On Saturday August 10, Cincinnati's beer experts/nerds met on the west side of Cincinnati at the home of The BrewProfessor www.brewprof.com for a blind taste test. The goal was to determine who among Cincinnati's craft brewers has the finest IPA.
The distinguished judges/tasters were Danny Spears of www.beermumbo.com, Ian Hoopes of www.beerquestabv.com, the BrewProf Mike Stuart, Tom Aguero of www.queencitydrinks.com, and Chris Stevens of www.queencityfresh.com. All of whom are beer experts and have much better websites than mine! Go check them out if you haven't..
The blind tasting was administered by myself and Mr. Matt Rowe. You can find Matt's thoughts on beer, brewing and smoking meat on twitter @LooseScrewBeers.
The breweries who graciously donated their versions of the wonderful and incredibly diverse India Pale Ale style were: Blank Slate, Cellar Dweller, Christian Moerlein, Double Barrel, Fifty West, Listerman, MadTree, Mt. Carmel, Rhinegeist, and Rivertown.
Each beer was assigned a letter, and delivered randomly two at a time to the judges. After blindly tasting each beer, they were each scored on appearance, aroma, taste, aftertaste, and drinkability. Based in a total possible score of 100, each beer's scores were tallied and averaged. In an exciting turn of events, we found ourselves with a tie! The tasters were sent back out to Mike's deck, Matt and myself poured one final taste if each beer and the tasters were instructed to choose their favorite of the two.
Finally, the smoke cleared and the victor was revealed as Blank Slate's The Lesser Path!! Another congratulations to Scott Lafolette at Blank Slate! Scott puts tons of effort into brewing original beers and up until recently all daily operations at the brewery he handled alone! A well deserved highest of fives to you Scott!
Check all of our respective blogs for similar postings about the judging.
Talks in the form of a constant email beep on my iPhone are already in progress on the next king of Cincinnati contest. Until then, drink local!
Cheers!!
@sudsanonymous
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