Top rated beers, and new ways to browse!

Citizens have been asking for this feature, and now it’s here. You can now check out the list of the top 20 rated beers on Beer Citizen. Ratings are calculated using the average (mean) of each citizen’s most recent overall rating value. Each beer must have at least three unique ratings to be eligible. Don’t see your favorite in the list? Don’t agree with one you do see? Well, make sure to review the beer, as every vote counts.

To take further advantage of this new feature, we’ve revised the browse beers page on the site and the mobile apps to include a quick view of the top beers. On the site, this includes a new interface to more easily browse and discover great beers. As always, you can still access the full list of all the beers.

We hope you enjoy the new features… as always, we’d love to hear your feedback. We’ve got more great things on the way, so stay tuned!

New Rating System

It’s been a fascinating experience listening to user feedback on our beta release. One aspect we’ve heard about frequently is the rating system, or “overall opinion.” Initially, our goal was to keep it simple and present three basic rating options (like, dislike & indifferent), but many users have voiced an interest in greater granularity; so, we’ve changed the system. We’ve replaced the previous system with a dedicated rating slider to give users more control in expressing their opinion of a beer.

A few notes about this change:

• The values from the previous like/dislike/indifferent system will not be carried over. We decided that assigning an arbitrary value to the existing ratings would be inaccurate.
• The new rating value is now mandatory when entering a review. The rating value is another metric for comparing beers, so we feel it’s important that everyone enters it.
• The new rating value is now displayed in the beer’s profile. The method we use to calculate and display the overall rating of a beer will evolve as the dataset does, but we’re keeping it simple initially, requiring a minimum of three user ratings to calculate an average score.

We hope that those of you who have entered reviews will update them with a rating value. We’re sorry to see the like/dislike opinions go, but such is the nature of being in beta, and we’re happy we’re making this change early.

As always, we look forward to hearing your feedback on the new rating system. Cheers!