Has anyone here done a blind tasting?

Line your hyped beers up and get going. I insist everyone do a blind tasting at least once a year.

There are different types of blinds that I do. Am I doing a 'best by the book's test or maybe a preference test?

Years ago, I remember lining up pte, blind pig, HT, a few hyped local beers, and some shelf beers. The question for us, what beer did we prefer or like best? The majority could not find validating preference for the out of town hard to find beers. They were not worlds better.

Other times well do a Oktoberfest type tasting. One or two of us will state loudly and proudly that we love a certain brand and that we can guess it correctly. 8 times out of 10, the beer we thought we preferred was a different beer. It's eye opening stuff.

We want to do a craft lager-pilsner/macro lager/import lager preference tasting. It would be stunning and save us tons of money if we found out that we like Hamm's over a craft lager- that is priced 3 times higher.

Too many people are on a high horse on preference tastings. How can I like such swill?

 

This is a problem I have as a beer judge. The palate is affected by what has been drunk previously and water/cracker biscuits only go so far to cleanse it.
This is generally with low ABV beers, it must be even more difficult if judging stronger one's.

 

I feel like blind tastings are a great way to see if your perceived favorites are really your favorites. They're obviously also a good way to see if hype is warranted. At least assuming the beers are properly cared for.
Over the years I've discovered many beers were and weren't worth the hype and I've also found many new favorite beers, too.

 

Yup, we as human beings have our biases and only by drinking the beers blind can this aspect be eliminated.

Cheers!

 

Yes.
Picking out a specific beer is amazingly effing difficult.

 

Blind test for beers is a great exercise for the senses, by looking the beer appearance, smell and taste without know the style and label, is great to develop your critic sense and learn the difference between styles.

 

I've never done a true blind tasting, but one evening, after listening to a friend boast about his sensitive palate, I made him close his eyes and poured the same beer into two glasses for him. Try it sometime!

 

I know a lot of hype beer drinkers who end up ONLY drinking hype products. If their egos can take it, I suggest all of them to give some samplings a blind try, and throw in regional mainstays and core brews.

I think so many are afraid their palates either can't tell them apart or they actually like a shelfie.

I do have a question for hype drinkers. If that's all drink, where is your baseline? I think we all need a proper baseline.

 

What blind tastings show is that most of us really aren't great tasters.

 

Did a blind tasting of a Hunahpu vertical (12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17) 2 years ago. We didn't have enough snifters to go around so we ended up using wine glasses too. I used a dry erase marker and marked the glasses 1-6, with only me knowing what was in each one. We went through each glass with everyone talking about what they smelled and tasted. Everyone had to take notes and at the end of the tasting I had everyone mark their top 3 years. After I counted everything up, 14 ended up having the most #1 votes and winning as the best year for hunahpu. Don't remember what year came in 2nd and 3rd. Need to find my notes on that.

What really surprised me about the blind tasting was how different each year was. One year had a more chocolate taste to it, while another year had a more pronounced chilly flavor and was spicier, and yet another a more front forward cinnamon taste. I was not expecting each year to be so drastically different when it's made with the same ingredients. The 14 won I think because it was more balanced with all the flavors coming through and not being dominated by a particular one.