This weekend, I'm planning a blind IPA tasting with some friends. I'll write more about the specifics after the fact, but I wanted to dig into why I find blind beer tasting such a tantalizing prospect.
For me, I suppose, the strongest draw is the ability to separate brand from the experience, albeit temporarily. I often wonder how much a beer's brand influences my perception of it - I know, for instance, that a beer from Hopworks or Santiam is going to be pretty good on average, and I'm less enthused at the prospect of a new beer from Falling Sky or Steelhead. But critically, I'm not sure I could reliably tell them apart without foreknowledge of what I was drinking. I suspect much of my thinking about a brewery is staked on those expectations.
The last blind tasting I participated in was several years ago, at the old Bier Stein, where they had 6 local IPAs on tap, with prizes on offer for anyone who could correctly identify all the beers. To my great shame, I got every single one wrong - and I'd probably had a pint of each within the month of the tasting. My pride was somewhat assuaged when I learned that no one had managed to identify all six beers - out of probably a couple hundred participants.
For this tasting, I chose Oregon IPAs - mostly for the fact that pretty much every major brewery in Oregon makes at least one. Instinctively, I know the ones I'm selecting are all quite different in their hop profile, malting, bitterness, and booziness, but we'll see whether that's still the case after the fact.
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