I should probably mention how I approach reviewing beer. It's not a bad idea to read
this guide on BeerAdvocate, but there are certain points I simply choose not to agree with. For one, I'm not a BJCP (Beer Judge Certification Program) judge. I simply cannot objectively review a beer in terms of how well it matches the style, because I'm not experienced enough. I'm not going to quaff a rauchbier and be able to give it a 4/5 for flavor, even if it appears to meet the style guidelines, because I simply don't think those beers taste good (or at least the ones I've had don't). I give high marks on flavor to beer I think tastes good, and I don't think there is anything necessarily wrong with that - I'm not professing to give anything more than my opinion when I talk about beer.
So here are the details I'll provide about each beer:
Brewery and name of the beer: obvious
Style: What style does the beer profess to be or appear to be?
ABV/IBU (if available): Alcohol By Volume and International Bitterness Units. It's tempting to look at IBUs as a simple "bitterness meter", but IBUs can be well-masked and balanced by a big, malty backbone. For example, most barleywines exhibit high IBU levels, but certainly don't taste quite as bitter as, say, an American IPA (India Pale Ale), due to their larger ABV (which means more grains were used in the creation the beer).
Serving style: Draft or bottle, what glass I used, where I had it, that kind of stuff.
I think the BeerAdvocate/BJCP guidelines for analyzing a beer make sense, and I use them when I review a beer. This is how i interpret them:
Appearance: What the beer looks like. I weigh how attractive the beer is, and how much it makes me want to start drinking. I value a good depth of color, clarity (even though it's usually just caused by filtering), a good carbonation level (when it fits the style), and lack of haze unless the style calls for it. I don't really care about things like lacing (usually cased by a high amount of proteins, hop oils, and really clean glasswear).
Smell: What the beer smells like. I value big aromas that are appetizing and let me know what's going on in the beer. I get frustrated when a beer has an extremely laid-back aroma, because aromatics are a huge part of how we taste. Even worse than no aroma, however, is a bad aroma - vegetables, sour aromas (again, when it doesn't fit the style), solvents - all these make me actively not want to drink a beer.
Taste: What the beer tastes like. This is, of course, the most important part of a beer. No matter what a beer looks like, smells like, or feels like in the mouth, if it tastes bad it's crap. Like many things, beer has an amazing diversity of flavor - even beers within the same style can have amazingly different flavors. I routinely will talk about whether or not a beer has "integrated" flavors. What I am trying to get at when I talk about this is if all the different flavor components in a beer create a harmonious whole, rather than stand alone as separate ingredients. For instance, I've had two chocolate coffee stouts recently that had similar flavors, but were drastically different in terms of how well the flavors melted together. One was complex, dynamic, and amazing, while the other felt like a collection of parts, a homebrewing experiment taken too far.
Balance is key, no matter what the style. If my taste buds are buzzing for a minute with alkaline flavors (think about chewing an aspirin) after I finish a sip because the IBUs in a DIPA (Double IPA) are simply unmanaged, that's a poorly made beer. If the beer is just a sweet, syrupy mess with no snap of hops to balance it out, it's just as bad. Sure, different styles will have different levels of sweetness, maltiness, bitterness, etc, but balance and integration are key.
I will admit that I overvalue a bit of caramel/honey sweetness in beer and tend to dislike the more mild styles, so bear that in mind.
Mouthfeel: What a beer feels like on the palate. Carbonation plays a big role here, as does the brewery's controlling of unfermented sugars and proteins. The most important thing for me is that the mouthfeel of a beer match the style - I like a lager that has a bit of body and has good levels of carbonation, but isn't going to be thick at all. For an IPA with a nice ABV, I want a substantial body. For an oatmeal stout, a silky-smooth mouthfeel with some nice backbone is desirable. If an 8-9% stout is thin or overly carbonated, it just doesn't make the whole package work.
Drinkability: How much you want to drink the beer. This is my least favorite analytical category on BeerAdvocate. If a beer is good, I want to drink it. Being able to "session" a beer (drink many in a row) isn't at all important to me, I almost never have more than a single beer a night unless I'm out at a bar. I most frequently discuss Drinkability in terms of the beer as a whole - what I thought about it, how much I wanted to keep drinking, how much I'm looking forward to having it again, that kind of thing.
I will then provide a grade for the beer based on my subjective opinion of the beer as a whole. I try to keep my grades uninflated - an average beer is a "C", a good beer is a "B" and a great beer will earn an "A". Not many beers get A's from me, and truly disappointing beers will earn lower than a C. I tend to trade much lower than most people on BeerAdvocate, so keep that in mind.
