Digging into the cellar and hosting a couple of nights of barrel aged beer tastings for a few friends. As we all know, some beers are just more flavorful and complex than others. As we also all know, our taste fades the more intoxicated we get. So, my question is... Should I line up the more subtle beers first with the hopes that the more flavorful beers will still shine later in the evening. Or let the big beers fly up front and maybe the others will still hold up to their potential?
The former. If you're worried about wasting the beers then cut back on what you plan on opening. (When I saw the thread title, I thought this was going to be about a tasting on BeerAdvocate/BA.)
Try to do some math on the amount of people and amount of beer, plus maybe ABV. You said multiple evenings, so it truly wouldnt hurt to try heavy to light (with plenty of palate cleansers) and another evening of light to heavy. I tend to drink many brand new tries on a 100% beer free palate. People definitely hit a wall at some point. Have you drank with these people before. 10 beers tops is usually our limit, at least for palate fatique sake. So you can definitely try to combo in the low ABV with the high, if that even exists with BA beers lol. Lastly, are you thinking of doing this blindly at all? Or just a tried and true sampling? It would likely not hurt to drink some of the higher rated ones at the beginning some days, and at the end the other. I sort of feels like cheating. But I do that sometimes. Going blindly, you might not know when you are having the "amazing" beer"
As already mentioned, you want to go from least impact on the palate to most impact on the palate. Putting the strongly flavored beers first has a bigger carry over effect and makes the palate less senstive so the lighly flavored beers will suffer by comparison. Be sure to allow some time between beers to help palate recovery. (I also assume you don't want a bunch of drunks leaving your party to drive home.) During that drinking and break time have plenty of water (as mentioned above) available and any food should consist of unsalted crackers or pretzels since salt is a palate changer not a palate cleanser. If you plan on serving food do so after the tasting is over so folks both have time to discuss which beer they liked best and also spend some time letting the effects of alcohol wear off a bit. Don't fill the evening with too many beers, after about 4-5 you're just wasting your beer because of the accumulated effects on the palate of the earlier beers. Have fun!
You said a couple of nights. Why not feature a heavy hitter each night? Maybe two. If I were to set up a multiple night BA tasting, I'd set up each night to go from least complex to most complex, with the most complex really being the heavy hitter. How many beers are you planning on trying total? How many tastings are you hosting? Even if the most flavorful, heavy hitting beer is last, it still may be drowned out by soaked taste buds. That's why I'd aim to only feature one or two of the really incredible BA stouts each night.
Get some brown bags, add numbers, and pour them blind. Reveal at the end of the night. Score sheets/"guess each beer" = optional.
Thanks guys. It's only going to be 4-5 people including myself. I can usually finish a 15% bomber in a long evening, so I was thinking approximately 1 bottle per person. But I have some big Bruery beers to choose from as well. I can always cut off the last bottle and roll it over to the next night. I like the blind taste test option. But only two of us are really familiar with big named beers. So the others might be lost.
Well part of this will depend on how rare these beers are. If you have SR-71 and Good Morning and Assassin in your list, definitely dont put those at the end of the night when you are already drunk off of Dragon's Milk. Blind tastings are fun to do. I've done a couple with friends. We usually had about 15 beers and broke them up into 2 or 3 sets. In each set we had a small amount of each, and at the end of all of it we revealed everything and then drank from the bottles we individually liked most.
