In my few years as an avid fan of the craft beer community, I've been responsible for arranging my share of tastings. As I've pondered how to arrange these events, I've been hit with a series of concerns that tend to come up when thinking about the setting of a tasting or a festival. These tend to be echoed back by beer festival attendees prior to the day their ticket gets punched for an event. As a result, I've decided to throw together a small collection of tips when planning tastings or attending events.
The Biggest fear is the fear of "Palate Fatigue": This is really it, this is what it all comes down to for fans of good beer. To be honest, this might be the one true responsibility held by the person planning the event as it is a matter of communication. There are two primary questions the host must ask:
Is this a tasting or a dinner party that involves beer?It's easy to confuse the two. The first of these is an event where food may be consumed - perhaps even a full dinner - but the centerpiece and the showcase of the event is the beer. Beer dinners are even fundamentally different from tastings in that there are pre-arranged pairings of food and beer that are presented to the audience. Returning to the issue, tastings should should provide the audience with a series of tools with which to better understand the beverage that's passing between their lips. For example, a beer on its own has a certain set of characteristics, but when coupled with certain mild foods (this is the key, they must be relatively mild foods that have little or no affect on the palate) perhaps other tastes come out in the beer.
Determine the level of "seriousness" involved with the tasting
Does the host insist on serving the beer in its appropriate glassware at the proper temperature or are we throwing a bunch of good beers into the bottom of American pint glasses. Now, in a perfect world, we'd all do everything right and proper, but we're not robots and we're not all millionaires - not everyone has access to all these things. That being said, respect the beer by at least not chugging it - giving it time to settle in and tell you what it's about. I'll talk about tasting rhetoric later on, but that also factors into this. It's possibly to have a good tasting that's serious without ever talking about the beer or alienating people; it's up to you to figure out how to do that.
How can I avoid "palate fatigue?"
Quite simply, there is no good answer for this beyond careful planning. A good way to think about this is by envisioning the dominant taste causing ingredients in beer (malt and hops) to occupy positions on an inverse bell curve. This is not a perfect example and definitely has its flaws, but can be useful when planning a tasting. On the left side at the top of a peak are beers with a very heavy focus on malt - American Imperial Stouts, Barleywines, Doppelbocks, for example. On the other side are beers that share a heavy emphasis on hops - Double IPAs being the obvious answer. In either case, the flavor is very bold and, especially in the case of hops, can be scathing (why do you think Stone named their famed IPA "Ruination?") In the middle are beers that blend the taste characteristics of hops and malt which, one would think, must contain considerably less alcohol and lack the bold and aggressive nature of these more one-dimensional beers merely so they can display a variety of more subtle flavors. It's time to ask yourself as host a further question:
Is this tasting organized by ABV/IBUs or by genre/style?
There are two good ways to organize a tasting: either put together a number of beers of the same genre and compare them against one another or link a number of unrelated beers together by strength (which, in this case will be measured by either/or/possibly both alcohol content or international bitterness units, or IBUs.) There is no "wrong" or "right" when it comes to these two styles, only wrong or right with regards to how they're carried out. For example, it's a poor decision to begin a tasting session with a hefty double or imperial IPA when it will clearly affect the rest of the beers you will drink. The trick is to start with the most subtle (and ideally stick to proximate genres/styles) and work your way into the bold beers. An example of this would be to begin with a traditional german style pilsener, then transition into a mild pale ale, then perhaps an IPA or Scotch Ale (which are the two "pivotal" beers in my opinion) and then in the respective direction towards more malt or hops. Scotch Ales and IPAs are pivotal in that they're definitely the point where the tasting becomes less neutral and more towards either ingredient. A genre/style based tasting must also take into account strength, but has freedom to explore. For example, start with a a milk stout, then go to an oatmeal stout, then a porter, then perhaps something more roasty like a coffee stout before putting the pedal to the metal with a Russian Imperial Stout or a Barrel Aged Stout.
Enough about the beer, what else should we have at the tasting?
Make sure water is readily available. In contrast to wine tastings where individuals waste perfectly good wine by spitting it into the nearest gilded trash can, beer must be consumed in order to get the last part of the taste, which is the hop signature. As such, water should be spliced into the tasting agenda to prevent both palate fatigue and, oh no, intoxication. In a perfect world, we'd be able to sit around and sip the world's strongest beers to analyze interesting and complex flavor profiles without getting drunk, but it's a scenario that is likely to happen, especially if stronger beers are a part of the tasting. It's important to know when you're not qualified to really taste beer anymore, and then leave those bottles for another time. If you want to keep drinking, by all means, go right ahead, but nobody likes opening every bottle in their wine cellar when their 60 year old wine is going to lose all nuances and taste just like the Carlo Rossi you keep in the back of the fridge. Also, like noted above, there should be food, but not anything with a very strong flavor (unless there's something you have in mind - my favorite example being my love for cilantro lime flavors as a means to really bring about the banana in a German Hefeweizen.) Crackers, some mild fruit, breads, cheeses are all good options. Eventually, I'll have my girlfriend write an article talking about cheeses and how they match with flavors of beer since she's far more knowledgeable about cheeses than I am, but until then, I have to leave you with that.
Use "user friendly" terminology
Sure, I like to talk about astringency as much as the next guy, but what happens if that next gentlemen doesn't know what the hell that means? As I learned from John Cleese's Wine for the Confused, it's important to establish a somewhat sterile yet universally descriptive set of words that even the most inexperienced beer drinker can agree on. Please, let's not talk about the dreaded "drinkability." Alienation is the enemy. For that reason, it's also encouraged to talk about things other than beer for a while. It might even serve to focus your thoughts when returning to beer later.
With that, I'll retire this article for the moment. I'm sure there'll be updates.
