It started, as many impossible challenges do, with a phone call.
“Hello.”
It was Dave Phillips, feature and outdoor reporter with the Colorado Springs Gazette newspaper. He had a strangely inviting idea: rank and rate the beers from across Colorado in the manner of the NCAA basketball tourney bracket, do a single elimination taste-off, and come up with the #1 beer in Colorado. The Gazette would run a series of stories about the beer taste-offs, in parallel with sports coverage of NCAA basketball. And he wanted our help.
“We’d love to.”
Some quick math determined the scale of effort. With over 100 brewers in Colorado, making about 8 beers each, it would be a lot of beer to rate. The NCAA basketball rankings bracket - long loathed and derided, imperfect yet coveted - pairs 64 college teams in a complex geographic and statistical matrix, out of a nationwide field of hundreds. Trying to select the top 64 Colorado beers amongst 800 worthy contenders would be a similarly flawed but worthy endeavor. We were, of course, prepared to assist. Sparse funding and tight deadlines, however, loomed against us.
“Make it local.”
We decided instead to concentrate only on the local Colorado Springs brewers, and with a universe of about 45 beers, the concept seemed manageable. We would choose a bracket of 32 beers, paired roughly by style, and conduct a series of blind taste-offs to choose the #1 beer in Colorado Springs.
“We’d love to.”
First off, we had to select the top 32. It was up to me, Zenia and Rick to weed out the worthy championship-caliber beers. Now, I’ve been drinking beer for a long while. Miller High Life was my go-to brew early on. I think you could buy four other beers - total. Shiner Bock was a godsend from south Texas, and Heileman’s Special Export (with the great nautical graphic) sustained my beer needs for many years. Zenia can’t remember a world without Fat Tire, and has the most impressionable taste buds amongst us. She no doubt has the most vital liver - she’s only been of legal drinking age for a short time. Rick is an experimenter, and knows his way around beers, with dark, mysterious ales and oddly-infused lagers being of particular interest well into the early morning. We all shared an attraction to the tastes and possibilities of craft beer, and were honored to participate in this beer-fueled journalistic experiment.
“You’re nuts.”
I say who we are so that you know we are not experienced, competitive brewing judges. We’re just a bunch of beer drinkers with various tastes, dislikes and biases, who were asked to help identify the best single beer being made and sold in Colorado Springs. It was a newspaper assignment, and we were journalists, after all. In order to find the best single beer, naturally, we had to identify and informally rate them all, and this necessitated several tasting sessions at each of the six different brewing operations in town: Arctic Craft Brewery, Bristol Brewing, Il Vicino (with beer brewed by Bristol), Judge Baldwin’s Brewing, Phantom Canyon Brewing and Rock Bottom Brewery.
“One of each, please.” So, Zenia, Rick and I trundled off to sample beers: browns, porters, wheats, ambers, pales, pilsners, stouts, lagers, over 40 total beers around town. Eli, the wise and knowledgeable force behind www.confessionsofabeergeek.com, helped out with the roughest duty: appraising the selection at Judge Baldwin’s. Dave from the Gazette gathered intel from Arctic, and before long, we had culled out the deadwood and arrived at 32 beer contenders. Beers that had won a competition during the last twelve months were automatically bracketed (as with conference champions in the NCAA tournament), but the rest were ranked and paired in a completely scientific and methodical manner (again, as with the NCAA tournament). Some of the beers we wanted to include were not available, so others were substituted at the discretion of the selection committee (sound familiar, basketball fans?) The taste off was about to begin.
“But . . . ”
It’s important to realize just how massively flawed this sort of comparison is. Equating an Oatmeal Stout with a Pilsner, and declaring one clearly superior to the other, is truly silly unless it’s some weird sort of game. Kind of like .... the Final Four! Dave was on to something here. This could be interesting. It’s even more interesting that people take this stuff very seriously. But serious stuff it is, and we - rookies dressed in black and white striped shirts, ready to reign in the beer court - were severely lacking in street cred. We were an unlikely crew to evaluate and proclaim such an audacious thing as “the best beer in Colorado Springs”, but hey - Dave at the Gazette was sanctioning the whole thing. He knew. And he had the guiding spirit to lead us away from pomposity and into enlightenment.
“Trinity.”
We were talking about this crazy Gazette beer bracket thing with Todd Walton and Jason Yester, partners in a developing Colorado Springs brewpub called Trininty Brewing, and it turns out that Dave and Todd were running chums, and of course were drinking chums as well. It’s a small world, after all. Todd started Kinfolks in Manitou Springs - part outdoor equipment store, part pub with great draught beers. Todd recognized a good PR op, and signed up himself and Jason on the spot. Jason is an accomplished brewer of legendary beers for many successful Front Range brewing operations, and an experienced beer judge to boot. This was getting really interesting. A doomed crew of three inexperienced judging brewbies had become the Five Beer Tasters With Sudden Street Cred, and woe be the crappy beer set down before us.
“Pace yourself”
Dave from the Gazette set the pace early on - we had a deadline, goddamnit. Beers were poured into various glassware, and presented to the five tasters two at a time. The pairings brackets were presented randomly, and we were never told what two beers were going mano a mano, or lengua a lengua as it were. Dave took notes and kept probing us with irritating and unnerving questions. Shut up, Dave, this is hard, I kept thinking. The fate of the beer world rides on what we decide here. Whether we can all agree that Raspberry Wheat is better than Milk Stout will most certainly affect global dairy and commodities prices, and I for one will not be ridiculed for taking my time deciding whether the smell of wet dog trumps the taste of rotten vegetables. We all had a mission now. Maybe the multiple beers were beginning to cloud our judgment, but we were going to get this right.
