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The other day I drank a longneck of Coopers original Pale Ale. Nice. I then popped over to the bottleshop and returned with 3 x 330's, one each of of Pilsner Urquell, Hoegarden "forbidden fruit" and Budejovicky Budovar. 25 minutes later I tasted the Hoegarden and it was great...followed by the Urquell,..which was exquisite...the budovar tasted ordinary. Last night, wanting to repeat the experience, I started with the Urquell...IT DID NOT TASTE ANYTHING LIKE THE PREVIOUS NIGHT...same shop, same batch....good but I felt that I had tasted better...I followed it with pale ale which tasted great. Tonight I started with the hoegarden..great but there was definite difference from my first experience with it...followed with a pale ale which tasted GREAT...
The only difference between tasting #1 of the Urquell and tasting #2 of the Urquell was temperature.
Now this is the conundrum...if we were to manipulate the order of beer drinking and the temperature at which it is served, could a VB taste great????
On the serious side what are the extraneous factors that effect our tasting of beer?
If I want to highlight my HB, should I serve a couple of other well chosen beers before I make the royal pour?

The temp certainly has a major impact on the beer. As do the way it is served (glass size and type, amount of head, etc.), time it is in the glass before being tasted, and time since last tasting the previous beer. Also what meals you had eaten through the day, if you had smoked or been near a smoker that day, any exposure to strong perfumes or foods/spices such as garlic, chili, ginger, etc. It is also usually a good idea to brush your teeth a couple hours before the tasting.

As far as serving your beer to maximize its impact. The best suggestion I can make is to NOT serve it immediately after other beers, and to be sure to serve it with a food which very well compliments it. Food stimulates all of the sense used when tasting a beer and the right food with the right beer can be like heaven!

I find I need to drink the lighter style beers first, then onto the heavys to taste the most out of all the beers on offer

Tipsy,
That's exactly my point. I agree with you that a nice light beer is good to start with before a gradual progression to more complex flavours.
But, to me the Hoegarden is a complex little thingy and I must confess that I had never tried one before a few days ago. For some reason it seems to kick really nicely into the the lighter stuff and not overpower them. I repeated the experiment tonight and it worked again.
Now what clicked through my little evil mind was this...I have friend who I want to convert to HB, he's sceptical and wants to taste the first brew that I have just done as he will have to invest in the fermenter kit. Now, evil cogs churning over, what can I serve him immediately prior to the HB "taste test" to make what could be an average result into something that is acceptable?
Cheers

Now this is the conundrum...if we were to manipulate the order of beer drinking and the temperature at which it is served, could a VB taste great????

V.B at any temperature is still crap it just gets worse as it warms.

try howing out thistles for several hours on a stinking hot day then smashing down a ice-cold VB. its fantastic then.
admittedly i'd rather have something else though.

Surprised you didnt like the Budvar. I prefer it to Urquell altho its a close call.

drsmurto wrote:Surprised you didnt like the Budvar. I prefer it to Urquell altho its a close call.

+1

Well, I had a beer tasting session with an old friend who has only been drinking VB for years. I started him on a Coopers Pale Ale. He liked it.
Then I thought that I would live dangerously and poured him a glass of my first homebrew...a lager. He really liked it...he was amazed. Followed this with the 2nd batch which I did concurrently to the first...Cooper's kit from the K mart fermenter box.
"Different, sweeter, I don't mind it..."
When i told him the only difference between the two was Saflager yeast and the brewing temperature...he was amazed...so am I for that matter>
Now the crunch. We followed this with an imported Stella. He preferred my lager...much to my surprise. (He actually requested more later in the evening.)
From there we hit a Pilsener Urquell. verdict...great.
Forbidden fruit....great.
Budvar...mmmmm interesting.
Hoegaarden wheat beer...Great.
Heineken (local)....Great
Carlsberg..(local) ...Great.
Chimay Red....SUPERB....perfect.
His only disappointment of the evening was the Stella...(he put it down to expectations)
Needless to say he's now working out where he can set up his homebrew equipment!!!
So now I'm stuck with all these bottles of Stella.

Send em down here they won't last long.

No problems, Biernut
To save on postage I've decided that I should convert the "bottles of Stella" into Stella bottles.
http://homebrewandbeer.com/forum/postin ... f=6&t=8595#