BCS variants tasting help!

Well here is the pic from the end of the Night.

I want to start out this post by saying THANK YOU to everyone who contributed to my tasting. I took all your idea to heart and made the best educated choices I could. So here is how it all went down.

So 6 non BA friends, 2 BA friends and 1 BA from 100 miles away all came to the tasting. Everyone but 1 stayed for the whole event!(one had a announcement party for his wife being pregnant he had to go to!Congrats to him BTW)

So this is how I had my event set up. I had 5 oz snifters for each guest. I then had sharpies and 5 oz plastic cups for everyone to use if they needed. I also had 1 jug of water and one empty for people to wash out there glasses and dump the water out.(most of us just drank the water instead of dumping it in empty jug.) I also had Unsalted crackers, Pretzels, pretzel bread pieces and tiny wheat bread pieces with a mild cheese and procuitto on them. All snacks that would help break up the flavors in between beers and soak up some alcohol while not adding any flavors to take away from the beer. OK thats enough about all that. Now on to the important part the beer.

1st Beer of the night
Well my good BA friend @claaark13 brought over one of my top 10 beers ever. DDG. Haven't had this since last time it was released. This DDG was the 2013. So this beer kicked off our night. It is so crisp and clean. Just a wonderful representation of the style and a great way to kick off the night! Still a top 10 beer for me!Thanks so much claaark!

1st Beer of the BCS tasting
Then I popped a 2013 regular bcs and told everyone to take a 1 oz pour. I didn't want to drink much of this beer as most all if not all of the people there have had it but i thought it would be good to have everyone try the base beer of what we are really all here for tonight(this is per suggestion by 1 or 2 members above)

2,3,4 BCS beers of the tasting
Then I popped Rare, Vanilla , And Proprietors all at the same time and everyone got a 2 oz pour of each.(this was the same for every other beer that night) We sipped on those for a little while before moving on. So here are my initial tasting notes

Rare- what a great beer. Still had a boozy nose but wasn't very boozy in the taste. Prob the most complex flavor profile of all 3 in the group. Had a wonderful chocolate back bone. NOT mind blowing but very good

Vanilla- Super smooth ,Creamy Vanilla chocolate. No heat in the nose or taste. This was prob even better fresh but still got a good amount of vanilla and really liked this one.

Prop- I had super tiny coconut floaties in my pour. Very bright coconut flavor and had excellent carb and just very crisp and clean tasting. You could tell how fresh this was.

This one was prob 40,40,20 …so almost half liking rare of the 3 , almost half liking prop of the 3 and pretty much 2 plp liking vanilla of the 3

So I of course used the plastic cups i had put on the table and poured 1 oz of each of the 3 in them so i could try them all side by side at the end of the night.(only 2 of us did this everyone else drank them all in the order they came)

5th beer of the tasting
Then I popped the 2009 BCS Bomber- Wow this was such a great beer. It really is in its prime right now. Got a good fudgey, carmel… even some vanilla notes in it. Still got a good amount of booziness to its aroma and taste. All around this was just a killer beer in the tasting and initially i thought it might be the most boring of the tasting. But a lot of us really loved this and it was a good spot to put the beer in the tasting!( Thanks @incubuscience )

6th and 7th beer of the tasting
I popped Bramble Rye and Backyard Rye.

Bramble- Well hands down the best nose of all the beers goes to BRAMBLE.. Man those blackberries and raspberries just pop you in the face coming out of your glass. I wanted to smell that glass all night. The taste was pretty close as well but a lot more muted fruit flavors than the aroma suggested. Just a nice chocolate fruity beer. with a hint of bozzieness. Almost felt like eating chocolate covered fruits while drinking on a nice port. I think Bramble though will only be good for about another year. I could detect just a hint of musty or falling off in the very back end of the beer when i drank it. But overall it was excellent.

BackYard- So this nose was way more subdued than the bramble. but the fruit was more bright and fresh. Which obviously makes sense. This beer the rye barrels really showed through in the taste and make this beer an excellent sipper. I would say the over all opinion was we liked the bramble more than the backyard but not by much and we would be happy with either

8th Beer of the night
I popped Cherry Rye. I could of done all 3 RYE beers together but the only reason I broke these up is I had Cherry rye at DLD last year and thought it was so cloy sweet that it might take away from the other beers.
But man was I wrong.. I mean I did have cherry rye out of the back of a guys backpack at DLD so i am sure it wasn't sitting at optimal temp when i had it.. haha

This beer tasted beautiful. like i was eating a cherry turnover next to a fire. Just a beautiful juicy cherry flavor with just the right amount of boozy heat to it. The rye barrels made this one have a good dryness to it. All around a pleasant almost dessert beer to me..

