It’s amazing how often I’ve heard people say that all beer tastes the same. It’s quite perplexing as well, given that in my experience beer encompasses a very large array of flavours. Each of the 4 main ingredients in beer (malt, hops, water and yeast, for those who are less educated) can have a fair amount of variation which in turn affects how the others interact with each other. As a result, even in the cheaper, mainstream beers there are notable flavour differences distinguishing each beer from its peers.

Recently I had the privilege of helping run a beer blind tasting session. Basically this involved a selection of 6 beers being served (by me, the honorary beer wench of the evening) to 6 blindfolded samplers in a randomised order. Each person had to write down what beer they thought it was, a rating out of 10 and some comments on the flavour. The six beers (in the order sampled) were Mac’s Hoprocker, Mac’s Light, Mac’s Sassy Red, VB, Mac’s Black and Mac’s Gold. Most of the samplers had not tried all of these beers before, but still 4 out of the 6 managed to correctly identify 4 beers.

The highest rated beer of the evening was the Hoprocker (average 7.2/10) followed by the Sassy Red (average 6/10). Even for the Hoprocker though the comments were mixed, ranging from “fills every corner of the mouth, hearty but graceful” to “tacky_sour @hotmail.com, oh sadness, how taste’th ye? Sour & foul!” At the bottom of the list were VB (average 2.2/10, “Rancid Butter, Foul Disgusting Crap”) and Mac’s Light (average 1.8/10, “Here and gone like a one night stand, with the appropriate sense of extreme dissatisfaction. Like someone spit yeast in a stormwater drainage pipe”).

It was interesting to note that all of the participants rated different beers higher, showing they each have their own preference of taste. Some were consistently harsher than others (I’m talking about you, Mat Szczepanski) and others were definitely influenced by previous experiences – certain beers caused reference to the smell of shadows vomit. But when it came down to it, everyone was able to find a beer they enjoyed and a good time was had by all.

I’d like to send out a big thank you to the kind residents of Dean St for letting me be part of such an entertaining evening.