PASTE: Dark Lagers Blind-Tasted and Ranked

Yup one in the same, started online in 1998, started printing in 2002 they suspended print in mid 2010 and went online only.

 

I've picked up six packs of this while down in Maryland before, and enjoyed it.

 

See, I must have been indoctrinated into the late 20th century because all I can think of is copy and paste. (Sort of implies plagiarism, don't it? )

 

Over in the Armed White Claw Guy thread, I released that "on line" now means something different than it did when I was in grade school and we were doing those Atomic Bomb Drills.

"Charlie and Jessie, stop making stupid jokes about hearing the Commie jet planes and get on line and wait until it your turn to go find your knelling spot against the wall!"

 

All I remember is duck and cover. 'Course, we used the same drill for tornadoes and that's been disproved as effective too!

It's a wonder we reached the "golden age" of brewing.

 

Would have been cool if they got their hands on Notch's Černé Pivo.

 

That's a real top quality beer, imo.

Glad you enjoyed it, @FBarber !

 

Even cooler if I could get my hands on it .

 

Obviously there are many structural imperfections to these exercises, but I enjoy that no-name breweries tend to dominate these lists, and the big-name and heavily hyped breweries often don't fare very well. These are good reminders that there's a lot of great beers being made out there that get no attention and that a lot of the beers that get attention at sites like this one don't particularly deserve it on their own merits. I also like the embrace of hedonic (consumer-oriented) over style-based (producer-oriented) judgment criteria, although that does force the reader to judge the judges' palates.

 

From the article
“As in most of our blind tastings at Paste, the vast majority of these lagers were sent directly to the office by the breweries that choose to participate, ”

Smaller & lesser known breweries tend to dominate because they are more likely to provide free beers for these types of reviews.
They want the publicity, national exposure, and recognition to use in PR campaigns (Named one of the top 20 dark lagers by Paste magazine!); while larger and better known breweries don't need the exposure and don't want to take the chance their well-known beer gets beaten by some no-name.

 

It also somewhat validates those hyped beers as deserving of such hype when they do score well on these lists.