10 Year KBS Vertical

Well, your tongue and sense of taste will decrease the more you drink, I would suggest if you want to taste all years at once start out with shotglass sized pours, and I myself would start with the oldest and work my way newest so as to pick up the subtitle flavors of the oldest and get a sense of the beers evolution through the years.

This is also a little left field, but I always like to have a little "warmup beer" of something very light (I'm talking Coors here) to prime your tastebuds. Kind of contradictory I know (the more you drink, the less you taste, so why drink garbage before the tasting), but in the past I haven't enjoyed verticals coming in with a cold palette as much as ones where there was an apartif of something light beforehand.

 

Do it with a group and do it blind...sometimes bottles change, sometimes they don't We had a 12 year old Magnum bottle of Fred from hair of the dog and a new Magnum...luckily he brought three bottles.

One of the 12 year old bottles was more oxidized and people didn't care for it...I personally drank it to excess to get effect. However the second bottle that was aged 12 years had remarkably...not really changed much at all and the new bottle was quite similar to the aged bottle.

Now if it were me I'd have a friend be the pooring person and make 3-5 ounce tasters put identifying marks on the glasses...white tape, blue tape etc...

have the assitant not tell you which is which then let the panel decide which color holds preference.

Of course it might be obvious and some might say "well this oxidized character makes it better" or vice a versa.

 

Invite a lot of friends over !

 

Yeah, I'd invite a lot of friends; otherwise, you're in for a long day (maybe two)...I've been pretty underwhelmed from aging experiments with KBS. I've always found it to be better fresh.

 

Personally, trying to taste and compare 10 beers that will have only a small variance is too much to expect from my tastebuds. Have you considered doing an odd year or even year vertical? 5 beers, each having a 2-year difference in age might show you more variance between each tasting while not completely losing your sense of smell/taste by the end. Bonus...you can do another vertical with the remaining ones later.

 

make sure you don't do this with too many people, you'll need 2-3 oz to tell the difference if the changes are minimal. Let us know how it goes, I'd love to see your notes.

 

Take notes, have one each week for the next 10 weeks. I dont think it matters whether you go from latest batch to 10 years ago or from 10 years ago to 2017.

 

Tips and pointers?
Yeah invite me to your place and I'll help you drink'em.

 

Did your vertical tasting ever happen?

Interested in the general results, for another data point in the "fresh vs. aged" debate with KBS.

 

I forget it is released early in Michigan.
For most of us it's still over 5 months out