I know NOTHING about beer

I do think you made it more difficult by including ABV & vintage but by the scores, nobody got very many of the other categories correct. I would try it again with less beers [6 at most] and use style & beer name only. If you get the beer name correct, chances are you'll get the brewery correct since it's just a matter of knowing - not something you'll taste.

 

This sounds like a lot of fun.

 

I would think ABV and style would be the two easiest to get (not saying it would be easy, just the easiest of the categories). Brewery and beer name would be easier if you have had the beer before, but if not, that would be pretty tough. Vintage...thats damn near impossible, unless you have done extensive drinking of that particular beer and its vintages. I say hold your head up high with your 9!

 

I think vintage would be almost impossible, so I'd throw that one out. That being said, I think I would have trouble too. I can certainly recognize a stout, but can I blindly recognize the difference between one breweries stout and anothers? Man, that sounds hard.

 

We did a BMC blind tasting to see what we liked best and we also tried to guess what each beer out of the 17 was.

I got 2/17 right and the winner got 3/17 right. It was damn near impossible

PS Heinken lost (by a very large margin, it was voted worst across the board compared to beers like Natty Light, Bud Light, Ice House etc) and Tsingtao won (also voted unanimously best)

 

I would have scored lower.

That sounds like a crazy tough test.

 

For the vintage and abv (and maybe to a lesser extent, the style) did you have to get it exactly or was there leeway with how close you got? With that kind of scoring, I'm guessing it was either 1 or 0.

 

I'm not surprised at all. I've never done this with beers, but I've done something similar with wine (identify the grape, country, and vintage) and a ton of very experienced drinkers fail miserably. There are very few people with the kind of palate that can pick out specific elements and remember them from one sample to another without a ton of external clues. It's what makes our endless arguments about which beer is better than another very similar beer so ridiculous (but entertaining).

There are lots of studies and stories that back this up - the loyal Coors drinkers that couldn't identify their own brand, the sommeliers who couldn't tell white wine from red, foods that taste differently if they have been colored with food dye, etc. We rely so much on other elements to decide on what we're tasting. Personally, if I could pick out most of the styles I'd be proud of myself.

 

Sounds fun.

I'd do better, of course

That seems exceedingly difficult. I have been 100% guessing every beer in a 10 beer sampler, but that was with knowing what handles were being poured. Without knowing what you're choosing from, it would be really hard I think.

Edit: questions already answered.

 

how old are you? how long have you been drinking good beer? and yes I would smoked your but.

but seriously, I can detect ABV and the type of beer, style is well BS, and hell if the brewer made a porter and called it a black IPA I guess I would lose?

vintage, depends...maybe
brewery well no way
name whats a name mean,

sure certain well know to me beers I could pick out, but random beer no 1 can do that your just guessing. even beer judges know the style before they judge.

I call bs name the beer and maybe then. I mean i know a hefe from a quad, but an American pale from an English ipa?

oh 1 last point time reading BA forums means nothing.....I was drinking before most here were even born. not to mention PC computers.

 

what was the full list?

 

Should also mention that the overall winner (Cosmic "13.5% ABV wheat wine" Evan) could not have been more wrong on the first beer poured: Bruery Salt of the Earth, a gose.

To be fair, the test was set up by a crafty individual who purposefully chose some of the beers because they were poor examples of the style. The aforementioned gose and the Central Waters Satin Solstice come to mind.

IMO, the beer universe is too expansive to accurately guess brewery & beer name unless you just happen to have consumed that *exact* beer very recently, as Evan had with Burly Gourd. Still, I'm surprised how bad all of us were at guessing style, ABV, and (to a lesser extent) vintage. Fun times

 

We got guesses of Berliner Weisse & Wheatwine for the Gose. Those styles couldn't be more different. "Oh man, I can smell the booze!" .....

 

What was your list? And what did you get correct? This would be an extremely difficult test depending on the beers chosen. There are quite a few I would think I could pick out because of their unique taste, but with a lot of random beers out there would be tough.

 

but not taste the salt? to be to me fair I would need my so called standards for the style. plus how were they grouped? how did the test happen? so much more to know here....wheatwine who guesses that?

 

Pangaea had to have been the easiest one.

 

I was not involved but I will chime in. Seems like a lot of very specialized beers on this list, not ones that are classic examples of their style except JW Lees and Chimay. I would like to do a similar test with some more run of the mill offerings.