Tasting Craft Beer

4 beers and a scoring sheet.

Other jury members are working hard. Looking, smelling, tasting, writing.

Judging 21 homebrew Maibocks is a great experience. The variety in beers is great. Some are outright great, some are very good beers in a different style, and with some you hope they take your feedback well and improve in the next iteration.

La Trappe Bock. One from this year, one from 2006.

Jopen Bokbier. Fresh from a can and a bottle with a BBD in 2003.

ZHB Dubbelbok. A 2925 edition with label. The one without label is from 2011.

De Molen Bock. From 2011.

#Beer tasting club was seasonally themed yesterday. We had Bocks. For most, a fresh one from this year, and a very old one (2011, 2006, 2003). The old ones were more similar than the fresh, thinner, aroma of apple syrup and port. All bitterness and roast notes were gone. Some still had carbonation!

A beer filled week ahead: 16 written beer reviews due, the local tasting club night on Tuesday and on Thursday I'll be judging (and orchestrating the judgment process) in a home brew competition for Maibocks. Could be worse!

A fridge temperature and room temperature version of the same beer. The cold one is much hazier.

After 20 minutes, the difference has largely disappeared.

Chill haze in action!
Some beers show a haze when they're cold. Above about 10 degrees Celsius this should largely be gone.
Left image: the same beer at fridge and room temperatures. Right: 20 minutes later.

Perhaps even more than helpful?

The can of their Alkoholfrei says "less then alc 0,5% vol."

Perhaps some language education would be helpful for the Warsteiner packaging staff.

A pin machine, with a very odd order of the numbers: 978 431 506 2

Is this a check to see if I can order one more beer?

Plans made! I made printed visuals of the brewing process and of a flavor wheel. Will talk for ~5 minutes about how to taste, a ~5 minute quick overview of main ingredients and process. Then 10 minutes of tasting at 2 out of 3 tables with ingredients present, and 2 exemplary beer styles.

Mixed spit fermentation!

I didn't try to suggest you spit in it. Those enzymes must be isolated somewhere else, too, I'm sure?

I think there are other enzymes (in our saliva, for example) that extract sugars from starches, at room to body temperature, no? I don't know what kind of sugars, but I'm positive there's some type of yeast that will take it.

The Belgian beer styles are only a fraction of the content...

Women speak out about sexism in the beer industry A selection of women working in beer revealed how sexism in the sector continues to prevail and how it is everyone’s job to speak up about it. Jessica Mason reports.

Women speak out about sexism in the beer industry www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2025/09/wome... @teamdb.bsky.social

Plus, English is the native language of the author... One of the arguments could be, that the book lists style classics as well as good "local" (to the Netherlands) commercial examples per type. This would be a challenge in a more internationally oriented book.

The first thing I thought was why this was published in Dutch... Not sure if it will be translated, but it should be!

The Biertypenboek by Derek Walsh

Meet the new Standard Work, in Dutch, on beer styles. Or types, rather. Derek Walsh put a tremendous amount of knowledge, research and work into this long-awaited book. Such a joy to just browse the pages and absorb the wisdom.

O'zapft is! 🍻

Welcome to Leiden!

European Beer Star 2025: Medal Winners and Insights Last Wednesday, the results of the European Beer Star 2025 were announced in Munich. I quickly looked at the results table and jotted down some of my personal conclusions from it. Read this as &#82…

I had some fun with the European Beer Star 2025 results table. I made a little writeup: tasteofcraftbeer.wordpress.com/2025/09/20/e...

One of the best.

Hallo! Wanted to respond to your post from Leiden. Welcome! Still looking for dinner or pub recommendations? Enjoy Borefts just once more!

That's for a British audience? I'm quite positive that my audience wouldn't know what a bitter is...

Excellent suggestions, thanks! I do the temperature trick more often (I sometimes even make sure all gas is gone from the warm one by heavily stirring).
I will certainly think about this a bit and report on what I do!
Thanks!

Sounds reasonable. Do you make sure they walk out with something like an informative one-liner they can brag with at their next birthday party or neighborhood BBQ?

Bottles, cans and probably (yikes!) plastic cups. Only tables.

For context: these are colleagues at a public health department, not necessarily beer afficionados, but they could have chosen a different workshop, so there's at least some interest.
I want them to learn something fun (fun facts?), taste some good beer and hopefully be surprised by what they had.

I'm asked to give (two rounds of) "beer workshops", lasting only 25 minutes, for an unknown number of people, but I'm guessing roughly 25.
What do you do to make this entertaining and somewhat educational? Any experience among my followers here?

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Nederlandse brouwers opgelet!
De Grolsch Proefbrouwerij biedt aan dat bieren van micro- en nano-brouwerijen eenmalig (gratis!) door een laboratorium en smaakpanel kunnen worden getest, via de Vakmannen & Meesters podcast.
De ideale manier om de waarde van lab- en sensorische testen te ondervinden!

Depending on where you stay in the city, Artisan was also excellent!