Three tasters who like each other will usually agree on which beer of the night is best and rarely agree on what the number means, and the second half of that sentence is the part worth keeping. An archived tasting night in this blog's own records had three British Columbia beers in it, and Kyle, Matt and Mike each scored them out of five. All three ranked the flight in the same order, from the Vancouver Island imperial red at 3.2 up to a Surrey imperial pale ale at 4.4 or 4.5. That ranking is the least interesting thing in the entry. The notes underneath the scores, and what has happened to two of the three breweries since, are the reason to reread the night.
What The Panel Recorded
The entry lists three opinions rather than declaring a winner, which is the honest way to publish a group tasting. Nobody weighted the scores, nobody dropped the low mark as an outlier, and the same three people worked through all four beers in the same order on the same night. That leaves the gap between tasters visible, and on every beer the gap is small enough that the result never came down to one dissenting glass.
| Beer | Kyle | Matt | Mike | Gap between tasters |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thirty Years Imperial Red Ale, Vancouver Island Brewing | 3.2 | 3.0 | 3.2 | 0.2 |
| Sap Sucker Maple Porter, Fernie Brewing | 3.9 | 4.2 | 3.7 | 0.5 |
| Red Racer Imperial India Pale Ale, Central City | 4.5 | 4.4 | 4.4 | 0.1 |
| Bootlegger Ale, brewery not recorded | 3.2 | 3.3 | 3.4 | 0.2 |
Thirty Years Imperial Red Ale, Vancouver Island Brewing
The panel had built the evening around this one and came away mildly disappointed, which is what a 3.2 from three friendly tasters usually means. The note describes a beer caught between sweetness and hops, with what reads like molasses doing the bridging, and the verdict was that the addition changed the flavour without improving it. Kyle's line, a solid start and a syrupy finish, is the whole review. Vancouver Island Brewing made it in Victoria and sold it as a bigger, well-hopped relative of the pale ale that had been the brewery's staple for years.
Two things have moved since. The Government Street brewhouse closed on 1 November 2024 after a 35 per cent rent increase, and production moved across to Phillips Brewing, so the Victoria address in the notes is a place with a history rather than a working plant. The vibrewery.com address the notes link has been superseded by vibrewing.com, where the company now publishes.
Sap Sucker Maple Porter, Fernie Brewing Co
This was the beer nobody expected to enjoy, poured for a panel that rarely reaches for a porter, and it drew the widest spread of the night at 3.7 to 4.2. The notes record a dark glass, gentle carbonation, and caramel and coffee running through it with the maple sitting behind the roast rather than on top of it. Matt's verdict, that a hint of maple makes it a genuinely Canadian beer and a good thing to pour over pancakes in the morning, is not something you can argue with. Two things to have straight if the name comes up: Fernie Brewing is in Fernie, in the East Kootenays, and Sap Sucker has been retired and is no longer brewed, so the seasonal the panel waited for is an archive item now.
Red Racer Imperial India Pale Ale, Central City
The top marks of the night, 4.4 and 4.5, went to a beer the panel admitted it had not expected from Surrey. The note is enthusiastic rather than careful: sweet malt and hops arriving together, and a finish long enough that all three tasters called it the best beer they had scored to that point. The brewery's own blurb promised grapefruit, tangerine and mango from whole-leaf hops and a long maturation before release. Mike's summary, smell check, taste check, alcohol check, it has it all, is not analysis, but it is honest about what a first great experience feels like.
Central City Brewers & Distillers has since gone through a change larger than a rebrand. The company ended up in a court-ordered sale, and Mark Anthony Group completed the purchase in February 2025. The Surrey plant that made the beer now sells it under the Homefield name, listed at Red Racer at Homefield Brewery, so the beer outlived the company name that made it.
The Beer Nobody Wrote Anything About
The panel scored a fourth beer, Bootlegger Ale, and filed three marks between 3.2 and 3.4 with no tasting note and no brewery recorded against it. That row is the most useful line in the whole table, because it shows what a score looks like when it carries no information. Nobody reading it later can tell whether the beer was fine, forgettable or flawed, and the closeness of the three marks only proves that three people agreed about something none of them bothered to describe.
What A Panel Score Can Tell You
Three people in one room produce an order you can trust more than the numbers on it, because that order survived a scale everybody uses badly. The absolute marks are another matter. The same beer can move half a point for the same drinker depending on the glass, the temperature and the position it was poured in, and a 3.2 in a flight where the top beer reached 4.5 mostly means third of three rather than a bad beer. Read a panel score for the ranking and the reasons attached to it, then let the decimal go.
What Happened When Everybody Became A Rater
Untappd does the same job at a scale no panel can reach. You log what you are drinking, rate it out of five in half-point steps, and leave the entry where your friends can see it. The difference is not that strangers are careless, since most of them are not, but that a crowd averages out everything a panel shares. Three tasters in one room had the same bottles at the same temperature with the same expectations going in, while a large set of check-ins mixes warm glasses, a dirty line, a long flight and two different production runs of the same label. A high crowd score is a weak argument that a beer is good. A crowd score that collapses against its own style is a decent argument that something is wrong with the can you are about to buy.
How To Run A Better Panel Night
- Put the bottles in paper bags or pour identical samples into unmarked glasses, since a label changes a score before the first sip arrives.
- Let everybody write a number before anybody talks, because the first confident opinion in the room quietly sets the range for the rest of the night.
- Score each beer against its own style rather than against the last glass, which is how a very good porter loses to an imperial IPA on the same table.
- Write one sentence with every score, because a number without a reason is the row nobody can use later.
- Include one beer nobody in the group would order, which is where panel nights produce surprises more often than a flight of favourites does.
- Keep the scale simple at half a point a time and stop arguing about whether a 4.2 is really a 4.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a five-point or a hundred-point scale better for scoring beer?
Five points in half-point steps is enough for three people in a living room, because it forces a decision without pretending to a precision nobody has. A hundred-point scale lets two tasters disagree by four points about the same glass and both be reasonable, which makes the average meaningless. The extra resolution only earns its keep when one person scores the same style repeatedly over a long stretch.
Does agreement between tasters prove the score is right?
Agreement says the panel is stable, not that the number is true, and this flight is the example. Three people who tasted together, in the same room, from the same bottles, landed within half a point on every beer, which is what it looks like when tasters influence each other and share reference points. Consistency is a property of the group rather than a measurement of the beer.
Should a brewery care about a low panel score?
It should care about the sentence attached to it. A 3.2 gives a maker nothing to work with, while a note saying the added sweetener left the finish heavy points at an exact decision in the recipe, and that is the kind of feedback a drinker rarely puts on a public rating feed.
Order, Reason, Then Ignore The Decimal
If you want to keep the useful part of a panel night, publish the ranking and the reasons and let the averages go. Two of the three breweries in this flight have changed out of recognition since the glasses were filled, one of the beers is no longer made, and the only thing in the record that still holds up is what three people said the beers tasted like. That is worth more than a decimal, and it is the part that outlives the brewery.
