anyone doing a BoB at home?

[too far gone]

We were so inspired by the realbeer BoB we decided to "try this at home." Blind tasting. Attached is our bracket or here (http://home.twcny.rr.com/jtonole/madness.pdf). Limited mostly to brews we could get locally (we have a great beer store) and a some mail order. Our first (of several--that's alot of beer) round is tonight. If anyone is interested we can post our results.

Cheers.

[fretlessman71]

Welcome to the boards - that's pretty cool! And a decent selection of brews to boot. So, who is "we," and "where" are we?

[TrojanAnteater]

yeah definitely keep us updated

[too far gone]

Originally posted by fretlessman71
Welcome to the boards - that's pretty cool! And a decent selection of brews to boot. So, who is "we," and "where" are we?

Thanks! There is a hint to our locale in the bracket--two very local beers in the Pale Ale region, including one going up tonight against my all round fav, SNPA. We're a small group of beer buddies plus a probable drop-in or two. One is a homebrewer. Four of us with lots of west coast beer tasting experience, as our bracket probably reflects.

[fretlessman71]

Must be NorCal... bay area, maybe? Or farther up north?

Do you get Odell's 90 out there? Worth a try if you haven't had it yet....

[too far gone]

Originally posted by fretlessman71
Must be NorCal... bay area, maybe? Or farther up north?

Do you get Odell's 90 out there? Worth a try if you haven't had it yet....

Oh so close fretless..but...ah..no...Ithaca Pale Ale and Cazadilla are the home town brews...upstate...NY...but 4 of us used to live in the Bay Area. We had some close calls with the playins tonight. We'll post an update soon...

Oh and no, I haven't had your flagship 90 shils but will look for it at the beer store tomorrow. I don't think they have it but it sounds good...

[fretlessman71]

It's not a scottish, it's not an amber, and it's not a pale... it's the best of all worlds, and then some. Stick around long enough and I just might trade some brews from here with you - I can't imagine you've had anything quite like the 90 Shilling from Odell! :)

[SI_West]

It's too bad you couldn't wait another month for the Flower Power Pale Ale. If you haven't been down to try it yet I highly reccomend it. It usually comes out in April or May.

What is the Cazadilla? I spent four years in Ithaca and never came across it.

[too far gone]

Originally posted by SI_West
It's too bad you couldn't wait another month for the Flower Power Pale Ale. If you haven't been down to try it yet I highly reccomend it. It usually comes out in April or May.

What is the Cazadilla? I spent four years in Ithaca and never came across it.

Yeah, we regretted that as well. It probably would have been placed instead of the pale ale. I think it is their best beer.

Cazadilla is a typo (after our first round of tasting). Should have been spelled Cascazilla (play on the Cascadilla Creek/gorge). It is pretty good. To me it is like a hopped up red. Its new and probably a limited release. I think they are done brewing it now to make way for the Flower Power.

Hope you are now living somewhere sunnier :) We are very ready for spring!

[chazwicke]

Nice line up. Except the Shiner Bock and Stella.:D Keep us posted.

[too far gone]

Here (http://home.twcny.rr.com/jtonole/madness.pdf) is the update to our "try-this-at-home-BoB" tasting sessions: the play-in rounds, stouts/porters, and some of the Open region. The numbers in the () indicate how many of the five of us voted for that beer. We did the IPAs last night and those results should be posted shortly.

Fretless's sig line rings true: "In beer there is truth." We pretty much blind tasted all the beers--we did not know which beer was which and, in most cases, even which match up we were tasting. As such, there were some surprises! I, for one, now suspect that name, label, and brewer reputation has a bit on influence on my taste buds. The fun part about this format is to strip those away and let the beer stand alone.

The hard part about the format is the head-to-head aspect. There were some clear cut choices, but there were many very tough decisions, even in the case of a unanimous winner. Many of the losers were really great beers and some of the winners were merely the lesser of two evils. Sigh. Perhaps we will add some kind of rating for Round 2 in addition to the "which would you rather have" criteria.

[chazwicke]

Thanks! Looks like some decent beers made it though. Keep us posted.

[too far gone]

The IPAs have been updated (http://home.twcny.rr.com/jtonole/madness.pdf)--thanks Jeff! What a great round!! Tonight we go for the pales...

[too far gone]

The Pale Ales have been updated (http://home.twcny.rr.com/jtonole/madness.pdf)--thanks Jeff! Our beloved SNPA lost to a tidy Red Seal. We think it was a heat abused bottle--Sierra was robbed! Sigh.

Sweet Sixteen starts tonight. We are all looking forward to another round of Shakespeare and Smuttynose. It will be interesting to see if the Cinderella Cascazilla will survive another round.

[too far gone]

The Elite Eight is set (http://home.twcny.rr.com/jtonole/madness.pdf)--thanks Jeff! Despite a close encounter with a couple of skunks at our tasing venue, we felt it was a good round.

Cascazilla and Alpha King move on (are we just a bunch of hop heads?), Smuttynose and Anchor Porter hold their own, Flying Dog IPA narrowly upsets Arrogant Bastard, and AleSmith was again tough. Bigfoot bests TurboDog, though I was amazed at how evenly matched they, uh, tasted. The bottom of the barrel--I mean bracket--defaulted to a disappointing Anchor Steam, not to necessarily diss the Beligan styles but we mostly don't care for them.

Thursday is set for the next round with the final four and championship on Sat. along with the hoops tourney. There will likely be a few pick up games here and there too as we have many of the losers leftover :>

[fretlessman71]

I'm just going to have to find a fresh bottle of Snake Dog IPA this summer and give it another chance... I had it once before, and I was really underwhelmed by it. *sigh*

[BREWERDLUX]

Snake Dog is a pretty good beer, but i can't see it being better than Hop Devil. No matter how fresh. Thats the beauty of personal choice.

