May 14th Van Houten Beer Tasting in Review

Ok - the good news is we have so much going on that getting to the blogosphere has been delayed! Last month we had a successful semi public tasting event in our backyard beer garden. A collection of old friends and new friends from the beer community and twitterland gathered at our house on a Saturday in May to sample six of Johnny's beers.

Johnny outfitted a freezer with built in tap towers and a temperature gauge to transform it into a serious kegerator.


We debated about whether to give folks feedback forms or surveys, and decided to engage folks about what they were tasting. We served our American Amber, California Common, Belgian Brown, Belgian Dubbel, Pilsner, and Northern English Brown. It was a nice opportunity to talk about beer in general and specific, why we're not filtering, why small batches matter, and to enjoy in the convivial spirit of local beer.



We were honored that our fellow-nano brewers Alan, from Beltane Brewing, JJ, from Petaluma Hills, and Cathy a brewer out of Novato joined us, as well as our colleague Brian, from bayareacraftbeer.com. Also a delight to meet a few folks from the twittersphere in person.


People really enjoyed themselves and most found there way to trying all 5 varieties.


Lots of beer gets paired with heavy pub food, which is often a delight, but with three local cheese companies, we wanted to present an overall delight of the senses with local beer, cheese, bread and fruit.


It went over rather well.


At the end of the day, we tallied up the results and found some interesting information - Lots of people who thought they didn't like dark beers, or light beers etc - liked the Van Houten version. The California Common and Belgian Dubbel were the official winners, but most of them were rated quite well.


Next time - and update on our West Coast Brewery Tour - 19 Breweries in 9 Days!

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