How to Host A Great Beer Tasting Party
In an age where craft beer is more popular than ever, there’s never been a better time to host your own beer tasting party. These days, events like this are often just as appealing as wine tasting parties, and they’re a great opportunity to test your palate on a range of new flavors.
One of the best things about a beer tasting party, is that you don’t need to be celebrating a special occasion, you can have this event on any day of the week, or you could turn it into something you do for a birthday, graduation, or something similar.
Here are some top tips to get you started.
1. Decide the Rules
The first step in hosting a good beer tasting party, is figuring out what the rules of the event are going too be. Is this going to be a laid-back Friday night experience with some snacks and entertainment, or are you going to be having a full tasting at a professional brewery, and sharing gifts as part of the night? It’s totally up to you which route you want to take.
If you’re planning on having a more structured event for a birthday party or similar celebration, then make sure that you let people know that they’re expected to bring gifts in advance, and how much money they’re going to need for the taster beers too. GiftCannon Gift Ideas has some great options if you’re stuck for inspiration.
2. Choose Your Focus
These days, there are hundreds of different kinds of beer to explore, each with their own distinct flavors and notes. The best way to keep your tasting party organized, is to decide what sort of beer you’re going to be testing in advance. Choose a theme, like sour Gose beers, or IPAs from local breweries in your area.
To let your attendees know what to expect, you could even create a tasting card that tells them the name of the beer, where it comes from, and what’s it’s identifying features are. This will help them to check off the experiences one at a time.
3. Have Some Food Lined Up
When you’re hosting a beer tasting party, there’s a good chance that you’re going to end up with some hungry people who want to snack as they sip. The good news about this kind of “tasting” event is that you don’t have to be particularly fancy with the snacks. However, you can get some advice from the breweries and bottles on the kind of meals that will work best with each flavor or collection.
Looking up the kind of beers you’re tasting online will also give you some extra information to work with. You can check out some surprising details on how certain unique flavors can really bring out the tastes associated with each beer.
4. Try BYOB
If you’re not hosting the event at a local brewery as part of a professional tasting experience, then why not ask everyone to contribute to the party by bringing their own favorite beer. Each person in your crew should bring enough beer for everyone else to taste. This is a great chance to get an insight into the kind of flavors that your loved ones and friends appreciate. It could also give you some great gift ideas for later in the years too.
One great way to make things extra special, is to ask everyone to bring their own beer in an unlabeled bottle and mix them all up. Then ask your friends to try and identify who brought each drink. You’d be surprised how much you can tell about someone by the kind of beverages they prefer to drink. Or, just try and guess the name of the beer based on what you can taste.
5. Combine Beer and Wine
Finally, if you really want to mix things up, why not have a beer and wine tasting on the same night? You could choose a selection of countries and pick a popular wine and a beer choice from each location to give your attendees the tastebud-tingling adventure of a lifetime. Or speak to an expert and see how you can sometimes combine both beer and wine to bring out the flavors of each drink.
Hosting a beer and wine night could be a great way to ensure that you can appeal to as many people in your circle as possible too. If everyone in your crew doesn’t like beer, they can still be part of the experience and enjoy a glass of wine instead.