Melbourne Beer Tasting Competition

[Pyssedas Heavy Industrial]

I'm considering organising a beer tasting competition, to give people an opportunity to show-off how precise thier tastebuds can be.

In short there would be a blind tasting of approx 25 beers [5 in 5 rounds], and people would asked to identify which beers they were tasting. [I thought it would be kind of neat to have teams [like a trivia quiz arrangement] of tasters as well.

At the end of the day the most accurate taster [and tasting team] would be given a round of applause and maybe even a prize if i can organise one.

Would people be interested in participating in this? If so would you be willing to pay a couple of dollars to cover the cost of the beer?

A couple of other questions:
Do you think I should break the rounds up into categories [either by style of beer or perhaps by overseas/australian/australian boutique etc?]
Should i post a list of the beers to be tasted on the web first so that people can have the opportunity to practice before the big day?

Hopefully this experiment might go some way toward answering some of those age old questions like can you tell the difference between VB, Tooheys and more expensive beers, and is there a difference between Melbourne and Victoria Bitter at all!

 

[Wortgames]

Hi PHI,

I was hoping there might be some more responses to this, any effort to get brewers together for beer-related hijinks is a worthy cause in my book. I actually tried to get something happening a year or two ago, but it's not always easy to pull it all together.

A while ago I went along to a 'pale lagers' taste-test with the Melbourne Brewers, it was great fun but it was surprisingly difficult. I reckon even the experts would have a fairly high error rate. Especially after the first couple when the tastebuds and the attitude become less than sober. Judging a beer comp would be hard work!

I think you might be a bit ambitious with 25 beers. My suggestion would be to perhaps have 3 or 4 categories with 3 or 4 beers per category, say 12 beers all up at most. My personal preference though would be to hold the thing every couple of months and have Pilsner / Belgian ale / English ale nights etc, where you sample maybe half a dozen of the one style over the evening.

I don't think many folks would be organised enough to 'practise' beforehand, but you could name 1 or 2 of the beers at the time of judging - you would then have to pick which samples are the given beers, and try to identify the 'mystery' beers for bonus points.

The Melbourne Brewers were well organised with info sheet handouts for reference, but even so it was a tough job assessing the anonymous samples (particularly under flourescent lighting - all the beers looked the same shade of green IIRC).

I wouldn't make it too much of a comp - most of the fun is actually in the banter and listening to how other people justify their choice, and then either agreeing with their assessment or arguing your own point. A prize seems unnecessary but if it becomes a recurring event some sort of naff perpetual trophy could be fun.

Also, remember that someone has to 'work' - opening bottles out of sight, filling jugs and pouring samples. This person doesn't get the full entertainment value out of the night obviously.

As for cost, I don't think there's a brewer around who wouldn't chip in for that kind of entertainment, but there's the small logistical problem of managing money and beer. You need to know how many are turning up to know how much beer to get (and how much cash will be coming in) - but there's always the chance that extras will come along or that folks will drop out at short notice.

Hope this helps anyway, I'm keen to do something like this on a semi-regular basis. If it helps, I can probably accommodate it here (near Preston).

 

[therook]

Sounds good Wort, i know a few guys that would come along...

rook

 

[AUHEAMIC]

Im not a very qualified beer taster as I am a reformed VB drinker (had my last VB 14months, 2days, 6hours and 3minutes ago) but it might be a good opportunity to refine my taste buds so I would be interested.

 

[lucas]

im interested

 

[pb unleaded]

me too

 

[Pyssedas Heavy Industrial]

Thanks for the responses guys - its good to know that i am roughly on the right track here

You may be right in terms of the scale of the excerise, I was actually thinking of a sunday afternoon rather than an evening, and I had thought that I and a couple of others from the Pyssedas crew would do the pourings etc

The competition bit of it wasn't so much to get rivalry going as to provide a bit of direction for the process - i had thought that with "teams" people could have a little banter on their tables during each "round" with more general banter etc in between

i am kind of thinking of the sunday on labor day weekend but does this clash with any other important brew days i have overlooked

and of course if this is a success we could easily have other days in future months

but yes...i think a smaller number than 25 may be wise...

 

[Wortgames]

I think we might be talking about 2 different kinds of events here PHI - it sounds like you are talking about a reasonably large, organised (and presumably infrequent) event, with a wide range of beers including commercial megabrews - while I guess I am thinking of a smaller, more local, evening thing, like a little Northern suburbs beer appreciation society where half a dozen local brewers get together every couple of months and wear tweed blazers with leather patches on the elbows and act like toffs while drinking expensive beer.

To be honest, I think it might be hard get all that many people attending a single event, so it might be difficult to form teams etc. In my experience homebrewers are a well-intentioned lot, but once you pin down a date and time the family commitments and transportation problems tend to crop up and a lot of people who were keen as mustard drop out. Don't let me discourage you from trying of course...

I'd probably be up for your idea too, but I'll bow out of this thread and let you shape it how you want - hopefully my thoughts (and thread resurrection) have been useful!

Anyone who is interested in the smaller Northern suburbs thing, PM me - I might try and resurrect the idea and maybe start a separate thread if there's enough interest.

 

[Pyssedas Heavy Industrial]

You are right aobut the well intentioned thing, and I oft suffer the same thing myself, even just catching up with mates these days is hard enough - but i do like the idea of the elbow patches...

 

[Pyssedas Heavy Industrial]

I was thinking of the Sunday afternoon of the Labor Day weekend for this fine event - does that suit/not suit people who were interested?