Beer Tasting Event
Yesterday I had the pleasure of participating in a beer tasting with the St. Louis members of the Beer Advocate forum. We all gathered at one of the member’s house, each bearing some sort of unique beer. We hid the beers, so that no one else knew what we had brought. Then two people snuck them into the kitchen and concealed the bottles for a blind tasting. They would bring out glasses of each beer, and everyone would taste them, and write little notes on paper. Then the next round would appear, and more sniffing, swirling, and subsequent drinking occurred. We had bottled water and some delicious bread to cleanse our palate between rounds.
For this event we were specifically tasting stouts. There were some excellent offerings, and a few surprises. Among my favorites were the Bell’s Stout, and the Stone Imperial Stout. There was an Alaskan Smoked Stout that tasted far too much like bacon for its own good (though it doesn’t actually contain bacon), and a fairly bland oatmeal stout.
After the blind tasting, we tried to guess which beer went with which bottle, with limited success. However, the process was quite educational. The results were interesting too, and it was good to compare results. We had one man who had never really enjoyed beer before (simply because he hadn’t had beer since college, and it was cheap crappy beer), but was very into wine tasting. He wanted to participate so he could get a good start at finding some good beers. We enjoyed his impressions, and he enjoyed the entire event, feeling like he got a good reentry to the world of beer. We also had some members who are extremely accomplished beer tasters, who produced some very detailed notes.
After the stouts, we had dinner. Our hosts had prepared a fabulous vegetarian chili that was quite surprising. Normally I don’t like chili, even vegetarian chili, but this was very good. I’m going to pester him for the recipe.
More beer was tasted after dinner, with the style limitation removed. We sampled Stone’s Ruination and the Hop Rod Rye, both of which are fairly ‘extreme’ beers in terms of hoppiness. The Ruination was more like crazy hop tea, but the Hop Rod Rye was excellent and well balanced, despite being very hoppy.
All in all, the evening was quite entertaining and informative, and the other beer geeks are all fun and interesting people. We’ll be having another tasting in February sometime (no date set yet). Oh, and in case you are curious, my favorite stout was the Stone Imperial Stout. Yummy.
Monday 15 Dec 2003 | Sam | Personal
sounds like a whopping good time or do i mean “hopping” good time? im glad you enjoyed it. what sort of delicious breads help to cleanse pallettes? I would like to know that for my strongly flavored dishes. m caroline marshnee and neske went to CJ Muggs for dinner. plenty of salad and pizza went around but i went for their pad thai. it was surprisingly spicy and sweet in a generous but appropriate portion. too expensive but it was an adventure. here’s a weird quote, lets see if you can place it: “Every minute I live is agony! (ralphing noises)”
ps chili is awesome when done right!! try some avacado andsour cream as toppers.
Yes, it truly was a ‘hopping’ good time.
The delicious breads were actually just basic sourdough, I think. It was unflavored, so as not to sour the palate, it was just a good ‘neutral’ flavor. For the chili, there was bread with garlic baked in! 
Sour cream is yucky, but avocado sounds good!
mmm…stout… i sure could go for a mackeson’s xxx chocolate stout…
In germany there is a political party whos sole purpose is to advocate beer. mmm…actually maybe its belgium. Damn now i feel like a complete git posting this, well ask johnny fantastic when you get a chance he knows for sure which european nation contains said political party.
I don’t care which country they are in, they’d get my vote!