All my beer notes are created purely for my own enjoyment. The more I analyze beer, like wine or books, the most I find I enjoy them and the more I take away from the experience. If someone else finds these notes useful, that’s great. But they are designed to be purely personal and so I make no apology if they don’t hold up to critical scrutiny.

All beer rating pages contain an overview at the top of the page consisting of the beer’s name, the style, the distribution method (referred to as “format” for lack of a better term), the ABV, the date tested and a summary of the ratings. After that, each individual criteria is broken down and explained.

Final Rating (out of 50)

Simple sum of all subratings.

Appearance (out of 5)

Appearance is the most difficult rating for me given how subjective it is. I consider the head, colour, clarity, apparent carbonation and beer style in this rating. For example, I’d subtract marks for a cloudy lager, but that’s normal and expected for a wheat beer. It’s a combination of how far it is from the ideal for the style of beer and how appealing the beer looks.

Aroma (out of 10)

Aroma is much easier to score, in my opinion, even though getting a feel for the nose of a beer and dissecting its component smells is a hard skill to develop and one I’m still working on, simply because it doesn’t need to be adapted to the style of beer. A beer I smell and can’t wait to taste scores 20, one I dread taking a sip off would be a 1.

Taste (out of 20)

Taste is an aggregate score, though I don’t generally include a breakdown of its component parts. I consider the start, middle, finish and aftertaste, considering the flavours and their balance. My preference tends to be for either simple, crisp, refreshing beers, or beers with a fair amount of character but still with a nicely balanced and inviting flavours. I tend to gravitate towards high IBU IPAs, browns, ambers/reds, and stouts, but I have enjoyed a wide variety of beers from other categories as well. I try not to limit myself.

Mouthfeel (out of 5)

An aggregate score of the three qualities of a beer’s feel in the mouth: carbonation, fullness and aftertaste. It should be noted that aftertaste in this context is the lingering sensations in the mouth, so aftertaste seems a bit misleading. Any actual lingering taste component of the aftertaste I include in my taste score. Like appearance, I find this one a little trickier as the beer style needs to be considered: a cream ale will have more nitrogen and therefore produce a tighter foam and smaller bubbles vs a lager or an IPA for example.

Overall (out of 10)

This is the most subjective of all the scores. This is essentially my overall enjoyment of the beer. Beers I don’t like I rank harshly here, and beers I do like I rank generously, as opposed to other categories where I take a more balanced approach. A beer that smells like apricots I don’t rank lower simply because I dislike apricots, but it will likely suffer in the overall category. If we have very dissimilar tastes, it might be best to ignore this subrating if you’re reading this to get a feeling for how enjoyable you might find something.