Items you will need

A variety of different beers

To conduct your tasting, you will need a variety of different beers. These can range from expensive boutique beers to widely available run-of-the-mill beers. Check out the forum discussion about which beers are the best if you need some ideas for beers to include in your tasting.

Some tastings cover a variety of beer styles, while others concentrate on different beers within the same style, such as a tasting which concentrates only on lager.

Some people feel that it is best to serve the beers with the lowest alcohol content first, and move up to the higher alc/vol beers toward the end of the tasting session. The downside of this approach is that it can give clues as to which beer is which.

Beer glasses

Beer glasses are another important element of a beer tasting. Ideally, you will use glasses appropriate to the beer style, such as straight-sided clear glasses for chilled lager and ales. However, if you are tasting across a variety of styles, or do not have the appropriate glasses for the style you are tasting, it is acceptable to simply use water glasses of about 0.2L each. Wine glasses are also an acceptable alternative to beer glasses.

You will need 2 beer glasses per taster, so that the servers can continue to serve beer for tasting whilst one round of glasses is being washed. The beer glasses should each be labelled with the taster’s name or number.

Other items you will need are as follows:

• a refrigerator for keeping the beers at an appropriate temperature
• pens for the tasters to score each beer
• beer scorecards
• 1 water glass per taster
• a sink for washing the beer glasses between beers
• tea towels for drying the glasses after each washing
• a name card for each taster
• sticky tape for attaching the taster’s labels to each beer glass