To Review or Not to Review a Beer – Part Two (A year later)

Last November, after attending the MBAA Philly Region meeting and after discussing on-line beer review web-sites with many of our regional micro-brewers I posted THIS THREAD.  There was considerable debate as you can see in the comments, and a wide variety of opinions.  A year has passed, and I’ll admit I DO understand why some people do review, but I still have my concerns.

Since this year-old thread has been re-awakened, I thought I’d pose some new questions for everyone to consider:

1) Do you think on-line beer reviews can hurt (or help) a brewer’s business?

2) Do you think on-line beer reviews can cause someone to avoid (or find) a beer that could have been their favorite beer of all time or could have introduced them to the craft beer world?

3) Do you think on-line beer reviews may cause a brewer play it safe and be less-experimental to avoid risking a bad on-line beer review?

4) Do you think on-line beer reviews may be used as a weapon(i.e. a competitor may damage your brewery’s reputation via on-line beer reviews)?

5) Do you think there may be profit-driven motives or a conflict of interest between on-line beer review web-sites and the companies they do (and do not) do business with?

6) Do you think people tend to only review a beer when they do not like it?

7) Do you think we’d be better of with web-sites that allow you to track what beers you have tasted, but simply record details such as date, serving type, serving temp … and NOT necessarily give the beer a grade?

I’ve started this new thread in the hope that we can discuss this topic.  Please feel free to comment here, comment on Facebook or even comment in the origial thread.

I think this is a topic worthy of discussion and I’d like to see the opinions of beer lovers, brewers and everyone else.