Friends make tasting more fun

We all have our hobbies.

Sometimes you want to be able to combine your hobbies.

Besides drinking beer and writing about it, I am also involved in Medieval re-creation in the Society For Creative Anachronism. One of the things I do there is to raise money so the king and queen can travel to visit different groups.

I generally run auctions, and one of the “prizes” I have been using is a beer-tasting that I’ll run at a person’s camp at an event.

Over Fourth of July weekend, I did two of them, with my 22-year-old daughter, a veteran beer geek, as my assistant and with my wife as an observer.

It was really cool. I learned a lot about beer and about people.

Pete was the winner for the first night, and George won the second night. They are both good friends of mine. George had said he didn’t like Belgians, so I brought the two I had to Pete’s. Each person got to have three others taste with them, but in actuality, more people took part.

In both cases, the audiences were really interested in what we were doing. On Friday, I introduced Pete and his friend to a pair of Belgians -- a Saison du Pont and a quad called Gravitation from Smuttynose. We also had the Long Trail IPA and the Arrogant Bastard Strong Ale, from Stone Brewing.

Pete had never had Belgians, other than the Belgian Whites, which are citrusy and citrus isn’t so good for him. He really liked them. So did his friends.

The Gravitation, part of Smutty’s Big Beer series, was very sweet and was a big hit.

The Saison, much lighter, also appealed to folks. Two of the people who were tasting were fairly knowledgeable, but the others seemed really impressed by the different tastes.

At George’s on Saturday, after a wonderful meal, that he had cooked. We had Long Trail Blackbeary Wheat, Gritty McDuff’s Black Fly Stout and two strong ales – the Bastard and the Long Trail Double Bag.

I think the Bastard was probably the most popular on that night.

I used my spiffy new six-ounce beer-tasting glasses from Stone Brewing, but I found you cannot put them back in the box with the packing peanuts if they are the least bit wet.