Plymouth Beer Tasting

The tasting commences!

A recent beer tasting with Plymouth Chamber of Trade was very enjoyable but also highlighted what interest there is from the general public in learning a little bit more about beer. It's not however the art of brewing that people want to know, fascinating as it is, brewing can be scientific and complicated with references to brewing equipment and processes that many in the trade take for granted, but for the uninitiated cause an instant glazing over! What is of far more interest is to help people understand a little about the flavours they are tasting, what ingredients contribute to them, help in describing them and above all else keeping it entertaining and fun.

As regards flavours how often have you heard someone describe a beer as hoppy? Countless times for sure, but for many people to describe the flavours you can expect from hops would be quite hard - the fruity citrus, herbal, floral, grassy and cheesy notes. It just gets described as hoppy. Likewise with malt flavours, there are not that many times you hear toffee, biscuit or roasted being used to describe beers.  However this is where the Beer Sommeliers, CAMRA members and other enthusiasts can help. It is really easy to try to impress with ones beer knowledge and identify flavours that are the merest hint in a beer. It's actually much harder to try and bring this into the every day language, using easy and obvious flavour terms and make a beer more accessible and easy to understand.

At the Plymouth tasting it was great to use simple props like bags of toffees, grapefruits, jars of coffee etc. to engage with people and help them connect every day flavours to the beers they were drinking. Add a little beer and food matching, a fun quiz, play with some actual hops and malt and of course taste a wide variety of beer styles and you have the making of a good evening.

The tasting in Plymouth went well and I have to thank Plymouth Chamber of Trade for organising it. Hopefully it will have enthused those who attended to try different beer styles for themselves and also understand a little as to why they like or dislike certain beers.