Beer tasting for one at home

You don’t need to get a group of mates together to do a beer tasting. If you find yourself in a situation where you’ll drink a well-deserved beer or two by yourself, why not have some extra fun with it? You can do a beer tasting all by yourself!

If you’re confident enough, you can organise a blind taste test for yourself. You will have to go to the bottle shop, armed with some aluminium foil. Just ask the staff for 6 different beers, and ask them to wrap each beer in the aluminium foil right then and there. You will have to trust the staff not to overcharge you.

Alternatively, you can organise a semi-blind taste test where you purchase your own selection of beers and then mask their identities before you start tasting.

Either way, organising a beer tasting is easy.

Items you will need

• Beer (6 different beers will provide ample fun)
  • Cans of the same size are best for this purpose.
  • If you buy bottles, stick with the same shape and glass colour (to make it difficult to identify each beer during the tasting).
• Aluminium foil (for covering the beer cans/bottles)
• Beer scorecards
• Pen, sticky tape and labels
• A beer glass and a water glass

Preparation

1. Wrap the cans/bottles in foil (unless you had them wrapped at the bottle shop for a blind test).
2. Place the cans/bottles in front of you then close your eyes, and…shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, shuffle.
3. Open your eyes and label the cans/bottles on the underside (with letters A, B, C… ) using sticky tape and labels.
4. Store the beers in the fridge to keep them cool until you open them.

Detailed instructions

Now for the beer tasting:

1. Get a beer from the fridge, and fill your glass to about 1/3, making sure you’ve got about 1 cm foam. Try not to accidentally reveal to yourself which beer you’re tasting.
2. Now taste the beer and note your findings on a beer scorecard. Take about 2-3 minutes for each.
3. Complete the scorecard, noting the letter on the underside of the can/bottle.
4. Rinse and dry your beer glass, take a sip of water, then repeat the above for the next beer. Continue until you have tasted all the beers.

The “Big Reveal”

Once all the scorecards are complete, it’s time for the “big reveal”! Pull the foil off all of the cans/bottles and match the letter on the bottom of the can/bottle to the scorecard for that beer.

It’s a lot of fun to see whether you agree with other people’s findings, so why don’t you come back to tastebeer.com.au and see what other people said about the beers you tasted? You can also submit YOUR findings. We’ve got over 61 beers listed, so you’re bound to find some beers to comment on, and of course you’re welcome to submit completely new reviews as well. You can also discuss your findings about the beers you tasted in our forum and discover how much you really know about tasting beer by taking our fun beer quiz.

Click here to learn more about how to taste beer.