Oktoberfest Tasting Party

This Saturday I hosted an Oktoberfest Party, and during the party I had a blind Oktoberfest tasting. We worked it by having 16 people sign up to do the tasting, and each individual had to bring a 6 pack (or equivilant) of the Oktoberfest beer of their choice which they posted on the event page to make sure nobody else brought the same one.

Letters were randombly assigned to each without the tasters knowing which was which, and then beers were poured into marked cups and brought out two at a time (so A and B, then C &D, etc) until all the beers on the bracket had been served. Tasters worked thier way through thier bracket until they had gotten it down to thier favorite, and then they turned it in for scoring.

To determine the groups overall favorite, everytime a beer advanced a round, it got 1 point. To keep people entertained while beer was being served (as if beer wasn't enough) we also did Oktoberfest Trivia. We gave out a prize to the trivia winner and the person who brought the winner of the tasting.

Now I realize this isn't the best way to determine the complete order of favorite beers, and some beers will get screwed by getting paired against most peoples favorite in the first round. But it will give you what your favorite beer is, what the groups favorites were, and its a hell of a lot of fun. So with that in mind, below were the results of our tasting in order, as well as the point totals:

1. Spaten - 30
2. New Glarus - 24
3. Blue Point - 23
4. Sam Adams - 20
5. Ayinger - 19 (this was my favorite)
6(T). Genesee(Dundee) - 17
6(T). Saranac - 17
8. Great Lakes - 16
9. Rohrbachs - 13
10(T). Sly Fox - 12
10(T). Victory - 12
12. The Lost Borough - 11 (my friend just started this brewery and entered his)
13. Hacker-Pschorr - 9
14. Yuengling - 7
15. Ellicotville - 5
16. Otter Creek - 3 (went against Spaten in the first round. Poor fella)