(Part two to follow) Here are links to the original Colorado Springs Gazette story and an interactive bracket of the beers tasted.
“Hello.”
It was Dave Phillips, feature and outdoor reporter with the Colorado Springs Gazette newspaper. He had a strangely inviting idea: rank and rate the beers from across Colorado in the manner of the NCAA basketball tourney bracket, do a single elimination taste-off, and come up with the #1 beer in Colorado. The Gazette would run a series of stories about the beer taste-offs, in parallel with sports coverage of NCAA basketball. And he wanted our help.
“We’d love to.”
Some quick math determined the scale of effort. With over 100 brewers in Colorado, making about 8 beers each, it would be a lot of beer to rate. The NCAA basketball rankings bracket - long loathed and derided, imperfect yet coveted - pairs 64 college teams in a complex geographic and statistical matrix, out of a nationwide field of hundreds. Trying to select the top 64 Colorado beers amongst 800 worthy contenders would be a similarly flawed but worthy endeavor. We were, of course, prepared to assist. Sparse funding and tight deadlines, however, loomed against us.
“Make it local.”
We decided instead to concentrate only on the local Colorado Springs brewers, and with a universe of about 45 beers, the concept seemed manageable. We would choose a bracket of 32 beers, paired roughly by style, and conduct a series of blind taste-offs to choose the #1 beer in Colorado Springs.
“We’d love to.”
First off, we had to select the top 32. It was up to me, Zenia and Rick to weed out the worthy championship-caliber beers. Now, I’ve been drinking beer for a long while. Miller High Life was my go-to brew early on. I think you could buy four other beers - total. Shiner Bock was a godsend from south Texas, and Heileman’s Special Export (with the great nautical graphic) sustained my beer needs for many years. Zenia can’t remember a world without Fat Tire, and has the most impressionable taste buds amongst us. She no doubt has the most vital liver - she’s only been of legal drinking age for a short time. Rick is an experimenter, and knows his way around beers, with dark, mysterious ales and oddly-infused lagers being of particular interest well into the early morning. We all shared an attraction to the tastes and possibilities of craft beer, and were honored to participate in this beer-fueled journalistic experiment.
“You’re nuts.”
I say who we are so that you know we are not experienced, competitive brewing judges. We’re just a bunch of beer drinkers with various tastes, dislikes and biases, who were asked to help identify the best single beer being made and sold in Colorado Springs. It was a newspaper assignment, and we were journalists, after all. In order to find the best single beer, naturally, we had to identify and informally rate them all, and this necessitated several tasting sessions at each of the six different brewing operations in town: Arctic Craft Brewery, Bristol Brewing, Il Vicino (with beer brewed by Bristol), Judge Baldwin’s Brewing, Phantom Canyon Brewing and Rock Bottom Brewery.
Mike Laur © DG2C
Arctic's Cuvee - Patentia.
“But . . . ”
It’s important to realize just how massively flawed this sort of comparison is. Equating an Oatmeal Stout with a Pilsner, and declaring one clearly superior to the other, is truly silly unless it’s some weird sort of game. Kind of like .... the Final Four! Dave was on to something here. This could be interesting. It’s even more interesting that people take this stuff very seriously. But serious stuff it is, and we - rookies dressed in black and white striped shirts, ready to reign in the beer court - were severely lacking in street cred. We were an unlikely crew to evaluate and proclaim such an audacious thing as “the best beer in Colorado Springs”, but hey - Dave at the Gazette was sanctioning the whole thing. He knew. And he had the guiding spirit to lead us away from pomposity and into enlightenment.
“Trinity.”
We were talking about this crazy Gazette beer bracket thing with Todd Walton and Jason Yester, partners in a developing Colorado Springs brewpub called Trininty Brewing, and it turns out that Dave and Todd were running chums, and of course were drinking chums as well. It’s a small world, after all. Todd started Kinfolks in Manitou Springs - part outdoor equipment store, part pub with great draught beers. Todd recognized a good PR op, and signed up himself and Jason on the spot. Jason is an accomplished brewer of legendary beers for many successful Front Range brewing operations, and an experienced beer judge to boot. This was getting really interesting. A doomed crew of three inexperienced judging brewbies had become the Five Beer Tasters With Sudden Street Cred, and woe be the crappy beer set down before us.
“Pace yourself”
Dave from the Gazette set the pace early on - we had a deadline, goddamnit. Beers were poured into various glassware, and presented to the five tasters two at a time. The pairings brackets were presented randomly, and we were never told what two beers were going mano a mano, or lengua a lengua as it were. Dave took notes and kept probing us with irritating and unnerving questions. Shut up, Dave, this is hard, I kept thinking. The fate of the beer world rides on what we decide here. Whether we can all agree that Raspberry Wheat is better than Milk Stout will most certainly affect global dairy and commodities prices, and I for one will not be ridiculed for taking my time deciding whether the smell of wet dog trumps the taste of rotten vegetables. We all had a mission now. Maybe the multiple beers were beginning to cloud our judgment, but we were going to get this right.
(Part two to follow) Here are links to the original Colorado Springs Gazette story and an interactive bracket of the beers tasted.
