Beer Tasting Dinner - Canned Beers

We've occasionally been hosting beer tasting dinner for the Humans' friends, and typically base the beer selections on certain styles of beer (porter/stout, pale ale/ipa, oktoberfest/pumpkin).  A few weeks ago, we decided to do something different and taste some canned beers.  More and more breweries are offering their selections in cans, and this gave us a chance to check out the some of these.  Surprisingly, of all the beer tastings we've done, this one ended up having the best overall quality.

Conveniently, we had just been in Asheville, North Carolina for a family gathering, so we were able to pick up some beers that aren't available in Atlanta to add to the tasting.

Our beer list included:
Pale Ales

• Nebraska Brewing Company Cardinal Pale Ale
• Blue Mountain Brewery Full Nelson Pale Ale
• Westbrook Brewing Company One Claw Rye Pale Ale

Stout

• Anderson Valley Brewing Company Barney Flats Oatmeal Stout
• Ska Brewing Company Hibernal Vinifera Stout

IPA

• Carolina Brewery Flagship IPA
• Catawba Firewater IPA
• Sixpoint Bengali IPA
• Ska Brewing Modus Hoperandi
• Uinta Hop Nosh IPA
• Cigar City Jai Alai IPA

The list leaned a bit toward IPAs, because it seemed like the best canned beers that we had available were IPAs, also most of the Humans' friends are hop-heads.

We had a total of 10 people join for the dinner, which seems like a pretty good number.   Typically we aim for somewhere between 8-12 people.  This lets us open 2 beers (or 1 22 oz beer) of each type and split it so each person gets a couple of ounces of each type.  Since we usually have around 10 beers, that is a reasonable amount.  That also leaves a number of unopened beers so people can enjoy their favorites during dinner.

Pre-tasting appetizers included Beer Pretzel Rolls, although we made them much smaller to be appetizer-sized.  Those were paired with Beer Cheese, which we found one one of our favorite beer/food websites, Love Beer, Love Food.

For the tasting, we did some basic research on each of the beers, and printed that information out on a tasting sheet.  Each person received a tasting sheet, a tasting glass* for each beer (so that you can have multiple beers in front of you to compare and contrast), and a glass of water.  We provided pretzels and bread for palate-cleansing, and kept pitchers of water and dump buckets on the table.

Beer Tasting Sheet and Tasting Glasses

During the tasting, we stepped through each of the beers.  The Humans would pour 2-3 ounces of each beer for their friends, and that would be followed up with light discussion of what each person did or didn't like about the beer.  Needless to say, by the time we were getting to the last beers, that conversation was getting a little longer and louder.

As I mentioned, the beers in this tasting had the most positive feedback of any we've done.  Suprisingly, in a group of IPA-fans, the easy "winner" was the Westbrook One Claw.  Everyone seemed to love that one.  The Cigar City Jai Alai and Sixpoint Bengali were also favorites.  My new discovery was Ska Brewing.  We had 2 of their beers, and they were both excellent.  I was a big fan of the Hibernal Vinifera Stout, an oak-aged stout, fermented with malbec grapes...wow.  Unfortunately, it's not available in Atlanta, so we'll be bringing back some more next time we're in North Carolina. There was only one "bad" beer in the bunch; the Blue Mountain Full Nelson was almost undrinkable.  The dump buckets got a lot of use for that beer.

After the tasting, we provided dinner for the crowd.  The Humans made a porchetta, accompanied with roasted root vegetables and a salad.  If you've never made a porchetta, try it sometime.  It's a relatively simple, cheap and VERY tasty meal to make.  Technically, you're supposed to use a pork belly, but we typically just use a pork shoulder, which is liberally seasoned and then roasts all day.   One of the nice things about doing this for a beer tasting is that once you put it in the oven, your work is mostly done, except for checking the temperature.

For dessert, we once again went to the Love Beer, Love Food website, and made Dark Chocolate Vanilla Porter Cupcakes.  Unfortunately, we had a hard time finding a vanilla porter, so we just used the Boulder Shake Chocolate Porter, and added a touch of vanilla to the recipe.  Yum!

Spore looks over the Dark Chocolate Vanilla Porter Cupcakes

We really enjoy having these beer tasting dinners.  We actually used to go to tasting dinners at a nearby restaurant where you would have four courses, each paired with a beer (all from the same brewery).  As the price of these kept getting higher, we realized that we could do just as well for a lot lower price.  We do ask each person to bring $10 to try to help offset the price of the beers.  I guess that may be considered a little tacky, but it's really no different than asking everyone to bring a six pack, and it let's us get everything organized ahead of time.

*Note: We bought a case of the Anchor Hocking Barbary Beer Flight glasses at Staples for the tasting.  They're a little expensive, but if you wait for a 20% off coupon, and get free shipping, then they're not too bad.  We expect to get a lot of use out of them.  In the past, we also found some much cheaper glasses at Ikea (6 for $1.50), but those have since gone out of stock.  My plan is to buy tasting glasses when we visit breweries that we like, and eventually use those during the tastings.