Back in October we tried an Octoberfest bake off (a taste test) and it wasn’t that successful. Nice.. not thrillin’, but nice. So when a different group of my friends suggested a blind IPA taste testing, I wasn’t very optimistic; but of course I was game anyway.

Surprise! Not only was it a great evening, the winners and losers made it all that much more interesting. We scored them differently than I had done previously, not just on an overall impression like the unofficial Hop-Talk rating system is built upon, but rather a much more detailed method using a standard beer judging sheet. It is based on an overall score of 50 points made up of several categories.

Here are the results. I rounded the averages of the four of us playing judge…

My comments after the tasting go like this…
Rogue - Yes, it stood alone at the top.
Stone – One of my favorite IPA’s. My score for it probably would have been higher but I hadn’t just taken a break in tasting for a slice of Buffalo Pizza… probably not the best idea and probably affected the overall result.
Butternut – We were all surprised by this one, but me most of all as I really don’t like Butternut’s other brews. I’m going to have to go back for this one.
Middle Ages – While we all know and love this IPA, none of us expected it to rate so high. Glad to see it up there.
Sam Smith – I nailed the import.

I had a great time doing this… I don’t know if the flavors varied that much greater than the octoberfest styles, or if the method in judging was what made it so much better. In any case, the casual nature and long evening in which we took to do it was one for the books.

Special thanks to our servers, Ellie & Katie, and their scientific strategy to organization assuring accurate test results. (We will excuse the Yuengling Porter incident.)