In looking at the beer threads currently up it seems people have lots of very strong opinions about what beers are crap or not. Has a group of opinionated beer snobs ever been put to the test with a blind taste test?
What’s stopping you?
Well, there’s the Great American Beer Festival. They do blind sampling for the Beer Competition.
I’m not a professional by any means, but I’m maybe what you’d call a beer snob. I can tell you that when I try a new beer, and don’t know what to expect, sometimes I like it a lot, and sometimes not so much. That’s not blind, since I can see the label, but if I was judging the beer based on the label, I think I’d already know if I was going to like it.
Do you suspect that without the label in front of them, they wouldn’t know whether they liked a beer or not?
Here, perhaps, is what you’re looking for. Just in case, you do know that it’s not all just “beer”, don’t you? There are many different styles. On that page, they’re just trying to guess the style, not grade its quality within that style, per se.
ETA: The links on the left, under Commercial Beers – Blind Tasting Comments… are all to blind tastings (I think–trying to fit in the 5 minute edit window) of various styles. The American Lagers link might be more what you’re thinking of.
The worst beer snobs anywhere are the ones who swear by their particular American macrobrew and hate on all the others.
When I was in undergrad my roommates and I were throwing a keg party, and we told everyone we were getting a keg of Old Milwaukee. You never heard such wailing and whining–why on Earth would we buy such horrid crap? (Because it was cheap, that’s why.)
When the party came around we told everybody we changed our minds and got Budweiser instead, but since it was twice the price we’d have to charge them more to break even. They sighed in relief and happily handed over the money. It was really Old Mil, of course, but we hid the cap and submerged the keg in ice so you couldn’t tell by looking at it. Everybody chugged away all night and no one said a word.
On a related note a while back a magazine did a blind test on stereo equipment. Turned out for the most part the real expensive stuff didn’t sound any better than the cheap stuff, especially for amps.
While it wasn’t properly double-blinded, a friend and I tried a test like this once.
He worked in a liquor store, and brought about a dozen bottles, each a different brand. We poured them in small, numbered glasses, tried each, and wrote our preferences in order.
Before the test, he declared vociferously that Miller was his only drink and he could tell the difference. After the test, Miller was #3 on his list.
Me…I’m not fond of any beers, and I wasn’t fond of any of these, either.
Now, what to do with a dozen bottles of beer? We poured the leftovers in a pitcher and finished them off. All agreed that the blend was the best beer we had ever tasted.
So what did we learn? All beer tastes good after you’ve had a few?
I am a largely irrational beer snob, but I admit it, so it’s okay (right guys?). I will always prefer brand x over brand y, and I might show some disappointment if the establishment where I am drinking has no brand x, but I’m not snobbish enough to outright refuse to drink brand y or z. Now, though, beer is expensive enough for me that I just buy the cheaper domestics. If I can, I’ll get my brown ale or dortmunder lager of choice, but I bet I wouldn’t be able to pick either out of a blind lineup of similar beers.
Yup, the Dutch Consumer guide did just that about three years ago. The results were devastating, at least for the beer snobs.
Five out of six were sure they had blindly picked their onw brand as best. Non eof them had. Two out of three, whne tasting their own preferred brand blindly, didn’t particularly care for it.
This reminds me of my favorite bartender down DC way. He always had stuff he was thinking of trying and would give us samples - but he always worked in a lesson on beer tasting. So by the time I moved away I’d begun to understand judging individual beers on their own merits rather than the label, the %ABV, or the country of origin. Doesn’t mean I don’t have my preferences when I go out drinking, but I won’t hate on any specific brand of beer anymore.
How could you tell the difference anyway? Both are swill
We could tell the difference when we paid for the keg. $35 vs. $60 or so for Bud, IIRC. In bottles it cost about $11 for a case, $1.20 of which you got back if you returned the bottles (which we didn’t, since I was doing some homebrewing at the time). On our limited budget it helped stave off sobriety, and to us it was indistinguishable from the far more expensive Budweiser. Our friends thought there was a huge difference, and we silently proved them wrong.
For every craft beer drinker I know who would turn up his nose at a free Budweiser on a hot day I know at least one Bud drinker who would turn up his nose at a Coors or a Miller High Life or a Milwaukee’s Best. The latter group is the one who needs the blind taste test; they’re comparing Wonder Bread vs. Kern’s Bread, while the former group is comparing white sandwich bread to a pumpernickel bagel.
I used to regularly host and attend beer tasting parties. Generally I’d arrange them along a theme, such as Octoberfest, Christmas, Wheat beers, etc. But there’s be nothing keeping anyone from setting up such a thing however they like. Could compare all Americans, standard Americans vs lights, toss in an NA or 2, what have you.
IME, often times people who regularly drink American macrobrews tend to prefer them, even in blind tasting, simply because they are - um - on the bland side. Another thing is, many American beer drinkers their brew ice cold - which can make a blind testing difficult as many other beers taste best at cellar temp.
If you are doing the tasting properly, factors such as smell, color, and head will factor into a person’s appreciation of a particular beer. And most American macrobrews compare poorly on those factors.
My father-in-law and I did this last June. I’d put together a custom 12-pack (some duplicates) for him filled with an assortment of pale ales, wheat beers, and some lagers. My wife poured the eight or so beers into identical, opaque, numbered cups. She also added two additional cups, one with Miller Lite and one with Budweiser. We were easily able to correctly identify both of the macros, and had varying success with the others. I think that my FIL correctly identified about 6 of them and I got 5. He hadn’t tasted any of the non-macros before, but he’s an experienced wine taster and has a fairly well developed palate and was able to use the tasting notes after we’d rated each beer to identify them. Of the incorrect ones, we correctly identified each of the styles but missed the brewery/specific beer.
One thing that certainly contributed to the easy identification of the macros was that the beers were chilled, but not ice cold.
There is a beer feud in the games section
As I said, the proper glasses enhance a beer tasting.
I’ve related the story here before, but I once served a variety of cheap malt liquors to my beer club in a blind tasting. They all thought they were fine to excellent brews. They were rather pissed when I revealed their favorite: Olde English 800.
Here are their listed criteria for getting a “Bronze” award:
“A fine example of the style that may vary slightly from style parameters and/or have minor deviations in taste, aroma or appearance.”
Yep, I’m sure those deviations are extraordinarily reproducible under test conditions. :dubious:
If it’s a commercial beer, they are. Just grab another bottle.
There is actually an organization dedicated to training beer judges.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say. There are different beer styles, and when judging beers, they’re supposed to be judged on how well they meet those criteria, not just on whether the judge likes the beer.
Think of breeds of dog. There are standard definitions of what, say, a German Shepherd should look like. Differences from those ideals are analogous to the deviations you’re talking about. It doesn’t mean your mutt isn’t a great dog.
When I posted, I thought astro was wondering if beer snobs who like craft beers could tell the difference between them and beers like miller, coors and budweiser.
A lot (most?) of the other posters were thinking like Doctor J’s first post, with beers snobs who drink one of miller, coors or bud, and don’t like the others.
I suspect, now, that’s more like what astro had in mind, but he hasn’t come back to clarify.