Beerlympics-The Pre-Game

Logo Courtesy of Brett Jeacle

Craft beer lovers love to talk about beer. The things they taste or smell. The styles they like and don't like. They love to discuss and debate with other beer lovers. It is just in our nature.

This love of discussion and debate, this love of breaking down beer is going to be exploited on Friday, February 7th.

In the spirit of competition and the  Olympics we are hosting the first Ottawa #Beerlympics!

Coming Friday, February 7th

Rules:
All suggestions must be beers available in the LCBO or Beer Store.

Suggestions are open to both Microbreweries and Macrobreweries. All bets are off.

Beers will be served in flights of 3 in a blind tasting. Tasters will not know what beers they are being served.

Each taster will taste the beers and rank each. Scores will be given in ranks of 1-10 with full and half scores possible.

Highest and lowest score of each will be dropped.

Highest overall score after all the flights will be awarded gold, second will be awarded silver and third will be given bronze.

-----

So this is how it is going to work.

Brett Jeacle, Katy Watts, Sasha Dunfield, Matt Petitpas, Dave Price, Dave Evans, Brian Papineau and Ryan Bellerive and I are going to be the judges.  

The 15 different beers are the competitors.

Chuck, the Wort to my Barley is going to be doing all the purchasing of the beer. The list he makes will come from the judges and from you. (more on that in a minute) He will be preparing five blind tasting flights for each judge.

Each flight will have three beers at an approx 2 oz sample in a styrofoam cup marked one, two and three.  We, the tasters sip each and figure skating judge style give each a score between 1-10 (ex. great beer might be 9.5, bad might be a 1)  The highest and lowest score for each beer will be dropped and the rest averaged out.  We then move on to flight 2 and so on and so forth till the end (apprx 5 flights with breaks in between to clean palates and have water)

At the end the beer that scored. The highest overall will be awarded gold, second silver and third bronze.  We will then reveal the names of the winners.

The score tallies and all arbitration will be handled by Ottawa's very own Brew Donkey, Brad Campeau.

Where do you come in?  Well simple. Starting on Saturday, February 1st we are going to be asking for beer suggestions. We will give a style and you get to flood us with your ideas of what beers we should have go head to head against each other.

Keep watch on twitter for the #Beerlympics or comment here on the blog. Either way all suggestions will get added to the list and will be considered for competition.  Remember micros and macros are allowed as long as they can be purchased in the LCBO or Beer Store.

As for the judges, well the smack talk has already started with Brian decreeing "Go Pilsners!" and Brett throwing down the gauntlet with "Go Stouts!"

When the day arrives keep watch on twitter for the live updates and the final results. In the meantime don't hold back on suggestions.

Which beer will come away with gold? Which will rank lowest in score?  We will find out on Feb. 7th at the #Beerlympics!