Courtesy of a few interesting connections, I scored a bottle of one of those beers that every beer geek in this region either goes bananas over or is anxious to sample thanks to high buzz on beer-rating sites. It's not commercially available here.
I am SO sorely tempted to take this beer, take the label off of the bottle, and pour it "blind" to a bunch of guys who fancy themselves as beer critics. Just to see what happens when we strip away the preconceptions.
Heck, I'll have to bring (or fabricate) a bottle of something else, maybe two, just to throw off the scent.
Does anyone think they're up to the challenge? BeerBaron? Bruce? JohnM? Maybe counter with a "blind" bottle from the cellars?
Or should I just drink it all myself and post the notes and see if you can name it that way?
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8 comments:
got your hands on some fat tire, eh?
glad to see you'll be coming to the hocoblog-tail party at kloby's smokehouse. see you there. http://hocoblogs-klobys-smokehouse.eventbrite.com/
i'm game. but i'm not really a beer GEEK. more like a beer enthusiast. Happy Drinker Sam? That has a vaguely familiar ring to it ...
Maybe Fat Tire, maybe not. But I'd have to re-bottle it so the New Belgium cap and cast bottle wouldn't give it away if it is.......
What's with the obsession over Fat Tire? I mean, I had it when I lived in Kansas City and it was good but not wicked wicked awesome awesome.
"I scored a bottle of one of those beers that every beer geek in this region either goes bananas over or is anxious to sample thanks to high buzz on beer-rating sites."
Thought you eshewed that sort of thing Alex. I realize it wasn't a beer that "you just had to have," and that it sort of came into your hands via serendipity, but still... in the interest of good Karma I think you should give it away and stick to local selections. :-)
In any event, I guess count me out as well, as I'm with Sam on this one. While I review beers for my own personal pleasure and because it's difficult for me to otherwise remember much about that 2006 Abyss I drank several year's back, beer enthusiast definitely describes me as well.
Just my two cents, but what I would recommend is your last suggestion. Why don't you enjoy it yourself with friends and/or family and tell us about the experience. If you want to make a game or competition out of the experience, that sounds like fun to me... if that's what you feel like doing.
I confess I'm not entirely sure I understand why you're "sorely tempted" to try and test some self appointed beer critics with this beer (to what end? to see if they can guess what it is? what would that prove?), but I'm sure if it's something like Kate the Great or Cascade's recently bottled bourbonic plague, at the very least they'll probably welcome the opportunity to try the beer. I know I would.
Have fun.
Every time I've done a "blind" tasting, it's been an educational experience.
Ask me about the time a pro brewer didn't recognize his own beer. Ask me about the time I reduced a homebrewer to literally begging me on his hands and knees for the source or recipe for what I had just poured for him, only for him to discover that it was HIS OWN braggot, properly aged for two years instead of being swigged in six weeks like the rest of his batch. Ask me about the time some beer enthusiast/geek went bonkers over the wrong beer--a "ringer" instead of the vaunted I2PA or whatever it was. Ask about the time someone all but found religion in his glass--and found instead it was Rochefort 8.
Context is more important than most beer enthusiasts give it credit for. The only way to show them that is to strip away the context--by, say, pouring the Westvleteren out of a screw-top 40-ouncer, or putting a regular Sam Adams in a blue Sam Adams Triple Bock bottle with a cork.
I'm game for a blind taste!
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