Ideas needed for Homebrew Club tasting event

[Apendecto]

About 15 of member of our homebrew club recently did an experiment where we all brewed the same beer. My idea was a cheap, low caliber beer everyone could enjoy and extract brewers could also participate. We'd all brew the same beer with the same ingredients (purchased in bulk and broken up) and take excellent notes when it came to things like OG, ferment temp, etc.

Now comes the problem. We want to taste and compare these brews to see how the variables change the beer. Not just extract vs. grain but how each brewers process changes the end result.

I've had a few ideas but I wanted to see what you guys thought. One idea is to have stations with the brewers sheet and people can roam around the room however they want and we'd talk about it in the end. Another idea is to sit down and pass around 3 or 4 beers and talk about them in batches like that.

Anything I come up has downsides and time is an issue. We need to be done in about 2 hours.

Any ideas? Thanks!

 

[Coldies]

Well it looks like you only have 8 minutes to talk about each beer. Maybe space them apart into 2 meetings?

 

[gr8shandini]

I think a modification of your first idea would be best. I'd guess that you'd end up with a whole lot of similar beers with a few duds and a few standouts. I would just have a vastly simplified scoresheet at each station where the tasters could give it a 1-5 rating. Then you could look for similarities/differences in technique between the beers that averaged 4s and 5s and the rest of the pack.

 

[IXVolt]

15 beers in two hours. I see no problems here.

 

[Zen_Brew]

It depends what level of feedback you desire for the brewers. Our club does same recipe brews fairly often. Most of the time the sampling is fairly casual as all the brewers gather with a couple bombers and one by one they pour the group a tasting sample then talk about their process and any issues they had. Feedback is given orally by the members tasting the beer as they sample.

For a more formal event we sometimes pour for the whole club and everyone fills out a dumbed down BJCP judging sheet giving the standard point total format from BJCP but brief comments. Members uncomfortable with judging pair up with experienced judges and talk about why the judges score the way they do as they taste along.

In either case, the later beers sometimes suffer a bit as alcohol kicks in, particularly on higher alcohol brews.

 

[Apendecto]

Well it looks like you only have 8 minutes to talk about each beer. Maybe space them apart into 2 meetings?

I thought about this. But we already screwed ourselves by having everyone bring them in in July. Whoops.

 

[Apendecto]

15 beers in two hours. I see no problems here.

15 people made the beer. I'm guessing the number of people who come to the meeting will be less than this. 10-12 maybe.

 

[prrriiide]

Go buy some of those little 4 oz. dixie cups like you get at a water cooler. 4 oz. is plenty to form an opinion, and doing 15 of those in 2 hours should be a breeze.

 

[Apendecto]

Go buy some of those little 4 oz. dixie cups like you get at a water cooler. 4 oz. is plenty to form an opinion, and doing 15 of those in 2 hours should be a breeze.

My question is how. One at a time and try to "remember" what each tastes like? 10 at a time so you can compare them all in front of you? Etc.? The possibilities are endless and that's where I'm running into a wall.

 

[gtcole]

Are you able to sample the beers before the group tasting? I think this would allow you to organize things better. For example you could have stations that highlight specific aspects of the beers. AG vs Extract, High temp fermentation vs low temp fermentation, stations highlighting off-flavors, etc.

Comparing two or three beers to each other would work better I think than trying to compare the whole group.

 

[Apendecto]

Are you able to sample the beers before the group tasting? I think this would allow you to organize things better. For example you could have stations that highlight specific aspects of the beers. AG vs Extract, High temp fermentation vs low temp fermentation, stations highlighting off-flavors, etc.

Comparing two or three beers to each other would work better I think than trying to compare the whole group.

Nice. We would be coming together for the first time. I've had mine, but that's it.

I like the idea of taking the similar variables and lumping them together one way or another. Thanks.

 

[KevinW]

How about three groups of 5 beers. Form three groups of brewers to taste each beer (5-10 mins.). Maybe provide a list of parameters in checklist format (for each beer) to make assessing quicker. Talk about the beers for about 10-15 mins jotting down important notes on each beer.

Once each group is done then rotate to another group.

After 3 rounds you should have enough time for the entire group to talk for about 30-40 mins and compare notes!

This may not give an in-depth assessment but it could be a good place to start!

Good luck!

 

[Mikey_Dawg]

This is how I would do it.

A. Create a list of specific KPIs (key performance indicators - in this case, the characteristics you want to capture from each tester) with a rating scale ahead of time and have a small sheet they fill out for each beer.
B. The sheet should also include an "Additonal Comments:" section for each tester to fill out.
C. Give each drinker 10 minutes with each beer, should be about 2 hours but probably faster.
D. At the end, analyze the "Additonal Comments:" and see if there were any common themes in the responses and possibly add other KPIs to the list that you can provide responses to based on the comments.
E. If time permits at the end, drink a full beer of the sample you liked best....so all participants bring a few extra of your sample brewski.
F. Send out results for everyone to review and get back together to talk about results, over more homebrews of course.

 

[biochemedic]

In the end, you're going to find out that you all made pretty good beer....and it's better than BMC...

 

[Apendecto]

How about three groups of 5 beers. Form three groups of brewers to taste each beer (5-10 mins.). Maybe provide a list of parameters in checklist format (for each beer) to make assessing quicker. Talk about the beers for about 10-15 mins jotting down important notes on each beer.

Once each group is done then rotate to another group.

After 3 rounds you should have enough time for the entire group to talk for about 30-40 mins and compare notes!

This may not give an in-depth assessment but it could be a good place to start!

Good luck!

This sounds like a great way of doing it. Thanks.