On the first days of April, beer nerds begin a hunt for “the best” barrel aged coffee stout, Founder’s KBS. Or at least that’s what most beer nerds say is “the best.” Others say KBS is good, but it’s all about Sunday Morning Stout, or Big Bad Baptist, or Bourbon County Brand Coffee Stout, and the list of “the best” goes on and on.
Deciding that there had been enough talk about “the best” barrel aged coffee stout we put them all to a blind taste test. Here are our results!
If you think you love a beer and think it’s your favorite beer from the style then there is only one way to verify that, a blind tasting. Perception plays a huge role in our enjoyment of beer, and many other products, and we must remove that perception to get a closer view of our real enjoyment. Plus, blind tastings are a lot of fun!
This is the first in a series of blind tastings I’m doing and posting about. Up next will be a post about hosting your own blind tasting followed by barrel-aged coffee stouts, barrel aged adjunct stouts, barrel-aged stouts, and krieks (cherry sours) will all be coming in the next few months.
Paste keeps doing these and I’ve got a few gripes on how they do them, specifically their sour tasting had a huge variety of sour styles mixed together. I think it’s unfair to compare a gueuze, or blended sour, to a framboise, aka raspberry sour. So, I present, a blind tasting of 8 blended sours and 11 raspberry sours.
Microbes are a crucial part of beer which many beer drinkers don’t appreciate until they take the jump to homebrewing. Many pro brewers will admit that they don’t make beer; they make wort and the yeast, which is a microbe, makes the beer. This is entirely true. We create very sugary water and add yeast to it. Yeast eats the sugar and turns it into CO² and, the fun part, alcohol[footnote]That’s the super simplified gist of a very complicated process [/footnote]. The main yeast used in brewing is Saccharomyces, but it’s kinda boring and I’m a much bigger fan of its family member Brettanomyces. So, let’s learn about my favorite microbe!
Continue reading “Learning About Brettanomyces: An Ode To My Favorite Microbe”
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