The Winner of the Blind IPA Tasting is…

By Iron Chef Leftovers

..Pliny the Elder.

I will admit it, I was wrong.  I really didn’t think that Pliny would be able to win, although, it barely won. The scoring was on a scale of 1-9 with 1 being the best. There were 5 tasters and the tasting was conducted blind. Here are the results with how everyone scored them.

The judges’ identities are being kept secret to prevent retribution from any disgruntled beer drinkers, except Judge #1, which is yours truly.

I would caution anyone reading this that finishing at the bottom was not an indication of a bad beer – it was just in this sampling, the judges preferred one beer over another. I think if I poured any of these beers individually, everyone involved would have enjoyed them. You also have to deal with sample size – 5 people are not enough of judges to really get a handle on this, and I do think there is a certain extent of regional bias – everyone tasting the beers has lived in the Northwest for an extended period of time. There was some great conversation at the table surrounding what people liked and did not like and why the ranked beers in a certain place, which was unexpected and most enlightening.

This was a fun experiment and one that I hope to repeat again once I get my hands on some additional bottles of Pliny.

I also attempted to identify the beers. I was successful on 4 out of the 9 (I got Maharaja, Harpoon, Anacortes and Boundary Bay correct) but I somehow didn’t get Devil Dog (thought that Pliny was DD) or Diamond Knot (thought that Firestone was DK), which are 2 of my favorite beers. I wasn’t guessing on these, I was basing my decision on what they smelled and tasted like. I guess it shouldn’t surprise me though, the 4 I got correct were the last 4 IPA’s that I drank prior to this taste test, so everything about their makeup was relatively fresh in my mind.

While the NW beers did not win, they did finish 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th, which should not really be a surprise. Boundary Bay could have easily won the competition purely with my vote – I had Maharaja, BB and Firestone all ranked about the same and I kept changing my rankings on them. On several occasions, I had Boundary Bay ranked #3 and I changed it to #4 at the last minute, otherwise it would have tied with Pliny.

Harpoon’s last place finish was not a terrible surprise, it was by far the least hoppy beer in the competition, at 42 IBU (The next lowest was 75) and was really tasteless compared to the other 8. It was also the only English Style IPA, whereas everything else was a West Coast style single or double IPA.

I was also surprised that I didn’t like the Diamond Knot IPA. It is one of my favorites usually, but, unlike the other judges; I really didn’t like it on this day. I might have just had a bad day or my palate was not working at 100%, but I was getting a smoky/woody flavor out of it that was a bit off-putting. On the flip side, I was loving Maharaja, but I was in the minority in that opinion as everyone else ranked it in the bottom half of their list. Anacortes proved to be the most polarizing with 2 judges giving it the top spot and 1 the bottom. Anacortes was probably the highest IBU beer at 118 and it was the only one that did not come from a bottle – I drove to Anacortes 48 hours before the beer was poured to get a growler as it was the only way I could be assured that we would have it – I couldn’t find it on tap anywhere near Seattle. I think this might have led to some of the comments about it being flat.

So where does this leave us? I think it is inconclusive – Pliny, while a fine beer, doesn’t seem to be significantly better than at least one beer brewed in the Pacific Northwest, Pliny just has better marketing and distribution than Boundary Bay (as well as scarcity driving up the hype).  We need to do this again with a larger group of hopheads and see what the results look like in round 2. A couple of the beers might need to be replaced due to lack of availability (Harpoon definitely will be replaced), so who should be added to the lineup? Feel free to post your suggestions in the comment section.