them here.

Beer Twitter Post Of The Week

Josh Noel @hopnotes

Funny how that happens.

You see so much shady date stuff when you ‘check your dates’ under cans, Josh found one with the month smudged off.

That is the most common I see from liquor stores. From some breweries I see (CONSISTENTLY) the stamp inking the wrong spot on the can so then you can’t make out anything - but they technically dated the can.

I guess I get the store owner trying to cheat just to get the beer out the door somehow. But why do breweries or reps do it?

If you are an educated enough buyer to know to check dates and you look and see the date is not legible, you don’t buy it. So who are you fooling? And why would you want someone drinking an old version of your beer anyway!?

Other Beer Twitter OTW

Beer Cruncher 📈📢 @beercruncher

Imagine your rating system having Allagash White at a 3.76/5 and you not thinking your algorithm needs a few enhancements, like weighting by style.

He is talking about how if Allagash White (considered by Beer Twitter to be a perfect beer) can be rated so low by Untappd, then something is wrong with Untappd.

Yes but if you are Untappd, HOW can you weight by style?

I think everyone knows “not my style” guy is a problem in Untappd, but how in the world could you actually remove that guy’s rating? How do you fix that in reality without someone at Untappd picking through every rating and messing with it?

I don’t think you can.

One of the ticks of Untappd is it’s what the world of drinkers thinks of a beer, not just what uppity beer geeks think.

Maybe you can try, like others have, to create a more curated, “educated” beer drinker app and not let anyone rate Allagash White below a five. Good luck with your boring-ass beer app.

And also, us beer geeks aren’t perfect either:

Aaron MJ Gore @ale_chaser

@beveragepodcast @beercruncher Selection bias is always a problem, to be sure. And data always needs context. But usually the folks complaining want to be the arbitrators of "good", and bias exists just as much (or more) in those groups as well

what that👆guy said!

BTW, Wheat beers and Belgian Witbier, like Allagash White? Well, they suck. Not my style.

The Links To Beer

• Illustrating how hard it is to be a pro-brewer and work in the area you want to live. Underpaid with Monster commutes is the norm.

• The Reckoning continues to push for a safer and more diverse beer industry and kudos to the beer journalists like Beth D for publishing the content we all need to read.

Yo, I’ll See Ya Later!

That’s all I have for you this week. I appreciate the read and thank you for the shares.

I MAY post a live drinking thread on the blog tonight if I can.

And I am pretty stoked about Jason hosting SNL tonight!:

I feel like I may start being a Brandi Carlile fan after this as well. NOT MY STYLE 😂 of music but she seems to be really good.

So there is that. Also happy to have the NBA back and I plan on watching my Suns play Portland too.

Point is, plenty of things to drink beer around tonight. Hope you stay safe and have a good time with YOUR beers!

-Mikey

Peace ✌️ Beer 🍻 & Metal 🤟