Landing the Whale: Beer thread

[TwoFoursStrohm]

DirtyRFed - what IPA have you tried? I hated IPAs until recently when I tried the New England style of citrusy juice bombs. Its night and day compared to the Laganitus/Goose Isalnd/Sierra Nevada mass produced, bitter nonsense.

Some Sam Adam's Rabble Rouser IPA, which was utter shit, and Guinness Rye Pale Ale, which technically counts shut up, and wasn't as bad.

I refuse to drink fruit flavored alcohol on the grounds that I am not a sorority girl

I understand where youre coming from on fruit flavored alcohol if the fruit it added (pineapple sculpin) but if its a characterictic of the hops than send it in. If you have a micro brewery near you, go try a DDH double ipa. It has to be within a month old. Part of the reason you might hate IPA (and why I always did until recently) is because you probably tried one that was sitting on a shelf for 6 months.

[Root]

facepalm.gif

There'd better be a really good rant in Shitposting to make up for this.

Yeah, I know. Fucking apostrophe in Sam Adams?!? What an asshole.

[Allentown]

Blaecorn Unidragon by Clown Shoes.

[Manveer]

I had Jackie O's barrel aged Black Mask tonight. Excellent.

[Allentown]

I have some friends coming over on the 28th and we are doing a blind taste test. I have, so far, Atwater, North Peak, Shorts, Bells, Sierra Nevada, Sam Adams, Hacker-Pshorr, Ayinger, Pigeon Hill, Paulaner, & Aecht. Most are local, though. Will see if Ayinger can still compete in a field of 11+, vs just 4 last year!

[Hamburgerfan]

I liked Sierra Nevada's this year.

[BobGrant]

I picked up a 4-pack of Founders Harvest Ale. It is very, very tasty. There is a lot of great brewing happening in MI.

[cgeorg]

This weekend I had Hap n Harry's Tennessee Lager and also their Revelry. Can't tell if it's brewed in Nashville or Napa though. I think that might have been all the local I tried while down there, shit got kinda hazy by the time I was out downtown.

Anyway it was a really good German style pils, recommend.

[Allentown]

I picked up a 4-pack of Founders Harvest Ale. It is very, very tasty. There is a lot of great brewing happening in MI.

I haven't had that yet. I'll be honest, I don't drink much Founders since their acquisition. It's hard to say no to a $15 15pk of All Day or PC Pils, though. I did pick up a harvest ale from Dark Horse, another MI brewery, and it was alright. I was expecting a lot more fresh hop aromatics.

[Jumrobe]

I'm also on untappd like Allentown. Username is "jumrobe" just like it is here.

Currently digging the Southern Tier Warlock and Sierra Nevada Narwhal.

[Allentown]

I'm also on untappd like Allentown. Username is "jumrobe" just like it is here.

Currently digging the Southern Tier Warlock and Sierra Nevada Narwhal.

Hopefully you didn't send that friend request a while ago, I just noticed it now when I saw this post!

I feel a little dirty checking in dated yearly releases, but I just did a vertical of Founders Backwoods Bastard ('14, '16, '17) and I wanted to note that. '14 tasted like scotch/bourbon and nothing else. '17 tasted kind of thin. I liked the '16 the best.

[Jumrobe]

I'm also on untappd like Allentown. Username is "jumrobe" just like it is here.

Currently digging the Southern Tier Warlock and Sierra Nevada Narwhal.

Hopefully you didn't send that friend request a while ago, I just noticed it now when I saw this post!

I feel a little dirty checking in dated yearly releases, but I just did a vertical of Founders Backwoods Bastard ('14, '16, '17) and I wanted to note that. '14 tasted like scotch/bourbon and nothing else. '17 tasted kind of thin. I liked the '16 the best.

I just sent it today after reading through the thread.

Hmm that vertical of Founders Backwoods Bastard sounds delicious.

I'm an IPA as my go to kinda person. There's some select releases from local breweries that are awesome. Yard's does a Cape of Good Hope DIPA that is pretty good. This year's version has a definite melon taste too it compared to previous years versions which were more citrusy in taste. Neshaminy Creek has a "Shape of Hops to Come" that is another DIPA that is actually balanced and not just hops and not just malt which I've found a lot of these mega IPA's falling into in the last two or so years.

[Allentown]

Hmm that vertical of Founders Backwoods Bastard sounds delicious.

It was alright. Honestly, either my tastes have expanded, or Founders has gone downhill in the past 3-4 years since getting bought and ramping up production something like 10x. Outside of an occasional All Day, a really cold PC Pils on a super hot day, the 2017 KBS, and (hopefully) Breakfast Stout, I don't really like much that Founders has done for a while. It all just makes me say "yeah, this is alright." Last time I went there I had 3 or 4 beers, and I couldn't remember a single one. It probably doesn't help that I had to call the cops on one of the owners over the summer, he just let his dogs run free in the front yard and they would charge, bark, and snap at my stroller as I walked past the front yard, and the third time it happened came on to the sidewalk and I had to kick them away. The next time I walked past the house there were flags for a buried fence. But my "meh" attitude toward them had started a few years before that.

