One beer to represent 'Merica

Now I'm curious, what are the simple things that can be done to eliminate the biases?

 

Have somebody serve you a beer totally blind; zero knowledge of beer brand or country of origin.

Cheers!

 

In an ideal world 'One Beer which should define 'Merica' is Dogfish Head 120 Min IPA.

 

For judging at competitions or as an individual to reduce/eliminate biases at the personal level when making evaluative judgments?

 

I'm just going to leave this here

 

I'd say

Budweiser or PBR

When SuperBowl comes on, are people really drinking craft beers? What about the 4th of July? Or any other American Holiday

Haha

 

I think 120 minute more represents the state of Kentucky....harsh and boozy

 

Anchor Steam. THE first American made craft beer.

 

SNPA, do doubt.

 

i can't believe how many of you are picking budweiser to represent America in a 'best beer in the world' competition.

 

Seeing as I'm currently vacationing on the Delmarva peninsula and was drinking a namaste when I typed that, it seemed so obvious I can't believe I missed it.

 

Both?

 

A quick rough set of ideas.

In competitions like the GABF most all the safeguards are already in place. But the problem is that they have to pick no more than one winner of the gold, no more than one for the silver and no more than one for the bronze. So even after one or more elimination rounds that get rid of the beers that don't fit the style criteria well there still may be too many candidates left and the choice becomes pretty much random. So it would help us more if they would list all the finalists since then we'd know which were in the running. (Here is where the limitation of the competition in picking a beer to drink becomes most meaningful. Lots of worthy beers don't get mentioned because people focus on the medal winners.)

At a personal level some things to try include making up a shopping list of several beers that are all above your minimum threshold of willingness to drink and buy a lot at once. That makes it easier to forget what you may have paid for a particular bottle. (e.g., I currently have about 50 or more different beers in the basement, some for drinking soon and some to be cellared, and honestly could not tell you how much I paid per bottle.)

Avoid as much as possible a one-and-done approach to reviewing/evaluating beers. If you review where ever possible go for the 3rd bottle of a 4 pack or 6 pack so you get familiar with the beer before hand and have a chance to re-evaluate your judgment following the review.

If you can find someone to help you can do blind tasting of multiple beers at once. e.g., a while back I had a tasting party which included 6 quads, 5 from Belgium and 1 from the US. They maintained at a standard common temperature and were poured and served in random order and nobody drinking/rating/evaluating them knew which beer they were taking notes on, etc. Let to an interesting time when the results were discussed....

If you want to decide which of two beers you prefer or think is better, use the triangle test mentioned above. This is where you have help from someone and have three samples in front of you. You personally have no idea what is in each glass. Two of the glasses have the same beer and the third is the other beer. From that set of three you pick the one which is different/or that you like the best. Repeat this several times and change up which beer appears as the solo sample. After several tests if one beer doesn't stand out they are basically both good (or bad ).

There's more but that would get us into statistics and an exploration of reseach methodology that doesn't fit here.

 

Victory just says they rebranded and doesn't say anything about changing the recipe.

http://www.victorybeer.com/news/victory-brewing-company-shares-reserved-beloved-pennsylvanians/

I prefer the Stoudts Gold over the Victory Helles when I can find it. Haven't yet seen the Devil's Backbone or the Penn versions.

 

I thought Victory was now Krausening their Helles.

 

There was a lot of talk about the 'new' version here on BA about a year ago, and I thought that it was also confirmed by some Victory employees. I'm not sure of how official it was beyond that, though.

 

If they are I've not seen any public mention of it. Got a pointer?

 

All I've seen so far was what was on the web site so I missed that thread. Have a pointer or a couple of key words that might bring it up in a search?

 

http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/victory-alley-brewing-co-lager.102095/#post-1499520

Seems unconfirmed at this point (unless the person who posted knows more than I/we do and/or works for Victory), but this is where I got it from. Looks like it doesn't correspond to the new labeling at any rate, so looks like I'm wrong. My bad.

 

Thanks, had just found that and was getting ready to post the same link. Note that it is dated 13 Jul, 2013 which is basically two years ago and I think was before the rebranding to Helles Lager.

Note: Also I think that unknown poster is talking about being told by someone at Victory that the krausening was begun about three years before the post. (Which is definitely before the rebranding :-).)