Beer tasting at Revolution

The first beer-tasting session at Revolution happened on Friday May 27th, and while the turnout was smaller than expected, we nonetheless had an interesting time tasting some different beers. (Regrettably, I forgot my camera, so no pics, sorry!)

We followed a blind-tasting format of 5 beers – each participant was given a scorecard for each beer to rate it based on appearance, aroma, flavour, finish and overall appreciation. The beers were poured and presented to each participant, and we got stuck in – certainly some interesting results, and I won’t go into the details of what people thought of each brew (that is up to each individual to blog about if they wish), but I think it’s safe to say that there were surprises in store for all involved.

Once we had sampled all 5 beers, each participant was given a sheet with details of the beers we had just tasted, along with tasting notes from the brewers, and a couple of reviews from one of the popular beer-rating websites. Then came the task of matching those beers to the evening’s scorecards, which certainly raised some eyebrows among our intrepid tasters!

Personally, I love blind-tasting beers – it removes any preconceptions (positive or negative, subconscious or not) I have regarding what I already know about the beer or the brewery. It seems easier for me to analyse the beer if I know nothing about it beforehand, I tend to be more clinical in my assessment of the beer, and inevitably discover something that I didn’t notice about a beer before. So it was with some envy that I sat amongst my tasting compatriots who were blissfully unaware of the name on the bottle of each beer before raising it for a sniff and a sip – maybe next time I will need to make @metalman_tim do the organising!

For those of you interested, the beers we tasted, in order, were :

1. Shepherd Neame’s Whitstable Bay
2. Carlow Brewing Company’s Curim
3. Metalman Pale Ale
4. Sam Adam’s Boston Lager
5. Shepherd Neame’s Bishop’s Finger

Picking out five beers from the bar’s menu that were adequately diverse, yet had enough elements in common to make the final matching of beername to beer a bit of a challenge, is fun, but it’s also trickier than it sounds