[Allentown]

I had 12 different beers, and 9 tulip sampler glasses supplemented by three larger tulip stem less wine glasses, giving me three sets of 4 glasses. We had 4 people there, so the one couple had to share a set of glasses but would score independently. We did 3 flights of 4 beers. For each flight, rank the beers 4 (best) to 1 (worst) in three categories- color/aroma, taste, and wildcard. In this way, each flight will be compared within itself, but because the flights would comprise different beers between testers (except for the couple who shared glasses) we would hope to minimize the luck of a good draw for a mediocre beer.

The beers, with the group score and my score, sorted by group score. There were 12 points max per scorer, and so 48 points is a perfect score.

Sam Adams: 46, 12
Paulaner: 40, 6
Bells: 36, 7
Shorts: 36, 6
North Peak: 33, 11
Rochester Mills: 29, 4
Ayinger: 27, 11
Atwater: 27, 8
Hacker-Pschorr: 26, 9
Pigeon Hill: 25, 7
Sierra Nevada: 25, 6
Aecht: 12, 3

Sam Adams had nearly a perfect score, with three 12s and a 10.
Discussing with the group afterwords, and after doing a "Final 4" we all realized that the Shorts was paired with the Aecht in everyone's flights, so it got a big boost in scores, as compared to the other top 3 it was terrible. Even during the final 4, I didn't really like the Paulaner, as indicated by my 6 vs 11, 12, 11 from the other tasters. Shorts, during the final 4, was revealed to be an imposter, and was immediately dismissed. Ayinger came is as my second favorite, but wasn't in the top half of overall scores. Aecht, a smoked marzen, was just terrible, and no one finished their 2-3oz sample. I'm surprised North Peak did so well, but for me it was paired with Rochester Mills, which I did not like, Paulaner, which I also didn't like much, and Hacker-Pschorr. So there was some peer group effect, but I feel like it was tempered by the three other scores.

tl:dr- If you want an Oktoberfest, get a Sam Adams. Or Paulaner. Or a Bells. Or (not the majority opinion) Ayinger. But probably just get Sam Adams.

[bugbomb]

We drank a bunch of Oktoberfest last weekend, and while it wasn't a blind tasting I typically had no idea what had just been put in my glass until after I had tasted it. Sam Adams was very good, so was Odell. My favorite was Ayinger, but I will be totally honest and admit that I poured that one myself and was excited to try it before my first sip. It's the standard for the style IMHO.

[Allentown]

We drank a bunch of Oktoberfest last weekend, and while it wasn't a blind tasting I typically had no idea what had just been put in my glass until after I had tasted it. Sam Adams was very good, so was Odell. My favorite was Ayinger, but I will be totally honest and admit that I poured that one myself and was excited to try it before my first sip. It's the standard for the style IMHO.

I agree- somehow, though, in our blind testing it scored an 11 (me), 5, 3, and 8. It had the biggest variation from high to low score, and I don't understand how it could have received a 3, the worst score possible, from one of the testers. Really the only two beers that had very consistent scores (ignoring the Aecht, with 4x 3 point scores) were Sam Adams, with 3x 12s and one 10, and Atwater, with 8, 6, 7, 6. The next lowest variation between high and low was the Bells, with a 3 point difference between high (10) and low (7, me).

[Hanley]

Allen, you sampled the “Octoberfest” offering from each brand, right?

[Allentown]

Allen, you sampled the “Octoberfest” offering from each brand, right?

Yes. I shouldn't really have included the Aecht, it was labeled a marzen but was so far out of style that it was kind of a throwaway pick and probably skewed the scores of the other beers.


Given that I had 12 beers, and 4 people, any suggestions for how to structure a blind testing without needing 48 glasses? I found doing them one at a time and letting people score them, say, 1-5, ends up with a bunch of 3.5-3.8s, with the first beer having nothing to compare to, and later beers getting better scores (beer goggles).

[Root]

Just share all the glasses. Are people afraid of cooties?

[Allentown]

Just share all the glasses. Are people afraid of cooties?

1) You can't ALL share glasses, unless someone not involved pours all the beers.
2) Not cooties, but I don't want to pass my cold on to other people.
3) If you taste a beer, and give it three 1 point scores, I will be less likely to give it three 4 point scores, (or, I guess, 12 points, if you just do all of them at once). We know because of anchoring that even hearing an unrelated big number before asked to score something with a number (or establish a value for something, etc) will skew the resulting score. If I don't know that the beer I am tasting is the same beer you are tasting, I will be less likely to give it a score related to what you gave it.


Looking over my sheet some more, I noticed I gave the Shorts, which everyone agreed once we had it among the winners circle tasted awful, a 4 for color/aroma, but 1s for taste and wildcard. But the other three testers, during blind testing, gave it 11, 10, 9, meaning it had to at least score in the top 2 of it's flight.