“This is blowing my mind,” says a guy at one table.
“Mate, this is mind-blowing,” says another at a table across the room.
Two beers into the first public Crafty Pint Blind Tasting event and it seems the concept previously only run with friends and brewers at Crafty Towers could be a winner…
As part of our visit to the inaugural Beer Lovers Week and the Tasmanian International Beerfest in Hobart, we’d arranged to host a Pint of Origin style tasting at Tattersalls Beer & Food Hall, the newly opened venue from one of the guys behind Grumpy’s Green and The Alehouse Project in Melbourne. The setup was similar to those we’ve run before, but with a simplified scoring system, fewer beers and more guests. Pale ale was the chosen style, with one selected to represent each Aussie state and a couple of internationals completing a lineup of eight.
The aim:
- to give people, none of whom had tasted blind before, the experience we had at our first blind tasting last December
- to get them thinking about what they were tasting in a different way
- to show how important branding and perception is when drinking beer, and
- to introduce them to a few new brewers along the way.
Oh yeah – and to have fun.
“I was expecting this to be quite serious and cerebral,” says one of the attendees to us a couple of hours after the results are in. “People hunched over their glasses and talking in depth about the beers. But it’s been loads of fun.”
“Well, it is a beer event after all. It should be fun. If it’s too serious, then who’s going to want to come along?”
The noise from the busy venue – from which we were only protected by a curtain – added to that lively atmosphere, forcing us to shout to be heard and reducing the amount of information and stories we and the guest judges from Mountain Goat, 3 Ravens, Bacchus, Beer Lovers Week and Hopco could share. But the fact that – while the intentions behind the concept are serious – it is an evening of drinking beer with mates and brewers while tucking into beer food, ensures it was a laugh too.
And the results turned up some zingers too, with a couple of well known brands bringing up the rear with the internationals, and a couple of breweries no one in the room had heard of appearing in the top half. (NB We’re only running the top half here, unlike our normal tastings, as the brewers' results were a little different to the overall result (although not number one).)
“I’d seen bottles of Lobethal before, but knew nothing about them so never picked one up,” says one guest who’d scored it his favourite of the night. Given Lobethal brewer Al Turnbull had driven an hour across Adelaide to a courier’s depot to get the carton to Hobart for the event – arriving at 4pm on the afternoon it kicked off – this was particularly rewarding.
Perhaps the highlight, however, was the fact that one of our judges, Ross Kenrick from Bacchus Brewing, wasn’t aware that we’d snuck his APA on and off the taps in the venue to fill a couple of growlers earlier in the day so it could appear in the tasting. Not only did he not pick it, but possibly due to confusing it with the warm up pale (at least that’s he claims!) he scored it relatively low – and convinced one of the other judges to follow suit – which may have cost his beer top spot.
So, the top four:
There will be some tweaking before the next event – quieter room, decanting all bottles into jugs rather than spending hours wrapping them in brown paper bags and numbering them, slightly altered scoring system, and presenting the judges' scores alongside the room for comparison – but rest assured there will be a next event. And a next after that. And that’s not including those being set up for their mates by those in attendance in Hobart.
As we’ve said before and will say again: “Blind tasting… It’s eye-opening.”
Look out for our write up on Beer Lovers Week and the Tasmanian International Beerfest later in the week.
