First of all, I wish everyone a very happy new year!! May you all get what you wish for, and a little more (of the good things)!!
I hope everybody enjoyed the new years'eve parties, we sure did!
Remember one of my earlier posts, in which I pointed out my new years resolution for 2011? In that post I said I wanted to taste (and describe) every beer we offer in Bier Central. All those beers are described in the "Bier Central Bier Encyclopedie".
The "Bier Encyclopedie" is our 86-page beer-menu that every visitor to our pub uses to make his choice of drink. Customers can also buy our "Bier Encyclopedie" for a very reasonable price, if they want to have a thorough look at it at home.
By now, we're already 4 days in the new year, and it's time to get started. But tasting 300+ beers is not an easy task :) ... Where do I start and how do I continue to bring it to a good ending? Honestly I was a bit confused and overwhelmed. Should I taste beers per category, or should I taste several types of beers of each style per tasting-session? How much beers should I taste per session? Where, and when should I taste them? It all seems very easy, but I promised myself to do it thorough, and as objective as possible.
This morning I had a quick chat with one of our beer-experts, Hans Bombeke, president of the "Antwerps BierCollege" (Antwerp Beer College). Hans gives us (the Bier Central staff) regular updates/workshops about beer and everything that comes with it. Presenting him the question in what order I should taste beers, he advised me to keep it simple, and just start tasting from page 1 to 86, in that order, so that you, the reader, can easily follow each tasting, using the "Bier Encyclopedie" (if you have it of course :).
Luckily our "Bier Encyclopedie" is already categorized, and is not an alfabethical list of all our beers.
A short recap of the categories, listed in the order as printed in the "Bier Encyclopedie":
- Beers on tap (20)
- Large bottles (26)
- Trappist beers (20)
- Abbey beers (54)
- Gueuzes and Lambics (22)
- Kriek beers (20)
- Fruit beers (18)
- Speciale Belge beers (4)
- Flemish Brown ("Oud Bruin") beers (10)
- Belgian golden ales (8)
- Belgian White beers (8)
- Biere Brut beers (Champagne beers) (3)
- Saison beers (5)
- Speciality beers (119)
- Saisonal beers (and beers hard to get) (20)
So, using the list above, I should start with the beers on tap ... However, I will not :) ... As I want to start my tastings at home (as the tastings evolve, I will do them at the pub in the future), I have to start with bottled beers. So my first category will be the beers bottled in 75cl bottles.
As I've already learned the hard way, you should limit the number of different beers per tasting, and thus I can not taste one category in one tasting (20 beers is just too much :). So I will take one page per tasting max (each page has a maximum of 6 beers, some have less). One tasting per week, 50 weeks in the coming year ... that is about 300 beers ... It's gonna be tight, but we sure will try :).
Ok, we have a plan ... what's the next step? The first tasting!
Let's have a look at the first category: large bottles.
We have 20 different beers listed in that category. Wherever possible I will taste from a small bottle, rather than a big bottle, it's simply no use to drink 75cl of each beer to taste it. Taking the first page of that category, we see the following beers:
- Chimay Bleue
- Westmalle Triple
- Dominus Triple
- Ename Triple
- Gueuze Fond Girardin
- Iris 2007 Cantillon
These will be the first beers in my "Bier Central beer reviews"!
Stay tuned to read the first tastings in the coming days!
Greetingz,
Koen.
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