blind tastings
I am a new listener (first time poster) and heard the blind tasting show yesterday and thought I should chime in. I greatly enjoyed that you both had to fumble a bit in your attempt to state what the style of the beers were, let alone which brewery the beers came from. This is not meant to beat on you, but it shows how we react to labels on the bottle and our expectations of the brewery are. I think this new format will force the show to reevaluate how you view beers and their makers. It should help you (and us) to think deeper when we are tasting and evaluating a brewery in general. Your show has been a great series so far, so I hope it continues on. On a slightly different note; it might be of use to try a blind wine tasting from a sommelier or from a good wine bar. It should help give you a better grounding in identifying different tastes and how to shuffle thru them in your minds eye. You recently were joking about someone calling a flavor "granite" and how it never occured to you that was possible. If you look at a wine tasting wheel, you will see flavors you may not have thought of. I hope this is of some help, sorry about the lenght of the post.
great podcast!
Craft Beer Radio is an Internet talk show about craft and micro brewed beers. The mission of the show is to spread the word of good beer. We introduce people to craft beer, and teach them about different beer styles, brewers who make them, and beer history. Whether you are new to craft beer or have been drinking it for more than 20 years we have something for you.
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One thing I forgot to
One thing I forgot to mention about the show that you just reminded me of (thanks) is that it seems like the blind tasting is a worthy exercise based solely upon the fact that your expectations are unbiased about what you are going to taste. If you're expecting a specific style, you might overlook some other tastes that maybe shouldn't be there. Or, in other words, if you're expecting a Lost Abbey, you might be expecting ambrosia, when really it's an over-hopped west coast beer (which J&G touched on).
Woot for new taste sensations...especially beer ones.
-JDZJ
Tempe, AZ
I thought too much effort
I thought too much effort was spent trying to figure out which beer you were drinking and not enough effort spent on simply describing what you were tasting. I understand that it is a great game to play to try to figure out what beer it is without being told, but it takes away from the point of a blind tasting.
Still, it was a pretty good show overall. I enjoyed the format.
Yeah
Yeah that's essentially what I was feeling. Time will temper I think, though.
Another idea possibly......Have Greg and Jeff purposely pick out beers for the other to taste blindly (possibly trying to purposely stump the other?). Just throwing it out there.
-JDZJ
Tempe, AZ
I also enjoyed the blind
I also enjoyed the blind formant. I would love for you to do it more often. Possibly monthly?
blind tastings
I really liked the format, esp when Jeff was very sure about what the last beer was, only to be shot down :).
It would be interesting to have another show where you guys do the rankings without knowing what the beers are. Its really amazing how much are brains are influenced by what we're told we're drinking and our prior expectations.
But maybe just do that kind of show every once and awhile, make it a special thing when you don't have a single style to concentrate on. I generally like the "one style" shows, and also like hearing the stats and stories behind each of the beers (even though I can't try most of them here in Scotland).
I think it would also be good to have a macro "craft" beer thrown in to the blind too... see where it appears on the ranking list...
A vote for blindness
I too really enjoyed the blind show! I think you guys have a great format going, but taking the format and twisting it a bit is a great way to keep things fresh. I remember Greg shot down an idea Jeff had about a year ago to keep the format fresh by bringing in guest speakers on different topics. I wasn't in love with that idea necessarily, but was bummed that Greg was anti-evolution (oh, wait, sorry wrong thread). The format is great as is, but I think it can always be tweaked especially for one-in-awhile type shows.
Got an idea
How about a blind tasting of a specific style with half microbrews, half macrobrews? It would be interesting to see if you could sort them out by brewery.