Blind IPA Tasting 2 – The Wrath of Cali

By Iron Chef Leftovers

One IPA blind tasting was not enough for the Iron Chef, so we had to do another one. Same rules as the first, once again with 5 tasters, but a slightly different cast of characters – Port Townsend Hop Diggity replaced Harpoon IPA, Skagit River Sculler’s IPA replaced Avery Maharaja, Ninkasi Tricerahops replaced Laughing Dog Alpha Dog and Port Brewing Wipeout IPA replaced Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA. The beers were ranked 1-9 with 1 being the best. This time around, no one except me knew what the beers were. The results:

In the interest of disclosure, I am Judge 5; all others will remain nameless to avoid the wrath of disgruntled beer drinkers everywhere.

Let me stress – finishing at the bottom of the rankings is in no way an indication of a bad beer. If anything, the general comments this time around was that the beers were very difficult to rank as there were a number of them that were liked equally. That definitely shows up in the voting totals with less than 10 points separating 5th from 1st and just 17 points separating first from last (it was 25 points the last time around). The similarity of the beers was by design and had an inadvertent consequence of making it harder on the judging – all of the beers ranged on the higher end of the IBU scale, with Diamond Knot coming in at the low of 72 and 5 of the beers topping 100 IBU.

Some interesting results in this one – Pliny remained near the top again, but Firestone seemed to be the clear favorite this time around after a disappointing showing last time (and almost not being part of the competition this time around). Port Brewing made it a clean sweep at the top for the California beers by finishing 3rd. Anacortes again finished 4th, despite it getting 2 “best in show” votes and previous winner, Boundary Bay fell hard to 8th.

Once again there was great conversation surrounding what everyone liked and did not like and much food and beer was consumed in the festivities.

Based on the feedback, I think that the scoring will be handled differently for The Great Blind IPA Challenge, Episode 3: Revenge of the Simcoe (It is a play on Star Wars Ep.3 in case you are wondering and Simcoe is a variety of hops).