Brewpublik’s founder explains how to become a better beer drinker at Queen City Brewers Festival

I’ve been to a lot of beer festivals, and we all know they get a little sloppy at the end. There’s all the shades of general drunkenness, lots of spilled beer and, once, I even saw a festival-goer forcibly remove a T-shirt off of the body of one of our hapless staffers. (We didn’t have one in her size to buy and, well, she wanted a T-shirt).

And I wouldn’t change a thing. You do you, beer festivals.

However, I think there’s a chance for you to come away from Queen City Brewers Festival this year with more than just a smudged tasting glass, broken pretzel necklace and a vague sense of regret. By all means get sloppy — that’s part of the fun. But before you get to that point, there’s a chance to learn a little something about your own beer tastes. And that’s fun, too.

Beer tasting is very simple. That why I like it. As much as I love my personal spittoon, not having to spit the product out is nice. So is the fact that anyone can be a educated beer taster.

Follow these simple steps and you’ll be there:

(1) Take in the whole experience.

Good beer looks, smells and tastes good. Now, this doesn’t mean that there’s a three-minute preparation ritual to try a beer. Just give it a look, note the color and effervescence level and take a nice deep sniff. The aroma of the beer will give you a lot of notes about the taste.

(2) No swirling!

You look like a total goober swirling your beer around. Also, no swishing. It’s not mouthwash.

(3) Take a sip and try to experience all the flavors.

For drier beers (like pilsners and pale ales), the sip should be short — these beers are meant to run straight from the front of your mouth to the back and just be crisp. You won’t get much additional flavor from letting them sit in your mouth. However, for richer, more complex beer, treat it more like the bobsled in “Cool Runnings” — bounce it back and forth against the sides of your mouth, letting the different flavors hit your different tasting zones. A lot of beers will release additional flavor as they warm in your mouth.

(4) Ask about ingredients.

Beer has a short list of ingredients. Finding out what flavor profiles you like will help you know what to order in the future (and help you avoid the dreaded feeling of ordering the wrong beer at the bar).

OK, to illustrate how I like to do this, here is a quick tour of the beers BREWPUBLIK will be featuring this year at QCBF.

At the 2017 QCBF, we are featuring a SMaSH beer from our good friends at Legion Brewing. SMaSH stands for “Single Malt and Single Hop” and it’s an excellent way to isolate two of the main ingredients in beer and experience their flavors. We’ll be hosting a sensory tasting of Legion’s SMaSH alongside two other beers in each session for you to compare.

Game, Set, SMaSH (yep, that’s the winning name!) has two main ingredients: Idaho 007 hops and pale malt from N.C.’s own Epiphany maltery.

If you’ve ever seen a potato commercial, you know Idaho puts some real effort into making agricultural products seem sexy. So, enter the hop with a debonair “007” title and flavor of Earl Gray. When you try this, take a light sniff. It’s slightly herbal but also smells like orange marmalade.

Pale malt meanwhile, is a bit like Benedict Cumberbatch — easy on the eyes, reflective of the sun and deliciously dry. What will you taste? I taste dry, the pale malt mixing with the herbal nature of the hops, like black tea and then some fruit: tangerines, oranges and passionfruit.

The dryness of this beer lends itself to quick sipping.

If Game, Set, SMaSH is aiming for “Doctor Who,” Boojum Brewing Galaxy Far, Far Away is straight up “Pineapple Express” — and not because it has fruit in it. No, it’s more a beer that you might drink in your PJs, accompanied by Hot Pockets — or those TGI Friday’s Potato Skins. Because this beer is dank, and nerdy.

For this, it’s really important to get the nose. Galaxy hops used in this beer are grown in Australia and smell just like a freshly-scooped papaya. Galaxy is one of my favorite smells.

In some ways similar to our first beer, Galaxy Far, Far Away isn’t loading up on the malt. This is about the hops. Galaxy hops definitely do taste like the tropics — lots of sweet rich fruit — and you tell me what else you taste.

Like Galaxy Far, Far Away? You’ll like Sycamore Countryside IPA. Or, maybe Bombshell Head Over Hops IPA, which is only available in Charlotte through BREWPUBLIK, by the way ;).

OK, now let’s move onto a more traditional IPA — Twin Leaf Brewing’s Leafer. Leafer definitely stands on ceremony and scoffs at the funky-fresh experimentation of our other varieties. This is balanced and then bitter. A traditional hop selection straight from the Pacific NW (Amarillo, Simcoe, Mosaic) should remind you of OG IPAs like Bell’s Two Hearted.

Last up, Mosaic Pale Ale from Lynnwood Brewing is another great opportunity to focus two very specific ingredients: Mosaic hops and 2-Row malts. If you follow craft beer at all, you might have heard of Mosaic hops. Mosaic is the Black Keys of hops — always respected and delicious, but not necessarily what the hipsters are frothing over. But it remains one of my favorites — just like the Black Keys.

This pale ale has the hop in the title so obviously it’s going to be a showcase. In fact, we’ll just skip over the malt-bill here and talk about Mosaic hops. When you try this, you may think that the beer is a little sweet. That’s not from sugar, that’s actually just the complex combination of beta acids that make Mosaic hops taste fruity and slightly sweet. A lot of people taste clementines or tangerine — what do you taste?

Being a pale ale, I’d suggest a quicker sip on Mosaic Pale. It’s going to be rather dry. And don’t sleep on the Black Keys. They’re still good!

OK, so there’s one final step, once you’ve tried all these beers. Take some mental notes- you’ve learned something! Which did you like better or worse? Use that to help you pick a beer next time, and you’ll add immensely to your enjoyment of the awesome craft beer world.

At this point, munching on the pretzel necklace is entirely appropriate. However, if you find yourself coveting a BREWPUBLIK team member’s T-shirt, please keep your hands to yourself. We do have them available in a wide range of sizes for a good price.

Cheers!

Photos: Courtesy of BREWPUBLIK

This story was originally published February 4, 2017 at 4:55 AM with the headline "Brewpublik’s founder explains how to become a better beer drinker at Queen City Brewers Festival."