I have some friends coming over tonight for a Pre-Brewvival party. We all have quite a few awesome IPAs we are sharing. Here is the list: DIPAs- Pliny the Elder Alpine Pure Hoppiness Alpine Nelson Surly Abrasive Hoplslam Three Floyd's Arctic Panzer Wolf DFH 120 Minute Deschutes Hop Henge Knee Deep Hop Shortage Lagunitas Sucks Pipeworks Ninja vs. Unicorn 21st Amendment Hop Crisis O'so Lupulin Maximus Heady Topper IPAs- Surly Furious Blind Pig Sculpin Toppling Goliath Zeelander Toppling Goliath Golden Nugget Ska Modus Hoperandi I had no idea our list would get this big! What would be a good approach in tasting order? Obviously, we can't try them all, if we did, we could never survive Brewvival. I will try to post the pics of alll them before we get started.
That's a hell of a lineup of great IPAs/IIPAs! That being said, I'd be worried about destroying my palate before even getting to Brewvival. I'd pick a few favorites (or ones that I'm dying to try), work my way from the bottom to the top of the list, and then enjoy the hell out of Brewvival. It's a sold out event with some killer beer ... might as well make the most of it, right? By the way, I'm not a big fan of Thomas Creek, but those casks sound amazing! Have a blast!
My only suggestion is to do the Nelson first. Nelson hops in that one are amazing and I think they might get muddled more than any other beers flavor profile if tasted in the middle. Beer tastings are one of the instances where "save the best for last" is a bad idea.
Tasting order needs to be related to how dry the beers are. As a general rule, you simply should not follow up a sweet beer with a dry bitter bitter, regardless of overall IBUs. I say this all the time on BA, "You dont drink the orange juice after eating the pancakes". If you habituate your tastebuds to a beer with higher residual sugar, they will be incapable of picking up the lower residual sugar in the drier beer.
Tough one. I would say leave hop crisis, hoperandi, and hop henge out of the line up all together. Make sure to have blind pig and Pliny side by side. I haven't had any Alpine but those need to be drank as well. Maybe take the ones most have had already or are readily available out of the line up. Maybe then go by ABV? Lowest to highest?
I did a DFH tasting a couple weeks ago and went 60 - 75 - 90 - Burton Baton - 120 in that order. I'd suggest arranging your IPAs, and then moving to the double IPAs. As you can see, I arranged mine in terms of how hoppy they are, but it was easier since it was all the same brewery. I also personally think you have a few too many if you plan to taste all of them. I'd recommend doing 2 separate tastings with that very impressive list.
I think a good rule of thumb is going from lowest IBU to highest IBU and disregard ABV. If you start with the higher IBU beers, you will wreck your palate and not be able to appreciate the lower IBU beers. Cheers!! Sounds like an awesome night ahead!!
Too many hops for one night; it would be a shame to miss out on the full flavors of some of those beers. However, if you want to do all of them, I would definitely go malty to dry. Except for the 120 minute. You can drink that first, last, or even in the middle to mix it up. It's so much different than everything else present, it doesn't much matter.
This is exactly what I was going to suggest. Rank them by IBUs, start at the lowest. No doubt you will suffer palate fatigue regardless, but should be a fun ride!
I would think cutting back the selection a bit might be in order. Also I can vouch that Heady will destroy your palate for other hoppy beer for days, and i'm sure the same could be said for other overly hoppy brews.
Agree that's too much IPA and the Hopslam and heady will ruin any other.. even RR Pliny. Drink the singles, they are top notch, finish with hop crisis then 120.
start with the single ipa's you have listed but drink them in the reverse order you wrote down, then move to a couple of the dipa's ending with alpines, pliny and abrasive, its called that for a reason..super good but definitely the last horah!
Sorry it took a while to respond. I appreciate all the advice. We were trying the IPAs the night before Brewvival. We ended up starting with the Toppling Goliath Zeelander which was a grapefruit bomb! Loved it! We then tried some of the Golden Nugget which was very good too. My father-in-law was kind enough to bring me back a bunch of beer from WI, IA and MN. Next we tried the Blind pig which was very good. Then Pliny was next. Extra smooth and pretty much the definition of a balanced IPA. We then moved to Heady topper. IMO I liked the extra pine and back of the palate bitterness better than the Pliny. However, the Pliny was the easier drinking one. Next, we did Ninja vs Unicorn. It was also very well balanced,but tasted a mild booziness. Then we tried the Surly Abrasive. It was my favorite of the night, but not by much over the Heady. The Abrasive had just the right amount of hop forwardness but yet remained smooth. We then split a 2009 bottle of DFH Palo Santo. That blew me away! It had such a great smoothness compared to fresh strong Palo. We finished off the night with DFH 120 from 2011. It was crazy good too very hop forward and omg I could feel the alcohol kick in with each sip. Overall, an awesome night of IPA tasting. I will have to move on to the others and try with time. We had an epic time at Brewvival. I got a great pic with Sam Calgione. There was mud wrestling and phenomenal beers. I had a randalized version of 120 with some ? Summit hops if I remember right. I can't tell you the best beer because so many stood out. I still have an awesome selection of beer to choose from for weeks to come.
I was fortunate enough to have my father in law pick some up from the brewery in Decorah on his road trip down here for my son's B day. They live near Red Wing MN.
The Palo Santo is an interesting and awesome addition into the middle of that lineup. I'm gonna have to pick up some of that for aging purposes.
I totally loved it! We were feeling real good at that point. It ended up working out well. Aging the palo santo really helps it out with the high ABV.
Thats my damage...pretty stellar list. Would have been cool if someone could have sent you some other great IPAs from VT other then heady.
