Jackie O’s snagged the RateBeer.com ranking for its second year in a row.
Jackie O’s Pub & Brewery is again the best place in the state for brew, according to RateBeer.com
RateBeer.com released its 2014 “World’s Best Places for Beer” list Friday, and Jackie O’s was listed as Ohio’s best brewpub for the second year in a row. A spokesman for the site said it is noted as one of the most thorough and respected beer reviewers.
“It really feels like we’re doing something right,” said Clark Benson, pub brewer at Jackie O’s. “We’re taking care of people, and they’re rewarding us by voting us in for this award.”
RateBeer.com’s list is broken down by states and provinces both in and outside of the U.S., then further divided into six categories: brewpub, restaurant, brewer tap room, grocery, bottle shop and bar.
Benson, who has worked at the brewery for roughly two years, said he thinks the company’s “local” element makes Jackie O’s the best brewpub in Ohio.
“We do a lot of emphasis on local,” Benson said. “We have a great customer base ... I think being surrounded by great people, and people who care about the quality (of the) product you’re putting out … I mean, it speaks for itself.”
The list is compiled by analyzing the site’s millions of reviews, said Joe Tucker, the website’s executive director — putting special emphasis on reviews from the previous year.
{{tncms-asset app="editorial" id="565b0c17-1a90-56a4-9dcf-9e811dbd0e8d"}}
“They’ve been making noise on our site for years,” Tucker said. “They’re part of this greater craft brewing community.”
Tucker said he is a fan of Jackie O’s beer.
“My personal opinion is they’re doing fantastic stuff, they’re doing creative stuff, and they’re taking risk,” Tucker said. “Jackie O’s is still offering an interesting range of flavor profiles.”
Tucker added that it is uncommon for growing breweries to continue to offer such a wide variety.
Scientific American magazine gave RateBeer.com’s rating system its seal of approval; a 2010 issue of the magazine called the site’s data set “virtually manipulation-proof.”
Tucker said that’s because RateBeer has amassed so many reviews — more than 6 million individual reviews of beers from roughly 19,000 breweries in the site’s lifetime — and because of safeguards put in place to prevent brewers from cheating the system to boost their own rating.
The site uses weighted averages that take both the word count of reviews and the beer-specific education of its reviewers, none of who are paid by the site, into consideration.
Those mechanisms aim to give the most thorough reviewers more influence when the site’s “best-of” lists are calculated.
Tucker lives and works in northern California, though he tasted Jackie O’s beer on-site when he visited Athens to judge a local brewing competition. Tucker said his favorite brew is “Dark Apparition” — an exceptionally strong Russian imperial stout.
@JeremyHTweets
jh082913@ohio.edu
