One of the strengths of Ranker‘s data is that we collect such a wide variety of opinions from users that we can put opinions about a wide variety of subjects into a graph format. Graphs are useful as they let you go beyond the individual relationships between items and see overall patterns. In anticipation of Cinco de Mayo, I produced the below opinion graph of beers, based on votes on lists such as our Best World Beers list. Connections in this graph represent significant correlations between sentiment towards connected beers, which vary in terms of strength. A layout algorithm (force atlas in Gephi) placed beers that were more related closer to each other and beers that had fewer/weaker connections further apart. I also ran a classification algorithm that clustered beers according to preference and colored the graph according to these clusters. Click on the below graph to expand it.
One of the fun things about graphs is that different people will see different patterns. Among the things I learned from this exercise are:
- The opposite of light beer, from a taste perspective, isn’t dark beer. Rather, light beers like Miller Lite are most opposite craft beers like Stone IPA and Chimay.
- Coors light is the light beer that is closest to the mainstream cluster. Stella Artois, Corona, and Heineken are also reasonable bridge beers between the main cluster and the light beer world.
- The classification algorithm revealed six main taste/opinion clusters, which I would label: Really Light Beers (e.g. Natural Light), Lighter Mainstream Beers (e.g. Blue Moon), Stout Beers (e.g. Guinness), Craft Beers (e.g. Stone IPA), Darker European Beers (e.g. Chimay), and Lighter European Beers (e.g. Leffe Blonde). The interesting parts about the classifications are the cases on the edge, such as how Newcastle Brown Ale appeals to both Guinness and Heineken drinkers.
- Seeing beers graphed according to opinions made me wonder if companies consciously position their beers accordingly. Is Pyramid Hefeweizen successfully appealing to the Sam Adams drinker who wants a bit of European flavor? Is Anchor Steam supposed to appeal to both the Guinness drinker and the craft beer drinker? I’m not sure if I know enough about the marketing of beers to know the answer to this, but I’d be curious if beer companies place their beers in the same space that this opinion graph does.
These are just a few observations based on my own limited beer drinking experience. I tend to be more of a whiskey drinker, and hope more of you will vote on our Best Tasting Whiskey list, so I can graph that next. I’d love to hear comments about other observations that you might make from this graph.
– Ravi Iyer
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