116 Beer IPA Blind Taste Test

Personal blind taste test yielded White Rajah in front of 6 other regionals (including Zombie Dust, which I know they classify as APA). ZD came at #2.

 

I visited family in Cleveland last year and made a trip to a local store to pick up some beer to bring home. The one that the beer guy raved about and sold me on was White Rajah, and boy was he right. Thrilled to see The Brew Kettle get some major love!

 

I'm sure everyone's going to jump on the rankings, but my biggest issue is with 51-116. Why put them in random order? Why not alphabetical order of brewery? Why not actually rank them? Someone should be fired over this.

 

I think the problem with this is how are you gonna get fresh HopSlam, Abrasive, Unsessionable, The Crusher just to name a few. You can't. So these ratings are limited just like the IPA one.

 

Loose Cannon surprises me. Not saying it's garbage, but #7? Can't see myself walking by too many of those behind Loose Cannon in order to drink it instead.

 

I went all the way to Birmingham to try some Snake Handler and never even got Good Peoples regular IPA. Now I want to go try it, it doesnt have a solid BA ranking.

 

I felt the same when I saw Centennial IPA.

 

No Susan No Care

 

An interesting article and contest. The fact they conducted the taste test blind is worthwhile.

Cheers!

 

I love White Rajah and Black Rajah maybe a little more. The fact that these "experts" had to look it up doesn't give me a lot of confidence. Having said that I think I'll give Loose Cannon another chance.

 

White Rajah really is a great IPA.

 

They should do a blind IPA contest with 279 entries and and rated by a professional judge panel to determine the top 3.

Oh wait, it's called GABF.

https://www.greatamericanbeerfestival.com/the-competition/winners/

 

interesting stuff...disappointed they didnt have descender from Goodlife or Overboard from Big Island...those are two of my favorite IPAs.

Everything else that is at the top end of my IPA ratings was in the top (Sculpin, RPM, Union Jack) finished in the top 20...

All of the beers in the top 25 that I have had I also really liked with the exception of the Stone Delicious IPA which I enjoyed but was not all that excited about and Centennial which I was underwhelmed by.

 

White Rajah is a fantastic IPA. That said, it didnt even place in the top 3 in an all Ohio blind IPA tasting. Viva Hoof Hearted! Some awesome hoppy stuff going on here, not to mention GABF winners Hop Juju, Creeper, and Bodhi.
http://artfulpint.com/2014/11/03/ce...augural-king-ohio-ipa-championships-columbus/

 

Well, one ‘advantage’ of the Paste exercise is that they purchased the IPAs. They did mention that they weren’t successful in obtaining all of the IPAs they would have liked to taste test: “If you want to know why any specific beer isn’t present (Hill Farmstead? The Alchemist?), then please, by all means consult that post, but know that the answer boils down to: “We probably tried to get it, and they don’t ship beer as a rule or don’t want to participate in tastings and rankings.” Trust us, we’d love to have every IPA on the face of the Earth, but instead we simply had to settle for most of the IPAs on the face of the Earth.”

The ‘challenge’ with the GABF is that it depends on breweries paying an entrance fee and sending their beers for competition. Not every brewery wants to make this effort (i.e., pay money) so the GABF is not an encompassing competition. Yeah, the number 279 is a larger value than 116 but Paste was able to tailor their taste testing to the perceived ‘better’ beers since they were willing to pay the money. The other advantage of the Paste competition is that we know the names of all 116 participants. The only names we know from the GABF are the three medal winners; we have zero insight into the overall competition.

I found this fairly telling from the article:

“In reality, we enjoyed almost every one of these beers on some level—from about #100 onward, we’re talking about solid American craft beers that we would happily drink at just about any time.”

I would be interested in knowing whether the GABF judges would state the same for the top 100 of the beers they taste tested.

Cheers!

 

Actually the GABF panels are not professional judges and in fact are selected in much the same way as most of the judges mentioned in the article.

 

If you were to drink 116 different IPAs over a period of a few weeks, even in small portions, as the judges here did, your palate would be bound to evolve over the course of that sampling. IPAs you drank just days ago would influence your tastes and preferences going forward. Even many IPA aficionados who seek a variety of examples of the style will take several years or more to try 116 different IPAs. I think this is a really interesting exercise, but the inevitable palate evolution makes comparisons and rankings extremely difficult and arguably moot.

 

Right on. Most all these beers were pre-selected for the competion by having some sort of good reputation already.