[chazwicke]

I am hoping to be home in time to participate in the Bigfoot tasting Saturday

[too far gone]

Well and the cat hair has been vacuumed up, pretzels set out, pitchers rinsed, and all the beer is chilled in the fridge. Tonight we do the final four and championship.

The elite eight winners have been posted (http://home.twcny.rr.com/jtonole/madness.pdf). It was close, and maybe as contentious as any, but Flying Dog Snake Dog IP advances ahead of AleSmith IPA. The vote was 3-2. Bigfoot handles Anchor Steam, Smuttynose noses out Anchor Porter, and 3 Floyds Alpha King sails past Cascazilla.

Uh oh, the first of our fellow tasters has just arrived (tasting at my place tonight)--off to drink some beer. We'll post the results as soon as they are final.

[too far gone]

Flying Dog IPA 3, Bigfoot 2. I can't believe I voted down an IPA! Here comes the PA and Porter...

[too far gone]

Alpha King 3, Smuttynose 2. But some of the Alpha King voters could have gone either way. Both were good, it was tough.


Ranked 1-4 we put 'em:
Alpha King, Smuttynose, Flying Dog, Bigfoot.

Now, ladies and gents....

Alpha King vs FlyingDog. Blind. Which beer would *you* like to drink?

[too far gone]

Finals time. Here we go:

Jeff-A
Kim-B
Roob-A
Shelley-A
Ellie-A

That's Alpha King 4, Flying Dog 1. That's it, folks. >$500 of beer (some of it mail order), 8 nights of tastings, tons of fun. Thank godness we mirrored this to the NCAA finals--not the NBA finals!

Bring out the pick up games. Robb is pouring some Dogfish 90 minute now :>

[chazwicke]

That sounded fun. And Alpha King is a fine beer. This might be fun to do with my buddies. Or possibly at the Realbeer gathering.

[too far gone]

It *was* fun! We are all thinking we should do it again next year. Here are some logistical observations that may be of benefit to others that may consider “trying this at home.” If any of my fellow tasters are lurking out there, feel free to chime in.

The event was not for the faint of heart. It took quite a bit of time: planning, finding the beers, multiple trips to the beer store, not to mention the 8 tasting sessions in about ~4 weeks. We haven’t totaled it up but the cost was at least $500. Shipping beers that we could not get locally was really expensive, but I think it was worth it to try new beers and include some old favs.

There were 5 of us tasting. It was nice to have to worry about a tie-breaker procedure. We split (2) 12 oz or (1) 22 oz bottles among us. Tasting eight beers a night max was about right. We did some 10-beer nights but that harder due to some palate fatigue and late nights.

The MOST IMPORTANT THING, and I think the thing that made the event very enlightening was to do blind tasting. BREWERDLUX’s point about Hop Devil (above) is well taken, but before we did this event, every one of us would have been shocked that Hop Devil did so poorly. (More about this in my next post.) As I think I mentioned earlier, we kept the entire night’s matchups blind until all winners were determined.

Things we might consider for next time:

1.Keep the same general selection process (beers that we like or want to try) but don't include beers that we are fairly certain we don't like unless there is some nostalgic or other reason for including them (eg Shiner Bock).

2. Make score sheets (or kind of system) to rate the beers, and perhaps to track our own votes and tasting notes. Ratings would have been nice to help us remember which 5-0 matchups were really close and which were blow outs. Just because a beer won didn’t mean we liked it.

3. Use beeradvocate.com or some other external rating to help us “seed” the brackets when possible so that we don’t lose a great beer too early. But we don’t want to lose the upset aspect either. We checked several of our matchups and found that we would have still seen upsets even with this kind of seeding. Like the NCAA tourney, the upsets make for a lot of fun.

4. Might consider starting with 16 with play-ins or 32 without play-ins. It was a lot of beer.

[too far gone]

We also had a few observations about the beers.

Personal taste does play a part:
Several of us just don’t care for the Belgian style beers.
One of us didn’t like the brews with higher alcohol content.
The range of aroma and aftertaste preferences and their descriptions were pretty funny—but then I guess that is what it is all about. Very slightly rotting vegetables, to me, was better than the licorice. Cat urine, grapefruit, liquid smoke and cigarette butts, anyone?

Head to head tastings:
It was amazing how much the taste/flavor/aroma etc. of one beer will affect the other. We found ourselves saying things like: “Try B first, then eat 2 pretzels, then try A.” And “Wow, that sure tasted different than last time.” Other than time and pretzels between sips, I don’t how we could have avoided this. Maybe a round robin tourney? (Just kidding!)

Bad bottles?
My earlier comment about a bad bottle leading to SNPA being robbed was a bit tongue in cheek. But it does make you wonder about the variability of bottle beer. Since the following Pale Ale round was at my place, we did an unofficial rematch of Red Seal and SNPA, but this time had draft Sierra (keg beer at home, baby!). We concluded that the vote had gone the right way.

Reliability:
Last night, 4 of us did one final tasting. Four beers were poured, tasted, and ranked. Though the results did not match the tournament outcome 100%, it matched our own votes pretty closely. Palate fatigue may have been an issue. Overall we ranked these 1. AleSmith IPA, 2. AlphaKing, 3. Flying Dog IPA, 4, Hop Devil. Hmmm, we just may have to a Beer World Series in Oct!!

Cheers ya’ll!

[chazwicke]

Again, I found this interesting and might like to try this with my buddies.