Reviewing of beer

Resolved: I will review beers with a numerical scale, no more.

For me, beer is not a number; beer is not simply a product. Beer is thing of beauty, and a thing that brings beauty. I revel in its flavor, and in the alchemy, skill, science, and joy that goes into the making of a good beer. When beer is quantified as a score, or as a price-point, or as a demographic category, beer is rendered as a formalistic, non-aesthetic, ugly thing.

Our mothers once told us, and the late, great beer writer Michael Jackson mostly practiced: if you don't have something nice to say, don't say it. If I like a beer, I'll tell you; if not, I usually won't. I will no longer pretend that beauty can be quantified.  Life is too short for a 1 to 100 scale and other such nonsense.

I write here on the blog much more on the culture and business of beer than I do on favored beers. The latter is what crowd-sourced BeerAdvocate, RateBeer and Untapped are for (and which I rarely use or consult). But, on those occasions when a beer does grab my attention enough that I feel compelled to to tell someone about it:

• For reviews here at Yours For Good Fermentables, go to my columns entitled Drinking, again!. 
• For 'snapshot' reviews, see these at my companion Flickr site.

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2013.02: I updated the links and redacted the wording.