Blind beer tasting with Lee Chase

I recently made my first visit to Tony's Darts Away to have a beer with fellow Beer Blogger, Sean Inman.  Of course, it was just my luck that Tony had scheduled an event to kick off Craft Beer Week.

Hosted by Lee Chase, former head brewer for Stone, brewing consultant, and current head brewer for Blind Lady Alehouse, Tony's' had blind tasting of some of their beers selected by Lee.  Our job was to guess what beer it was we were drinking.

The theme of the night was "hybrid-styles challenge", in which each beer has a twist to it from the "traditional" style making it particularly hard to place the beer to the brand/ "style."  

I was hyped and ready for the challenge.  Even had my Blazers Rip City shirt on.

Here was the list of beers and order he chose:

1. Ballast Point, Yellow Tail.  A Kolsch that tasted a lot like a lager.
   
2. Anchor Steam.  A lager that tasted like an ale.
   
3. Craftsman, .5 IPA.  The little IPA, brewed as a revolt to the double IPA craze
   
4. Stone, Cali-Belgique.  IPA fermented with belgian yeast.  I thought I would have recognized this beer immediately having drank it a lot, but it when put to the blind taste test, I thought it was too floral to be the Belgique.
   
5. Mate-Veza, Black Lager.  This was a really interesting mate infused schwarzbier.  You can totally taste the mate infusion, it really grew on me as I drank it.
   
6. Alesmith, Speedway Stout. A coffee infused Russian Imperial Stout.  Dangerously drinkable at 12% alc.

And here's me, doing my best beer discerning to guess the correct answers.

smelling...

examining...

drinking...

smelling sideways...

studying...

and finally, doing this...

But for all my finely perfected beer discerning skills, I was a miserable 1 for 6.  The Stout was the one beer I actually guessed right; I guess I know my stouts.  But despite my miserable skills at beer identification, it was a great time and Lee taught us all a lot about identifying characteristics of different beers.

Good times had by all, Brian and Paige from Blue Palms along with Sean Inman and a girl I didn't get the name of.. sorry!

Fellow beer blogger, Norm from My Beer Quest.

An artsy shot of Lee where his head seems to be merging with the sign.

Tony enjoying the tasting.

And that's it.  Be sure to check out Tony's, they've got some great beers on tap and awesome meat and vegan sausages for eating.