How can you tell if your beer is any good? You might think it tastes ok. Your friends and family might say it tastes great. You might give some to your colleagues and they'd say it's good. But in my experience few people will turn down free beer, and so how can you really be sure that your beer is any good and your friends aren't just being kind (and making sure they get some more beer!)
And then consider that your senses may be lying to you. That's right. There's a lot of evidence that how food and drink looks plays a big role in how you perceive it to taste. So if it's your own brew then maybe it might taste a little better to you than it might do to a complete stranger after all the time and effort you put in.
Well one way to get a good idea is to blind taste test it against some other beers. That way you get a pretty decent idea of where it stands, because its a blind test. If you test against other beers of a similar style you might be unable to even pick yours out from the rest. You might be really surprised. I was!
Every once in a while my friends arrange a night where we put home brewed beers up against some beers made by pros. There's a few of us who homebrew so there's also a "who is the better brewer" dynamic going on. We pick some categories some time in advance. Then we brew some beers, and and others buy some "pro" beers to taste test against.
On the night itself we pile round one house with a bunch of snacks and a thirst, then the tasting begins. This latest contest was "Beeroff3", so by now we had got the method down to a fine art. We had 5 categories. We tasted in 1/3rds with pouring away totally acceptable. That way you can keep quaffing the ones you do like and politely defer from the ones you don't!
So how did I do?
Round 1: Belgian Abbey
My beer did really well here. It was the first tasted, and I didn't recognise it. Happily I thought it was excellent! More banana and ester flavours than I remembered, and less clove. A good hit of farmyard for good measure. It went toe to toe with the proper Belgian Abbey beer, Duval. Equal on first preferences where it went to second preference only to love out by one vote. Still equal with the monks whose brewing pedigree goes back hundreds of years. I would cling to this in vain as the night went on.
Round 2: British (made from entirely British ingredients)
I'd put in an experimental beer here, one finished with green First Gold hops grown in my own garden. Id heard about using green hops, so I decided to try using my own in a London Pride clone. This made for a pretty good beer - good malty base with a herbal grassy hop profile. Unfortunately although it came second, it narrowly lost to the commercial beer. Now I don't liek to complain, and I am a realist, but it's November 2014 and this beer is using 2015 hops - what else aren't they telling us???!!!!!
Round 3: Porter/Stout
Wow - the second beer was amazing. This was my beer again. Deep resonant chocolate and coffee flavours, boozy kick augmenting the whole taste - definitely a winner. Beer one, a boring down the middle porter. Beer 3, overly stale coffee flavoured, sour and weak. Beer two wins almost unanimously hoora…. what? What do you mean mine is beer 3?
Round 4: Single Hop IPA
I’d brewed an all Chinook hop IPA for this round. An American IPA, brewed with my friends who are from Arkansas. That’s right, an American IPA made with real Americans! Despite sneaking my pals onto the voting panel the IPA still tasted a bit of armpits and admirably made it to second, behind my friend’s bombastic Cascade IPA (described as being hit around the head with a hop brick!)
Round 5: Blended Hop IPA
Last chance saloon. Because of a drop out, my beer was head to head with another homebrew. 50-50 chance of winning if they were both good beers. They were. Mine a blended Chinook and Citra beer (it’s the single hop beer finished with tons of Citra) up against.. well my memory is a bit sketchy at this point but here’s what happened. It’s gone down to the final vote. The last voter is one of my American collaborators. He changes his vote at the last minute because he tastes the Citra hop in the beer… except he picks the wrong one, and once more I’m edged out on a narrow vote.
So no prizes but 3 really good beers, only 2 duff and really pleased with the Belgian. For the next post I’m going to run through making the Belgian - my best beer so far.
