Do you mean the site itself or the forums? The ratings can be useful but the highest-rated beers are usually going to be biased towards the very limited/regional. I use it mostly when I'm at the store and come across a beer I'm not familiar with or when I like a brewery's beer and want to see what else they've done.
You're in SoCal right? Not the best place to be for imperial stouts like Rasputin but there's usually a decent selection. Sierra Nevada, Stone, Lagunitas, and Bear Republic all have good and relatively inexpensive imperial stouts but they tend to be seasonal. A lot of stouts these days tend to add coffee so if you like coffee try to seek those out.
Where do you usually shop for beer?
Edit: I've never liked Dogfish Head's IPAs much, especially given their price. Sculpin is a classic, but also overpriced generally. My advice with IPAs whether you're buying them at a beer shop or Safeway is to check the bottles/cans for a "brewed on" or "best by" date to make sure it's relatively fresh since hops can fade in flavor. Can't tell you how many times I've checked a bottle of, say, Firestone's Union Jack and seen that it was five or six months old. Have you had any IPAs or pale ales you particularly like yet?
