As I wrote in the previous post, I invited about 8 couples, (plus a few other friends). Each couple was assigned either a light or a dark beer, (4 of each assignments), and I told them to bring a dozen of that one kind. I came up with an overall theme for the beer bracket--Villains (dark beers) vs. Heroes (light beers). The last time I had this kind of party, the theme was Boy Bands vs. Girl Bands. When people arrived, I assigned an appropriate name to the beer so that the tasting would be anonymized.
Here's a picture of the bracket. Each villain name corresponds to a dark beer, and each hero name corresponds to a light beer. I had a cheat sheet so I knew which beer was which.
Each person had two cups, labeled #1 and #2. In each match-up, I poured a small sample of the two beers for each person, and we voted at the end of the round. I alternated between a dark beer match up and a light beer match up. After voting, the winner would advance to the next round. I made cute tasting note sheets so people could keep track of their favorites. The villain/hero names kept the beers unknown so that they were blind taste tests.
The entire tasting, 7 rounds, lasted about an hour and a half. We kept it moving at a good pace, and people had a lot of fun picking their favorites. Here is a picture of Caroline and me, (we co-hosted!), and the picture below is the line up of beers that people brought. With so many craft beer options available these days, you don't really have to worry about people bringing the same things.
Our winning beer was the purple bottle, a Left Hand Milk Stout. It was really tasty! The runner up was the Notch IPA, (the green can on the left).
For the party, Caroline and I made pretzel bites and lots of dips. Check out the pictures below, and click here for our recipes.
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