Our Review Methodology
Our review methodology here at CellarMonk is pretty simple. Review the beer like you are judging it, because in reality, that is what you are doing. The more thought you put into a review (the more you take away from your tasting experience), the better it is for both your own “beer knowledge” growth and for the edification of the CellarMonk beer community at large.
We at CellarMonk want to provide the user with all the tools necessary to enjoy their beer at hand. To this end, we have put a lot of work into how you can interact with our review system. Below is an image of the first portion of a review. We will go over it step by step:
Review Title: This can be the name of the beer or anything you think might describe your review (no profanity and try not to make the title negative)
Ratings: The value section of the review. This resembles the tasting categories on a standard beer judging score-sheet because we believe that is the strongest way to both evaluate and remember your beer experience. The different review reference points are weighted very much like an actual judging for a more standard review.
For added help, by mousing over the blue (i), the current Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) guideline for that particular beer style will pop out. This is to give the reviewer and idea as to whether their particular beer is at or near what its style should be.
Beer Review: This section details the circumstances of said beer drinking. We believe this give added information to the review as it speaks to the reviewers frame of mind and situation when they had the beer.
The Reviewer Experience: The next section is the meat of the review. This is where the reviewer gets to let us know what they actually thought of the beer. We would like to keep reviews useful so we ask the the following be copied into the “Comments” section before proceeding.
We will not accept reviews that have only “the beer was bad” or “I hated it” or just a single line describing the beer. This provides little value both for the reviewer and the community.
A bit about the Guidelines:
The Guidelines that we use are Copyright 1999-2015, Beer Judge Certification Program, Inc. They are used with permission and are subject to change. We will make every effort to keep our site current with the guidelines (current version is BJCP 2015). This site is not affiliated with the BJCP and is not a substitute for certification. Actually, we encourage everyone to visit the BJCP site and learn more about becoming a certified (beer, cider, mead) judge. We are hoping to provide an experience that will help you as you move through the beer/cider/mead universe.