9th and 10th beers of the night
So I popped a 2011 BCS Coffee bomber to stay with the bomber theme and also to see how the coffee had held up. and I popped 2x 2013 BCS Coffee bottles. So we could have the fresh version to compare.

2011- Still a really good strong coffee aroma. The taste was just like the nose. Good roasted coffee flavor with a tiny bit of sweetness.. LIke a delicious cold cup of coffee.

2013- Basically no different than the 2011. We were so surprised how hard these two were to tell apart. Most if not all could b/c the 2013 did have a slightly brighter coffee nose and tasted like fresher coffee. But really 2011 and 2013 are basically drinking the same with little of no change. Which is good to know that you won't totally ruin the BCS coffee if it gets lost in your cellar for a couple years

So That concluded my BCS Variant Tasting. I didn't make everyone Right down all 10 in order of how they liked them but I did have them right down their 3 favorites of the night.

And here were the results.

9 of the 10 beers were listed on someones top 3 paper-Only beer that didn't appear was 2013 BCS. (I was pretty surprised to see 9 of the 10 beers show up. But thats the beauty of craft beer and tastes being subjective)

Bramble, Proprietors and Vanilla All tied with the most first place votes which was 2
Bramble got 1,1,2 Proprietors got 1,1,3 Vanilla got 1,1,3

RARE was the beer that got the MOST votes but surprisingly no first place votes- It got 5 votes total- 2 Third place votes and 3 Second place votes

As i said above coffee 11, coffee 13,Backyard, Cherry, and 2009 BCS all showed up on someones top 3 and some showed up more than once.

So I don't know if you declare RARE the winner since it showed up on the top 3 more than any other or whether you declare Bramble the winner as it got 2 First places votes and 1 second place vote. But either way all these beers where just FANTASTIC!

I and one other let them all warm up and Tried them all side by side and here is what I came up with after doing that.

My Top 3 were
1. Vanilla
2. Bramble
3. Rare/Prop/2009

Vanilla just got more creamy and more vanilla as it warmed up. It was just the best all around flavor for me that night.
Bramble has just such a great nose and just such a good juicy ,chocolate flavor that it had to rank 2nd. for me.
Rare after my initial taste against prop and vanilla in the early part of the night was already my least favorite of those 3. But as it warmed up the flavors really melded together and I really started to enjoy this as a sipper. But i still thought Prop with its grab coconut flavor and 2009 with its bag full of flavors bursting from it deserved to be in the race as well.

So they all tied for my top 3(But my real answer on my paper was RARE)


Then after all those we ended up popping BCS barley wine, King Henry and Gilgamesh.

So again I want to thank you all for your suggestions and help. I really was worried but some of your posts that I shouldn't pop these all in one night as we would all get wasted and our palates wrecked and we might have bottles left half full. But per your suggestions and for whatever reason I thought it was PERFECT. I never felt overwhelmed or anything.. Thats why I ended up popping those other 3 beers at the end of the night as I felt great.. Unlike sometimes at tasting where Im pretty full and my palate is shot after just an hr into the tasting.

But I think a combo of lots of water, good snacks and just taking our time everyone enjoyed themselves and loved the tasting! So again I appreciate all the feedback I got from this great community and I'll def. be on the look out to track down another Vanilla or just hope GI makes it again.

BTW a big shout out to @fredmugs who drove 100 miles to come to my tasting without even knowing me(actually we realized basically instantly that we were at the same KBS tasting last year) and who brought some awesome 4 elf beers for me as a thank you for hosting this tasting. What a nice guy.

Well Thanks again and sry for the loooooooooong post! Cheers

 

Had such a long post(Over 10,000 words and the limit is 10,000) I couldn't thank everyone I Wanted to thank so here it goes! Thanks to @jb3304 for the bramble vs backyard suggestion. Another big shout out to @incubuscience .. You took the time to put together a lengthy post and basically followed urs to a "T"
Thanks to @JamesShoemaker on the UNSALTED crackers.. Great suggestion
Thank to @fishmich on all around good info to take It slow and no palate cleansing beers!
Thanks to @myersk27 for all around good info and nailed it on the head with extra cups to taste the beers when they warmed up
Thanks to @0zzzie19 for reiterating having a regular BCS to refer back to
And last but not least a thanks to @rxeight for showing me what can happen if I don't heed all these people's advice! LOL.

Again I'm not saying my tasting turned out perfect and I would be naive to say towards the end of my tasting my taste buds were not a little effected .. But overall I thought I took the nessisary steps to make this a wonderfully successfull tasting! Thanks again everyone!