Blind IPA taste test design

1. Control for freshness - try to get dates as close together as possible
2. Control for style - ignore APA, IPA, DIPA designations however if ABVs are very close. Sorry Zombie Dust, you are an IPA.
3. Break up into brackets or different days to avoid palate fatigue.
4. Have fun!

 

few suggestions:

1) make sure its a double-blind tasting

2) make sure glassware is clean for each round, and same glass is used for all beers

3) make sure all beers were packaged within a week of each other, but no fresher than less than one week old (reason being hop decay is half-life oriented)


cheers

 

I did a Hefeweizen and an IPA tasting with my friends one night and the former worked much better than the latter. All the IPAs started to taste the same after a while, as you might imagine. If I were to do it again I would definitely have some palate cleansers on hand between pairings. Like maybe pretzels or something. That being said, I think tournament style is a great idea. But I am also curious how you plan on making it a completely blind tasting with a mixture of bottles, cans, and growlers?

 

Palate cleansers!!!!!! You won't be able to taste anything past the first beer without it. Pretzels work great.

 

Have everyone use the same scoring system. I prefer a 0-10 scale, with decimals, or 0-100, with no decimals. Makes the math easy. Have every body take the 5 basic aspects used here on BA into account: Looks (does it look right?), Scent, Taste, body, and overall execution. I like to throw something of a curveball into IPA tstingsby adding a SNPA into the mix, as that's my baseline IPA. Have fun!

 

Now that sounds like a fun weekend. I'd be interested to see how it turns out and what you guys think is the best.

 

Sounds good. I hope you will post the winners of the tasting once it is completed

 

Definitely agree with the first part- plus lots and lots of water (especially with IPAs).

I'm not so sure about the pretzels, unless you use the unsalted variety. Plain unsalted crackers are also very good.

Just keep in mind that carry-over flavors can usually be a big problem; if there are hop oils lingering on the palate then it becomes even tougher to give the next beer a fair shake.

Personally, I can't imagine doing this many IPAs, so take it slow if you do. Here's hoping it's a success.

 

Invite me.

And please post results. If you do all of these I am very curious of the overall rankings for each of them. Also you mentioned bracket. Is this going to been known by all drinkers what beer vs what beer? The reason i ask is that may leave some bias either by popularity or by the fact that you feel obligated to vote for the higher "rated" beer. Blind might be the best way to go.

 

Yes, meant to say unsalted.

 

I prefer an easy ranking format. Have people pick their top 3 in order. Maybe also the worst 3, or least liked 3.

Results are interesting sometimes, especially if you do as I do and throw in some Sam Adams examples that people end up raving about when drinking blindly. Same goes for surprises one way or the other with local beers.

 

Can i come? i have done a few blind taste tests with IPAs before with friends and here is how i did it. Pick 4-5 beers, then have everyone taste them. Everyone puts them in order from favorite to least favorite, award 5 (or 4) points to favorite, and 1 point to least favorite and add up all the totals to find the cumulative winner. Since you have a huge list here, maybe do single elimination, then narrow it down to everyones 4 favorite beers. Then do a "semi final" round, score them 4,3,2,1 and add up the points. Clearly everyone will probably not pick all the same beers for their 4 favorite, but i predict that most of you will have a somewhat similar final 4. Excited to see the results!

 

My tasting group has stopped doing its annual IPA tasting due to inability to taste them after the first few. Ten IPA in there is no possibility of tasting properly. Not IPA, not anything. We palate cleanse, and take it slow, and it doesn't matter.

I recommend doing this as a gradual thing. One day do four of them. Take the winner and put it into another group of four on another day, etc.