Hello, friends. I've been thinking about organizing a blind tasting with some beer friends, but I have multiple questions regarding execution. For those that have held blind tastings, is there a drastic disparity between how well each beer style can be executed in a blind tasting format? Is it easier to taste through a flight of all BA non-adjunct stouts, saisons, BA vanilla stouts, BA barleywines, IPAs, etc? I fully understand that one's palate will get trashed quite easily based on (over)consumption, but is there a breaking point where the palate is just too fatigued, regardless of serving size, after five or six different bottles? Or is more mental fatigue if we're keeping taster pours quite small for the initial try? Any thoughts shared regarding previous attempts at blind tastings and what works best are much appreciated. Have a great day.
Have water, dry bread and cracker between tastings, and more importantly take your time and a break between tastings. Most importantly don't overthink it and have fun with it.
Depends on your goal. Are you interested in choosing a favorite among different examples of one style or are you just looking to have fun and maybe be surprised? If you're looking to narrow down favorites, I'd recommend one person pour them and label the tasters with tape or sticky notes. Allow people to try 'em all at once so there there isn't as much fatigue or bias on early/late offerings. Go mild to strong if you can. Not necessarily just alcohol, but flavor profile. If you're just having fun and looking to surprise yourself - just put everything in paper bags and cover the caps with electrical tape. Have people grab items at 100% random. You can play games like trying to guess the beer, guess the style, guess the ABV, etc. or just simply make notes whether you like something or not.
Drinking blind is so much fun. Especially with black glasses because we actually do taste a lot with our eyes. My game is to ask my wife to pour me one into a black glass and I just have fun trying to pick out different flavors. It’s amazing how much more you can taste and pick out. I guess what I’m saying is having a pourer who is not participating makes it a lot easier too.
I've done two to date, but both were lighter styles (Oktoberfest [including Maerzen and Festbier] and American Adjunct Lager). I posted both to this site (I have linked to them in the previous sentence, where you can read my process and methodology, which is nowhere near perfect, of course). As such, I can offer a few tips. First, of course it is easier to taste though more delicate styles than heavier styles due to both alcohol fatigue and palate fatigue. In my tastings (with two people), I usually limited myself to six beers per heat (this creates its own problems in that you aren't tasting everything against everything else at once, but it's not really feasible to do it another way without having multiples of everything and doing multiple passes). With stronger-flavored beers (IPAs, anything imperial, anything BA, sours), I would probably limit myself to four, but if you have plenty of water and some oyster crackers or saltines, you can probably do six. Second, if you have someone not involved to pour everything in the same glassware, this will simplify the set-up immensely. If not, get several of the same cups/glasses, tape and number the bottoms, pour and record the numbers, and have someone else shuffle them around. Some prefer opaque glassware to avoid any visual bias (darker stouts, hazier IPAs, etc.), but I like to see my beers. Third, I don't know how many people you're having in your tasting, but I found in mine that even the 6oz. that I would normally get (with two of us) was barely enough to give each beer a fair shake. If you're thinking of doing less than that (like a 12oz. separated between more than two people), I think you will be shortchanging yourselves and the beers, but obviously more power to you to do whatever you want. Ultimately, the results are for you, and they aren't completely invalid with even a very small pour as the only samplings. Fourth and finally, if you're doing difficult to acquire beers, it's going to be hard to do a heat system like I did (where I take the top two from each heat and retest them in championship round to crown an ultimate champion), so unless you can get multiples of the heat-winning beers, my advice there is to find a new system that works for you or to pare each tasting down to only six (or fewer) entries so you can crown a champion in one go. I hope that you'll post your findings here, whatever they may be and however you come by them! I greatly enjoy reading blind tasting reports. Just remember to have fun, and don't be surprised when you come out with a whole new perception of the beers you tasted.
I do these pretty often with family where two or three of us are participating. Our go to is flights of 3 or 4 beers at a time in 4oz pours. I’m a big fan of tasters and flights anywhere I visit. Rarely do I feel like I need more than 4oz to assess a beer and can get the barometer of whether I’d like more or don’t even want to finish the 4oz. Typically we buy 6-8 beers of same style and then my wife who doesn’t really drink is the pourer. She picks randomly the 3-4 beers and pours while logging the order. After two flights this way we then put the top rated ones or whatever was in bombers into a final flight with an ultimate winner. My best advice is pick the serving size well. To me, 6oz or more is too much. You can’t get through enough beers to make it interesting before people get drunk / full and especially with these gatherings people often need to drive home. And 2oz is so small it’s hard to get enough out of that. You can crank through a ton of beers but at a point having 15+ little tasters in an evening can make everything blur together into a mess.
I have yet to conduct blind tastings with a group but I have conducted communal taste evaluations. My suggestions: How many beers to evaluate in one sitting? My suggestion is to limit it to something like 6 beers. In my opinion anything more than this leads to fatigue – both palate fatigue but just general interest (mental?) fatigue as well. Quantity per pour My suggestion is that the pour amount be a minimum of 6 ounces. Some beers can ‘evolve’ over time as the beer warms a bit and the beer ‘opens up’. In my opinion anything less than 6 ounces will not support this ‘effect’. I suppose the best advice I can give here is to have some fun and do not get overly serious about this event. At one communal taste evaluation I caught myself mid-way through being a bit too ‘instructive’. I stopped myself at that point since IMO everybody should enjoy themselves; it is drinking beer after all!! Cheers
I've seen both opinions offered on AT LEAST six ounces and NO MORE than four/six ounces and I'm wondering if it has everything to do with the progression of the beer and giving it a fair shake? One can progress a tasting in many ways, but I'm wondering if a slightly modified version of utilizing heats for a beer style would make some sense...starting with four, five or six beers at two or three ounces served cold - running through blind and rating, then progressing to the last two or three ounces fairly warmed and rating again (double blind if you will). This would identify winners at cold temperatures and warm temperatures. While I'm not entirely sure that the beer would change so significantly to move the same beers up or down in rank, tasting the nearly room temperature beers blindly might yield some surprises or reinforce a winning beer. Great ideas and feedback, gents - thank you. The easy answer would be to do several blind tastings and perhaps several different ways to see what works best. Twist my arm.
To be honest I think that 12 ounces is the best serving size for beer evaluation. It comes down to the aspect of the beer 'opening up' over a drinking experience. The serving size of 6 ounces is a compromise solution from my perspective; this permits more beers to be evaluated in a given taste evaluation setting. Cheers!
