There's definitely an opportunity here for a better beer rating system. Get some equipment to analyze the chemical compounds of beers, automatically classify them and use it to recommend beers based on your personal flavor preferences.
In standard American fashion, we are bad at subtlety. You want hops, we will make beer that tastes like you're chewing on raw hops. You want alcohol, the beer will taste like whiskey. While there are some exceptions (like Dogfish Head 90 minute IPA), this is the standard formula for American craft beers.
The Belgians on the other hand can really 'craft' beer.
Yeah they can. I think the last 3-4 six packs I've purchased were Belgian imports. They tend to have distinct flowery notes that I really enjoy.
I'd rather have an app that looked at what I've highly rated and either paired me with users who highly rate similar beers, or just recommended beers those folks also rate highly that I haven't tried.
In practice, I just have a few friends that I know have similar beer tastes as me that I regularly swap recommendations with.
Disclaimer – I'm pretty biased in this assessment (helped build BrewGene, which provides a similar beer rating + recommendation service). Here's our top 5 for context:
* Trappist 12
* Heady Topper
* Pliny the Elder
* Sip of Sunshine
* Pliny the Younger
In terms of reviewing beers, most people have moved to using an app like Untappd. BeerAdvocate, another forum/beer rating site seems to have a more active userbase, but even that is becoming less relevant today as people move away from forum communities.
Is that data on RateBeer of use to them? Are they planning on pouring money into it to position it as a competitor to Untappd? I'm not sure what the goal is. If the fear is they will secretly skew review scores to favor their product lines, that seems hardly worth the effort, as I don't think enough people use the site to drive purchasing decisions to make a meaningful impact.
I think people need to be aware of which beer publications ZX Ventures owns, or owns a stake in, as that will help you identify marketing fluff pieces vs real reporting. The fact that they go to some effort to hide their ownership of several brands they have acquired is concerning to me, but I also understand it is not in their interest to promote that fact. Many people unknowingly buy ABI products without having any idea the beer they are buying isn't in fact locally owned.