The Beer O’Clock Special Official Beer Tasting Thing

You’ve been challenged.  A few weeks back we were talking here or somewhere about beers of quality -- beers of taste -- beers you should get inside you – and young Willy opined that we wouldn’t know the difference between one brown muck and another.

And since on this blog we advocate taking nothing on faith (“nothing on face” as the great woman sort of told Mike Wallace), we swing into action to prove two things:

1. That young Willy owes us all an apology.
2. That we can indeed organise a piss-up, both within a brewery and without.

So a piss-up beer tasting has now been arranged.  And you’re invited.

The tasting will be Saturday week, 31st October and will be done over two rounds: the first session in a secret location that looks very much like the garden used for that taste-off shown on the right, where we’ll see if anyone can tell one mainstream beer from another; and the second up the road at Galbraith’s, where we can work through one (or several) of their tasting racks. 

Your tasting guide for the afternoon/evening/early morning will be the Mr Greig McG, the brew-meister and beer maven of Hamilton’s world renowned Ruakura Campus Beer Tasting Club.

Plan for the first round (and you can tell this has been written by an innumerate scientist) afternoon session: 5 jugs labelled samples A through G will be divided into “light” and “dark” beers. A list of beers will also be provided containing 8 choices. Participants may sample the jugs in any order, and must identify which beers from the list they are.

Entry fee is a six-pack of your favourite mainstream beer of choice from the following lists:

Round 1, part 1. "All That Glistens Is Not Gold"
       Any five of:
       Export Gold
       Lion Red
       Tui
       Speights Gold
       Corona
       Waikato
       Heineken
       Steinlager
       Crown Lager
       DB Bitter
       Ranfurly Draught
       Victoria Bitter

Round 1, part 2. "Cheeky Darkies" (slight variation - not
       enough mainstream darks to have extras, so just mix and match)
       Any five of:
       Monteiths Black
       Speights Old Dark
       Mac's Black
       Monteith’s Black
       Cooper’s Extra Stout
       Guinness
       Murphy's

For Round 2, “The Gold Standard,” we start with a glass each of either (depending on taste) the Munich Lager, the Bohemian Pilsner or the Grafton Porter to cleanse our palates, before getting on with he serious drinking tasting. 

Our beer meister suggests we just do this simply by working through the Galbraith’s tasting tray – which experience indicates will often require several trays in order to compare, contrast and record the fulll range of beers on offer. Discussion, abuse, and general merriment may or may not ensue (such things not being compulsory, you understand).

Volunteers will be be called for to write up the whole experience for next week’s Beer O'Clock post, and if anyone is still standing there will be a single malt tasting to follow.  Or maybe tequila.

The session promises to give new meaning to the expression “a blind taste test.”

If you’re interested, then drop me an email (at organon at ihug.co.nz) with either “GOLDEN LAGER” or “DARK BEER” in the subject line and let me know what your beer of choice is going to be (first come, first served – so to speak), and I’ll let you know where it’s going to be.