Greetings one and all!

Thankfully I have found time to finally sort things out, scribble a few ideas down, chase a few brewers and grab a few beers to get things up and running for the second installment of this ElectroKemistry event!

For those of you who missed out, or those of you who were under the proverbial rock for the first event, you can read all about it right here: [http://electrokemistcuisine.weebly.com/blogs/electrokemistry-event-battle-of-the-breweries-round-1].

This time, as with the first, I am looking to get around 20 people to come and taste a few beers from a range of breweries in exchange for a little door tax to cover the expenses: 

As before, the tickets will be allocated on a first come-first served basis, so the best thing to do is to reply via the contact page (the link is above next to BLOGS) and send me an email, confirming interest and then I'll send out details for getting payment over.

So how is the event going to be laid out this time?  Well, it will be slightly cut down from the previous event as there were a few too many beers to get through in a reasonable timescale, thankfully the enthusiastic folk who came weren't put out and very happy to be rather inebriated by the end!  There will be 5 breweries supplying 2 beers each within the two categories, with a generous taster of each for attendees.  The two categories are:

1. Adjunct/Fruit Beer
2. Stout, Porter or Adjunct Stout Porter

Needless to say, there will be food laid on and thankfully the kindly gentlemen at Clove Hitch/23 Club on Hope Street in Liverpool are providing a venue for proceedings on this occasion.  There will also be a small competition as per the previous event where people can win a little goodie bag to take away.

Ticket prices will be £10 per person for the event.

I will provide further details and attendance updates until the event is sold out.

Hopefully see you there!

Pedro.

Cometh the hour, cometh the err… Brewery?  Gathering around twenty people to a secret location in Liverpool city centre for some blind tasting of some great bottle beers was some time in the making; thankfully the event came off rather well.

The selection of the beers was made, some weeks before the event with the intention of contrasting the styles on show and putting some local breweries head to head with some others from further afield with some fairly weighty reputations behind them.

The styles of beer were selected to give each brewery a chance to shine within 3 categories.  The first up for tasting was a Pale style beer, be it English, American or Wit style, being lighter on hopping and lighter generally in alcohol compared to the following categories (so as not to cloud the attendee’s palate too much).  The second style of beer was the IPA category (for the uninitiated readers, this acronym usually means India Pale Ale or in some cases Imperial Pale Ale, the latter of which is noted for additional alcoholic strength).  The final style was that of a stout or porter, with flavours ranging from coffee, toffee malts through to liquorice and some chocolate and vanilla in sweeter styles.

To begin with, the event was only meant to cover four breweries, but a last brewery jumped into the fray eager to have their beers tasted blind by the discerning panel.  In total, this meant there were fifteen beers to taste, rate and as an added twist, all the attendees were asked to guess which of the five supplied each of the beers.

So, the line up of breweries and the beers they supplied (Pale, IPA, Stout respectively) were as follows:

Thornbridge (Bakewell, Derbyshire) – Wild Swan, Jaipur IPA and Beadecea’s Well;
Mad Hatter Brewery (Toxteth, Liverpool) – Liverpool Wit, Follow the White Rabbit IPA and Fatter Stout;
Liverpool Organic Brewery (Kirkdale, Liverpool) – 24 Carat Gold, Shipwreck IPA and Kitty Wilkinson;
Meantime Brewery (Greenwich, London) – London Pale, Meantime IPA and London Stout;
Melwood Brewery (Knowsley, Merseyside) – Paleface, Equinox and Derby Stout.

The beers were all tasted by attendees in batches of 5 (in each category) before they were supplied with a rating of 1 to 5 for the respective placing.  Each of the numbers in the ratings were added together and then the beer with the lowest score was placed first in the category, then the next lowest in second place and so forth.  The overall brewery rating was then gained by the relative placing of the beers in first to fifth position, adding the numbers together again, with the overall lowest score being the winning brewery in this round.

Hopefully that all makes sense, trust me, after a few drinks adding the scores up was rather a demonstration in focus!  The winners were then announced at the event and the competition run for some excellent craft beers, supplied from Holborn Cask Ales in Ormskirk; I did promise a shout out to the winners, so congratulations to:

Andrew Barlow (1st place)
Jason Peters (2nd Place)
Mark Toney (3rd Place)
Les O’Grady (4th Place)

Incidentally, Andrew and Jason both guessed 7 breweries correctly and Mark and Les guessed 6, so a tie-breaker was required in the form of guessing the month and year of Germany’s Reinheitgetsbot, which split the winners accordingly.

So, which Breweries won then?  Continue reading below for full details.

Pale Ale Category
1. Mad Hatter Brewery – Liverpool Wit
2. Thornbridge Brewery – Wild Swan
3. Meantime – London Pale Ale
4. Liverpool Organic Brewery – 24-Carat Gold
5. Melwood Brewery – Paleface

IPA Category
=1. Thornbridge Brewery – Jaipur IPA
=1. Liverpool Organic Brewery – Shipwreck IPA
3. Meantime Brewery – Meantime IPA
4. Melwood Brewery – Equinox
5. Mad Hatter Brewery – Follow the White Rabbit IPA

Stout or Porter Category
1. Meantime Brewery – London Stout
2. Mad Hatter Brewery – Fatter Stout
=3. Liverpool Organic Brewery – Kitty Wilkinson
=3. Thornbridge Brewery – Beadecea’s Well
5. Melwood Brewery – Derby Stout

Overall Brewery Placing
1. Thornbridge Brewery – 6 points
2. Meantime Brewery – 7 points
=3. Liverpool Organic Brewery – 8 points
=3. Mad Hatter Brewery – 8 points
5. Melwood Brewery – 14 points

Although the scores seem stretched from top to bottom, the voting was quite tight in some places and all the beers received quite positive reviews; the Derby Stout in particular was particularly unlucky, just missing out on a lower score.

Anyway, congratulations and thanks to the Breweries for getting involved and helping out with glassware loans and providing a discount on the beers to keep the ticket costs as low as possible, many thanks to John and Julie at Melwood for jumping in with provision of additional beers for the event too.  Thanks also go to Gaz and Sue at Mad Hatter for glassware loans, especially to Karen Reilly for organising the venue and Angela Mulligan for helping to keep the event running smoothly.  Finally special thanks to all the people who attended to make the event a veritable success; I think I’ll be hiring some elves to help run the event and keep things ticking along without having to run around with trays of beer!

Stay tuned for the next event folks, I shall be putting feelers out for breweries to get involved and will spread the news on my Twitter feed, Facebook page and via this blog.

Cheers and catch you all soon,

Pedro x