Here’s why you should never take our tasting notes seriously (we certainly don’t).
We were sitting in the garden having a drink in the sun. We started with our own Centennial-hopped pale ale and followed it with Brewdog’s 77 lager, described as a pilsener. We thought 77 tasted like a good Franconian pils — noticeable malt flavour with bitter bite at the end, but with quite restrained, herbal hops.
Reading Barry and Velky Al, however, we realise that this cannot be. Surely we should have spotted the Amarillo hops a mile off? But they were drinking this alongside German and Czech versions, and we were drinking it after having had our tastebuds bludgeoned with c-hops.
Tasting is absolutely relative.
We really enjoyed it at any rate, and will be getting a bit more in for the summer.
Question: have Brewdog stopped making Hoprocker?
5 replies on “We can't be trusted”
Do you find, when drinking different beers, if you follow a well hopped beer with a less hopped one, you can still taste the hop character from the first.
I do.
This makes tasting the second beer properly impossible, for me anyway. I find that this is especially true for very bitter beers and very citrusy hops.
@Andy: I find that’s generally true, unless you have a reliable way of refreshing your palate…
Yes, Hop Rocker/Cult Lager was discontinued and reinvented as 77.
See here for the rather frank reasoning: http://www.brewdog.com/blog-article.php?id=52
I still trust you guys 🙂
I’ve found much the same thing. A rather extreme example was a couple of weeks ago in Copenhagen, where I bought a sampler tray at Brewpub Copenhagen. The first “beer” on the tray was their rosé cider, and the second was a new wit. I was shocked to find that the wit was thin, vinegary, and sour.
I was about to complain when I remembered that I’d just watched the brewer check all the tap lines and taste each of the beers before they declared the bar open. So if it really was infected, shouldn’t the brewer have tasted it?
Later, I came back to the wit after eating and trying the next two beers. Suddenly it was no longer remotely as thin, vinegary or sour. It seems that the intense sweetness of the cider must have distorted my impression of the wit.
I’ve had similar experiences before, so it does seem that previous beers can not just affect your experience of later beers, but also change them quite dramatically. I guess there isn’t much more to be done about this than to be aware of the problem.