Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

  • Home
  • About
  • Editorial
  • Birthdays
  • Art & Beer

Socialize

  • Dribbble
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Flickr
  • GitHub
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Powered by Genesis

You are here: Home / Beers / Knowing Your Limits

Knowing Your Limits

March 21, 2010 By Jay Brooks

limits
I woke up again in Seattle, my second day here. Yesterday I helped to choose the winners of the Hard Liver Barleywine Fest at Brouwer’s Cafe. It’s the eighth year of the festival and it’s really grown into an impressive event in the several years I’ve been coming up for it.

But the weekend has got me thinking, not about barley wines, but tasting in general. At these types of festivals, people often try to taste every offering — in small quantities of course — of some very big beers. You see it at the Toronado Barleywine Festival and you see if at Brouwer’s Hard Liver, where this year 50 barley wines will be judged and something like 62 or 66 will be served, owing to multiple vintages of the same beers.

And as impressive as that is, it’s today that has me worried. Each Sunday, the day after the Hard Liver Fest, Matt Bonney hosts, with his business partner Matt Vandenberghe (a.k.a. Vern) and a cast of characters, the private, invitation-only Keene Tasting, named for Dave Keene, who owns the Toronado in San Francisco. With Dr. Bill now working at Stone and no longer doing as many of his legendary tastings, the Keene Tasting is one of the few that follow the format Dr. Bill (at least as far as I know) pioneered.

It’s a simple, if punishing format, where a new beer is opened roughly every five minutes over a period of several hours. So while you never get a large portion of any single beer, you do ultimately taste a lot of different beers. Still, it adds up. There are snack breaks and a lunch break, and those that stick with it can expect to be there eleven or twelve hours. Like many other types of marathons, very few actually reach the finish line, tasting every single beer.

At the beginning, the first beer
Last year something like 160 beers were tasted, beginning around 11:00 a.m. and going well into the evening. That year I made it to 110 beers before reaching my limit.

The year before, I only made it half-way, and dropped out at beer 75, owing to getting very, very sick — not from the beer, just a feverish flu — which I detailed then in Pride Goeth Before A Fall. And that brings me to my point. We all have our limits, and it’s not only good to know them, but also pay them heed.

Matt Bonney keeping things moving
Impressively, one of the improvements Bonney employs over the average Dr. Bill tasting is that a clean glass is used for every beer, a Herculean task if ever there was one.

There are, of course, myriad ways to taste from settling in to drink only one beer, exploring it thoroughly from start to finish, lingering over it as it changes when it warms, really letting it sink in to the very opposite, tasting as many beers as possible, very quickly, and everything in between. Generally, when judging beers in competition, you want no more than nine or ten in a flight and 30 or less for a single session. But that’s just one legitimate way in which beer can be sampled. That may be too many at a time for some people and too few for others.

I know there are people critical of the rapid fire Dr. Bill-style tasting, but I’m not. Is it my favorite way to sample beer? Not necessarily, but it is still quite enjoyable and while you can’t linger over every single beer, you can get a sense of it all the same. There’s a Danish proverb, “better thin beer than an empty jug.” And that’s the rub. I still prefer the opportunity to sample some truly rare beers, even if not under the most ideal circumstances, than not at all. So yes, I’m a relativist when it comes to the marathon tasting but I’m just fine with that. The important thing is to have a good time and know when to walk away. I already know there will be some spectacular beers poured later today and I’m looking forward to giving it another go. Will I make it to the end? Probably not. But that’s okay, there’s no shame in that as far as I’m concerned.

In the words of the immortal Kenny Rogers, equally applicable to drinking as gambling. “You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em, know when to walk away and know when to run.” With any luck, I’ll know when to fold and can walk away. Stay tuned for details.

Below is a slideshow of the 2009 Keene Tasting. This Flickr gallery is best viewed in full screen. To view it that way, after clicking on the arrow in the center to start the slideshow, click on the button on the bottom right with the four arrows pointing outward on it, to see the photos in glorious full screen. Once in full screen slideshow mode, click on “Show Info” to identify each photo.

Filed Under: Beers, Editorial, Events Tagged With: Photo Gallery, Seattle, Tasting, Washington



Comments

  1. Tony says

    March 21, 2010 at 12:11 pm

    You sure did well! Once I get to about 30 I am done – maybe i should leave it to the pros!

  2. aperfectpint says

    March 21, 2010 at 11:31 am

    Where was this post yesterday before I dove into Firkin Fest in St. Paul?

  3. chuckl says

    March 21, 2010 at 12:00 pm

    Maybe I’m getting older, but I don’t get the point of marathon tasting of big beers. At some point, your palate just gets numb and you miss the nuance that characterizes special beers. Trying to differentiate among beers after you’ve had more than a dozen can be problematic, especially at the back end. And extrapolating some sort of conclusion of relative quality seems a bit ludicrous. I’d rather see fewer beers tasted per session over several days.

Trackbacks

  1. Knowing Your Limits | says:
    March 21, 2010 at 11:36 am

    […] http://brookstonbeerbulletin.com/knowing-your-limits/ […]

Find Something

Northern California Breweries

Please consider purchasing my latest book, California Breweries North, available from Amazon, or ask for it at your local bookstore.

Recent Comments

  • Return of the Session – Beer Search Party on The Sessions
  • Scoats on Beer Birthday: Scoats
  • You're Not From Around Here - Food GPS on The Sessions
  • Mark Smith on Beer In Ads #4778: Rheingold Can Quench A Dragon’s Thirst
  • Getting Ready to Celebrate St Patrick’s Day – The Blessing of Beer | Red Panda News on Beer Saints

Recent Posts

  • Historic Beer Birthday: Bert Grant May 17, 2025
  • Beer In Ads #4971: How To Serve, Drink And Enjoy A Good Glass Of Beer May 16, 2025
  • Beer Birthday: Gary Spedding May 16, 2025
  • Historic Beer Birthday: Maria Best May 16, 2025
  • Historic Beer Birthday: John Schneider May 16, 2025

BBB Archives

Go to mobile version