The Third Annual Beer Challenge

Original post author: Ryan

On Christmas Eve, my family held the 3rd annual beer challenge.  This is a competition where we each bring a six pack (or similar) of beers and then hold a blind taste test and ultimately select the best overall beer.  The winner is awarded a sampler pack of all the contending beers.

On this third year, there were several first occurrences:

1. For the first time, we had a tie for first place.  My mother and father (Jodi and Pete) tied for first, and they elected to not resolve the tie since they could just share the prize.

2. For the first time, everyone brought the same type of beer, a "New England Style" IPA.  This is likely because this type of beer has performed very well in the past two years.

3. For the first time, two people unintentionally brought the same beer.  Jodi and Casey both brought Smooooth by Greater Good.  Surprisingly, there was a very noticeable difference between the taste of these two beers.  In fact, two people voted Jodi's beer 1st place and three people voted Casey's beer last place.  Perhaps the consistency of some micro-brews isn't as good as we thought!  While the numbers say that Casey's beer lost, she still deserves some credit for picking a beer with the capability of winning.

Competition aside, this is always a fun event.  It adds some variety to Christmas time.  And, it's a good reason to gather in Barone's (the downstairs bar) and share beers together.

I'm looking forward to next year.  We've already discussed some potential rule changes, such as banning IPAs from the competition and displaying the cans for each beer during the taste tests.