IPA tasting advice?

Decent white bread or crackers, water, time. Go from light/mild (low IBU, abv, no roast malt) to high. With +/- 2 oz pours you can probably get through about 10 before your palate starts to fade too much. Have everybody rate the entire flight and then chose the top beers and have everydoby rate them to choose and agree on 1, 2, 3. That will help to adjust for palate changes from those evaluated at the beginning and those evaluated on the end. Having a small meal between the first round and the second to settle on the best also helps.

 

My understanding is that SHC will be brewed again in June/July 2015.

Cheers!

 

If you want to get real dorky go the the BJCP web page and get some of their beer scoresheets (www.bjcp.org/compcenter.php) or even use the scoring proecdures used here and on a 1-50 scale get people to try to agree within 5 to 10 points. Blind tastings are also a good idea.

 

I would definitely split this into two or even three different tastings. If you had all of those in one session at least half of them would be lost in the weeds due to palate fatigue / wipeout.

 

Not sure you would want to introduce more booze into the equation, but I always found a nice American wild ale, or Flanders red to be the perfect palate cleanser to sip between tastes of other beers. Incorporating sours into flights is actually what got me into the style.

 

Unsalted Crackers, a non hoppy Porter in between or water (for the weak) and fresh coffee grounds. Coffee grounds help to reset your nasal palate. For that many IPAs I'm guessing there's a few heads that will be tasting these?

 

Gotta echo @JackHorzempa here, split them up for more than one evening tasting, maybe at least 3 tasting events.

If you open all 15 of those on one night, order is basically irrelevant after about the first 3-4 (assuming you do in fact use water and unsalted snacks between).

 

If your going to do it, the best advice you'll ever get is to try the less flavorful beers first because after you have some big bad palate wrecker you're not even going to be able to taste the subtleties of a lesser beer. although ABV is certainly not the final word on flavor potency....without putting in too much work it would be easiest to just start with the lowest alcohol content and work your way up....this will not be perfect mind you but a lot better than just going in random order... becsuse unless you've had all these beers before you will not know how to order them... also strongly agree with the posts above.. such a delicious list of beers should be enjoyed over a longer period of time... or multiple days ideally.. I tried something similar a few times and it's just not the same as having one or two beers a night... something definitely gets lost towards the end..but then again there's definitely something fun about having that many excellent beers in one night also!

 

Start with Boat end with Heady

 

Fresh is the problem and the key here, Neshaminy hasn't been around forever, and the next batch will be released in July. If they're not all say under 30 days, doesn't count, fresh ipas will always trump 4-5 month old brews.

 

How many people in the tasting? That's how I generally determine # of beers to open regardless of intensity of flavors. I like to have hard cheeses (parmigiano, pecorino, asiago, etc.) between flights as well as crusty bread and good olive oil. The cheese especially helps with palate fatigue and the flavors of hard cheese don't coat your mouth the same way as softer cheeses. I also like to have cured meats out because the saltiness just goes with so many beers.

 

Be sure to share the tasting results on another post.

Have fun!

 

Damn man, that's an epic list. My suggestion, start early. And make sure everyone is clear that it probably won't ever get better than that day. Well done sir.

 

After reading I was thinking of something similar but low in ABV. Maybe a berliner weisse, gose, or pilsner to use as a palate cleanser. Water is always good but doesn't necessarily wipe the palate clean all the time. Contrasting flavors can also bring out different flavors that you may not have noticed otherwise. I've never done an IPA tasting but of all the beer styles I would think that it would be the hardest. I would take advice of other BAs and maybe split it up into different days. And of course have fun.