{"id":1480,"date":"2026-07-01T07:03:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T14:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kenwalger.com\/blog\/?p=1480"},"modified":"2026-06-30T16:04:52","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T23:04:52","slug":"root-beer-scoring-system-subjective-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kenwalger.com\/blog\/uncategorized\/root-beer-scoring-system-subjective-data\/","title":{"rendered":"A Cold Root Beer and a Small System"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>A Cold Root Beer and a Small System<\/h1>\n<p>It\u2019s starting to get warmer out.<\/p>\n<p>Which, at least for me, means two things:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>more time outside  <\/li>\n<li>and the return of cold root beer<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There\u2019s something about a really good root beer that feels\u2026 complete. Not just sweet, but balanced. A little bite, a clean finish, maybe just enough carbonation to keep things interesting.<\/p>\n<p>Naturally, I had a normal, reasonable thought:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  I should build a system for this.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>The Problem With Taste<\/h2>\n<p>Taste is subjective.<\/p>\n<p>Everyone knows this.<\/p>\n<p>But it\u2019s also surprisingly inconsistent\u2014even for the same person. One day something feels perfectly balanced. The next, it\u2019s too sweet or not sharp enough.<\/p>\n<p>That makes comparisons difficult.<\/p>\n<p>Which, of course, makes it interesting.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>Turning Root Beer Into Data<\/h2>\n<p>So I built a small system to try and bring a bit of structure to something inherently subjective.<\/p>\n<p>Nothing overly complicated. Just a few attributes:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>sweetness  <\/li>\n<li>bite  <\/li>\n<li>aftertaste  <\/li>\n<li>carbonation  <\/li>\n<li>overall balance  <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Each one gets a score, and those roll up into a simple overall rating.<\/p>\n<p>The goal wasn\u2019t to be <em>perfect<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>It was to be <em>consistent<\/em>.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>First Entry<\/h2>\n<p>Here\u2019s one of the entries:<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udc49 <a href=\"https:\/\/root-beer-reviews.onrender.com\/rootbeers\/695fc98acb0e4e4826b8118f\">https:\/\/root-beer-reviews.onrender.com\/rootbeers\/695fc98acb0e4e4826b8118f<\/a><\/p>\n<p>It breaks the score down across each attribute and shows how they combine into the overall rating.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kenwalger.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/root_beer_spider_chart.png\" alt=\"Radar (spider) chart showing root beer ratings across sweetness, bite, aftertaste, carbonation, and overall balance.\"><\/p>\n<p><em>A visual breakdown of a single root beer\u2019s profile across key taste attributes.<\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>What Shows Up Quickly<\/h2>\n<p>The interesting part wasn\u2019t ranking root beers.<\/p>\n<p>It was how sensitive the results were to the model.<\/p>\n<p>A few things became obvious pretty quickly:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Weighting matters more than individual scores  <\/li>\n<li>\u201cBite\u201d can completely change the perception of sweetness  <\/li>\n<li>A strong first impression doesn\u2019t always translate to a good finish  <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In other words:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  The system didn\u2019t just rank root beer. It exposed how I evaluate it.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>The Real Lesson<\/h2>\n<p>The moment you try to quantify something human, you\u2019re making decisions about what matters.<\/p>\n<p>Those decisions shape the outcome more than the data itself.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>What Comes Next<\/h2>\n<p>I\u2019ll probably add to this occasionally over time.<\/p>\n<p>Not at any fixed cadence. Just whenever I come across something worth testing.<\/p>\n<p>If nothing else, it\u2019s a good excuse to try more root beer.<\/p>\n<p>Purely for research purposes, of course.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>And One Final Question<\/h2>\n<p>What\u2019s the best root beer you\u2019ve had?<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m always looking for the next data point.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>(And for the record, my kid recently asked what root beer was made of. I told him: beer squared.)<\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>If you\u2019re curious, the system itself is open source and available in <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/kenwalger\/root-beer-reviews\">this repo on GitHub<\/a> as well.<\/em><\/p>\n<a class=\"synved-social-button synved-social-button-share synved-social-size-48 synved-social-resolution-single synved-social-provider-facebook nolightbox\" data-provider=\"facebook\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" title=\"Share on Facebook\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.kenwalger.com%2Fblog%2Fwp-json%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts%2F1480&amp;t=A%20Cold%20Root%20Beer%20and%20a%20Small%20System&amp;s=100&amp;p[url]=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.kenwalger.com%2Fblog%2Fwp-json%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts%2F1480&amp;p[images][0]=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.kenwalger.com%2Fblog%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2026%2F06%2Froot_beer_spider_chart.png&amp;p[title]=A%20Cold%20Root%20Beer%20and%20a%20Small%20System\" style=\"font-size: 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Which, at least for me, means two things: more time outside and the return of cold root beer There\u2019s something about a really good root beer that feels\u2026 complete. Not just sweet, but balanced. A little bite, a clean finish, maybe &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kenwalger.com\/blog\/uncategorized\/root-beer-scoring-system-subjective-data\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;A Cold Root Beer and a Small System&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[99,525,797,967],"class_list":["post-1480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","pmpro-has-access"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8lx70-nS","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kenwalger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kenwalger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kenwalger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenwalger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenwalger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1480"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenwalger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1736,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenwalger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1480\/revisions\/1736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kenwalger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenwalger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenwalger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1480"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kenwalger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=1480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}