Beer Tasting

Yesterday Mike and I hosted our first annual beer tasting party. I figured this was a nice way to get people together under the guise of celebrating fall and Oktoberfest but really to drink a lot of beer on a Sunday afternoon. The plan was to assign everyone a region or specialty and have them bring three beers of different types from their designated region (they would also bring 3 of each type making a total of 9 beers). Since there were 9 of us there were 27 different beers. Each beer was put in a paper bag and taped at the top so no labels could be seen (since each beer was present in triplicate, I put all in its own shopping bag then on ice). In addition, all beers were grouped so we drank from the least bitter to the most bitter (according to IBUs if possible). I would then uncap a bunch of the bags of beer and Mike would pick one bag out of the group and pour. This way I didn't know what beer was going to be served, though I knew what everyone brought, and Mike had no idea what he was pouring. This made it as close to blind as I could make it.

So the regions assigned (not all regions were assigned for this event) were:
1. NY beers
2. US microbreweries
3. Ireland and the U.K
4. Belgium
5. Germany
6. Eastern Europe and Russia
7. Oktoberfest specialties

I also threw in a few choice brews for fun. These were Michelob Ultra as the representative light beer, Kaliber from the Guinness brewing company for the non-alcoholic beer, and Budweiser Select as the generic bad beer. In addition to all this beer there was tons of food including 7 layer dip, lemon roasted chicken, pulled pork, and kielbasa and sauerkraut (thanks Yilin!). The drinking begin at 1pm and thankfully the weather help up (even though Mike and Josh rigged up a great tarp roof system). Thank goodness for the backyard because getting beer sloshed around was not a problem. We also had this bucket for unwanted beer ( i know, it's shameful) and to rinse our glasses out in between beers.
The beers were ranked on a scale of 1-5 for the following categories:
1. Smell
2. Bitterness
3. Depth
4. Clean
5. Smoothness
6. Finish

The total was calculated and the top 3 favorite beers were:
Tied for first were Brooklyn Brown Ale and Boulder Beer Company Hazed and Infused
Third-New Castle

The Least favorites were:
1. Michelob Ultra
2. Budwieser Select

This is interesting because this means these beers were way grosser than the non-alcoholic Kaliber. There was also beer trivia and the winning team won a pair of googly eye beer glasses. ( I kept a pair for myself because as moderator I could not partake. [And they are so fantastic. Mike almost bust a gut when he looked up at me after doing push ups. His comment was, "This is why I married you." Interesting....])

Highlights included Josh and the bucket, everyone being slightly buzzed/drunk for 6 hours, cartwheels and headstands in CP, and the 4 mile walk after the party in CP. The party was awesome and we will definitely be hosting another one next year.

Today I felt all slow and out of it as did many others attendants. Obviously we are getting old. But I like to think it's just because we are out of practice.

Pics.

UPDATE: Videos representing general partiness and CP silliness