How to Host a Beer Tasting

“What is civilisation if it isn’t people talking to each other over a goddamned beer?” wrote James S.A. Corey in his science fiction novel, Cibola Burn. We couldn’t agree more!

Recently, we organised a beer tasting down on the farm so we could chat with some local homebrewers over ‘a goddamned beer’. It’s a great way to get to know new people and new brews. We highly recommend it and have left you with a few tips on how to hold your own.

Get a theme!

You can choose to do only homebrews or a mixture of craft beer and your own. Whichever route you go for, it’s good to have a theme to tie the brews together for a better comparison eg porter and stout, IPAs, sour beers, or brews with interesting additions.

If you are really on it you can organise the event well in advance so you all have time to make a brew that matches the theme.

How many brews? 6-8 is a good number
How many people? Smaller numbers are best to get a good dialogue going and make it easier to manage. Keep it under 12 or so. We find that 6-8 guests is ideal.

Blind drunk?

Blind tastings can help people form their own opinion without being swayed by what they think a brew should taste like. If you want to do this then write a list of your brews and allocate each one a number. Then wrap each bottle in paper to hide the label and write the number on each.

Score Cards

There are a good few templates you can download on line or create your own. Essentially what you’re looking to judge is appearance, aroma, flavour and mouthfeel. It’s also a good idea for each guest to mark each brew out of ten as you go along.

At the end of the tastings we had a vote for the best and worst brews. We gave the prompts “Snog / Marry / Avoid “ but you can offer more grown up categories!

Glasses and things

As you’ll be sampling smaller quantities at a time stemmed glasses are better than pint ones. Go for ones with wider tops as they’ll be easier to detect the aromas of the brews. One glass per person per brew would be optimum, but if that’s not possible then go for at least two per person.

It’s also helpful to have a dump container for rinsing out glasses or to get rid of any beers that turn out to be a bit nasty.

Don’t forget to…

Chill the beers in good time and get out enough pens and a couple of bottle openers!

Nibbles and Water

Go for snacks like cheese and crackers, nuts, salted crisps and pretzels. From experience we would suggest avoid overly strong or complex flavours (like garlic) as these can mess with your palate. We had some spicy indian snacks which weren’t the best choice in hindsight – “everything tastes of samosa, dammit!”

Or check to see what food pairings go with the brews. A couple of the ones we were sampling came with biscuit pairing tips so we brought forth the Rich Teas and Custard Creams out of curiosity.

A couple of jugs of water is good to help cleanse the palate and rinse out glasses.

Keep it lighthearted

Most people don’t consider themselves connoisseurs so make it clear on your invites and at the event that you’re all there to sample and learn and have a good time.

Appoint a Beer MC

Their job is to get the beers out in the right order and to reveal what each brew is and impart any interesting nuggets about the brew or the brewery (check out the story behind Yellow Belly ).

It’s a good idea to set a timeframe to get all your core tasting done in case anyone has to head off after a couple of hours. Keep things gently moving along and ask for opinions about each brew to stimulate discussion.

Having a beer tasting? We want to see! Tag us in: @darkfarmhops