I had this post ready a few weeks ago but was once again held up by RateBeer’s 2017 year in review page that just went live today. Let’s start with the 2017 stats!
This blog and Flickr did pretty well. 5.3 million views on my photos and 7900 views to this blog from 3500 unique visitors. The blog is not what it once was in traffic but I still enjoy chronicling my adventures in beer so will keep it going for at least another year. 
Untappd has continued to be a great tool for me. I log every beer consumed even if I’ve already rated it which is something RateBeer does not currently offer. If I drink Hill Farmstead Arthur every week, I enjoy that count because I rated it in 2012 doesn’t mean I don’t continue to enjoy it. I rated 446 beers in 2017 and consumed 969 so that new beer ratio of 45% is completely logical. I rate everything I drink that has not already been rated by me. Top beers by checkins are beers I had a tire keg of or multiple cases throughout the year.
Ratebeer’s year in beer 2017 has a fantastic summary. 446 beers from 198 breweries with an average score of 3.46. The average scores of the beers I rated by the community is 3.6 meaning I drank beers on average that were rated 3.6. I rated them below that average. I continue to be very aggressive toward low ratings of new england IPAs. I regularly give beers from Tree House and Trillium a 3/5 so that contributes to my lower than average rating. I hate milk shake beers with sludge and barely any carbonation. No amount of hop oils will convince me otherwise. Start making good IPAs.
Traveling & trading were down this year so USA dominated the countries.
My favorite beers continue to be from Hill Farmstead
Allagash made some fantastic beers this year but this isn’t a fair average given. 39 HF beers = 3.95 and 7 from Allagash = a 4. even still, there’s no denying this brewery is still making amazing beers. River Roost, a brand new brewery that’s very local to me continues to make top quality IPAs…although most of them tend to be too milk-shakey for me.
By count, imperial stouts are still my favorite beers to seek out! I love the style. No sign of that slowing down.
UPS was up in 2017 from 2016 but unfortunately, in regards to beer this is an inaccurate number and I plan on ceasing reporting on UPS spending in 2018. The reason why is that my other hobbies (cars, bikes, selling things on eBay) are not beer related but I can’t eliminate those figures from the reporting here. I think beer is about 25% of my total UPS budget now therefore my lowest year ever. For example, today I mailed a helmet to Shoei for warranty work. That’s $17 that would show up on my UPS stats for 2018..not beer and therefore should be excluded.
I love this stat because it shows my actual drinking habits, not ratings. May, 2017, we finally got moved into the new house fully and drank a bit more because of it. Winter 2017 and end of 2016 were lower because we were technically ‘homeless’ and didn’t have access to any of our beer so we drank local and not from the cellar.
2017 is clearly the lowest year of rating by far. I drank more local, traded less and really the only time I rated new beers was when i got together with my tasting group every 2-3 months. I don’t buy beers to rate anymore. i buy things from Schramm’s, Eden, Bruery and Hill Farmstead to drink (rating is a by-product) and I re-buy beers from those places that I like to enjoy without rating.
Absolute figures, you see how huge the drop off was compared to previous years.
Again, back to my core, the numbers grew for HF, Bruery and Harpoon. Not much else.
Another huge drop in ratings per state. None grew at all.
Top styles of 2017 were IPAs followed by Stouts and Saisons. No surprise there. IPAs are very easy to get and I love imperial stouts and saisons to death
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That’s it for 2017! It was a fantastic year of drinking local, less trading and renewed financial commitments to my favorite breweries. I renewed my membership with Bruery, Hill Farmstead, Schramm’s and Eden and continue to buy bottles from them every month. Bruery lost my membership for one year due to shipping costs and 2 boxes being seized by UPS. Now that Bruery has a DC retail location, I can visit once a year 8 hours each way of driving and save California tax and shipping costs ($5 a bottle).
My commitment to 2018 beverages is $300 for HillFarmstead, $295 for Bruery, $75 to Schramm’s and $75 to Eden. Eden and Bruery give you beverages in that cost and Schramm’s / Hill Farmstead charge that much for access to their selections. Only Schramm’s will require shipping and I’m only buying 2 bottles a month from them so it’s fairly low cost. I am pretty certain I’ll be cancelling Schramm’s and Eden this year though.
I’d like to travel for beer this year but I don’t think it’s possible. I’ll gladly continue to share my bruery & Hill Farmstead with my tasting group and hopefully they’ll continue sharing beers with me so I can keep rating. Without them, I likely would have had only 50 new ratings this year of beer. That’s an honest figure. They were responsible for many of the new beers I tried. I’d drink a case of Bruery melange 3 or Hill Farmstead Arthur before buying a new shelf-beer from Founders or Crooked Stave.
I’m sort of phoning this one in because of the pain from carpal tunnel that I’ve spoken about on my main blog a lot this year but I am glad I found the time to assemble this report for you all. Thanks for reading!