IPA Tasting Results

I hosted a blind IPA tasting at my house yesterday with some family and friends, which turned out great, so I figured I would share the results. We had 16 beers and did it tournament style where each person had thier own bracket to determine what thier favorite was. There were 14 judges total, and to determine the overall winner we collected each bracket at the end and awarded a point to a beer evertime it advanced a round. So if a beer only advanced to the elite 8 on a bracket, it got 1 point, if it only made it to the final four, it got 2 points, etc. The maximum points a beer could get, had everybody picked the same as thier favorite, was 56 points (4pts x 14ppl).

We also did Beer Trivia during the tasting (winner got a pint glass and bottle opener from Roc Brewing) and let people put money down on what they thought would be the overall winner before the tasting began (I was the only one that bet on the winner and ended up winning the $80). The whole tasting took about an hour and a half with each person drinking just under 3 beers during it. It was lot of fun, and really cool to see how different some of the IPA's were. Below are the results:

1. Ithaca Flower Power - 38 pts
2. Dogfish Head 60 minute - 33 pts
3(T). Lagunitas IPA - 18 pts
3(T). Bear Republic Racer 5 - 18 pts
4(T). 3 Heads the Kind - 14 pts
4(T). Founders Centennial - 14 pts
5(T). Firestone Walker Union Jack - 12 pts
5(T). Troegs Perpetual IPA - 12 pts
6. Anderson Valley Hop Ottin - 10 pts
7(T). Victory Hop Devil - 9 pts
7(T). Green Flash IPA - 9 pts
8(T). Stone IPA - 7 pts
8(T). Southern Tier IPA - 7 pts
9. Great Divide Titan - 6 pts
10. Custom Brewcrafters Caged Alpha Monkey - 4 pts
11. Smuttynose IPA - 3 pts

 

Yeah I was suprised about Smuttynose too, but it ended up being paired against Flower Power in the first round which didn't help it.

 

I tried to pick year round available IPA's that were relatively easy to find here, and that I tended to buy somewhat regularly. So basically if you could get it anytime of year at Wegmans I tried to include it.

 

No idea if they were all fresh. I assigned each person that was coming a six pack to bring. Asking them to check the dates and buy nothing older than a month would have made it a bit too complicated. Firestone just started shipping here in the spring, and that one was bought at great little beer store that has a lot of turnover and little inventory, so I'm betting that was pretty fresh. It made it to the final four on my bracket where it lost to Green Flash.

 

Yeah it was cool to see where some of these stacked up for me. For trivia, we had a diverse crowd. Some home brewers, some big craft beer drinkers, and some who just knew they liked IPA's. So i tried to mix it up with hard ones, easier ones, local ones, and questions you could just guess at. The winner ended up getting 6 right. For a tie breaker I was going to have them write as many of the top 20 craft breweries by volume as they could. Here is what I came up with:

1. What country makes the strongest commercially available beer in the world?
2. The original Reinheitsgebot, or German Beer Purity Law, only allowed three ingredients to be used in the production of beer. What were they?
3. Pabst Beer became Pabst Blue Ribbon after it won a blue ribbon at the 1893's worlds fair. Name the city the fair was held in.
4. What is the oldest brewery still operating in North America?
5. Only 2 of the 16 beers in this tasting have ever won a medal at the Great American Beer Festival since the IPA category was introduced in 1989. Name one.
6. True of False: Ben Franklin said "Beer is proof that God loves us and want's us to be happy."
7. What is the most widely used hop variety by craft breweries in the united states?
8. The new Genesee Brew house Restaurant and Bar at the Genesee Brewery almost didn't happen due to issues with the demolition of an old building at the site. What was the name of the brewery that last used that building?
9. Rohrbach's, Rochesters oldest craft brewery, opened in 1992 in the city of Rochester. What was the Rochester neighborhood it was originally located in?
10. Which country brewed the original IPA?