I tend to roll my eyes and ignore such things, except for one frustratingly-common case: pretty much all stouts and porters (which are among the few beers I actually like) are described as tasting of coffee.

The problem is, I find coffee absolutely horrendous (I get my stereotypical-hacker caffeine fix from energy drinks), so it's often hard to tell whether actual coffee has been added during brewing process (which is quite common for stouts), resulting in a horrible drink with an accurate description; or whether it's a lazy 'tasting note' which is completely unrelated to the actual, potentially nice, flavour of the drink.

I know a person who grew to love stouts and porters, but then for medical reasons had to give up all caffeine. It's awfully hard to figure out which of those beers contain caffeine from coffee, and which just have coffee-like flavors. This person has mostly sworn off such beers in order to avoid the risk of drinking one with caffeine.