I want to start an off-flavor class/homebrew meet in my town. Advice?

[BrewVerymore]

I've been brewing for less than a year now and have always wanted to try one of those Siebel sensory kits. I live in Southeast Asia and I happened to have a friend coming by so I asked him to bring a kit for me (6 flavors).

I already have a couple of experienced brewers who are on board, but they are doing it more to help me as the smaller guy. As for structuring the whole thing, I think that should be my undertaking.

I was wondering if anyone has ever taken one of these off-flavor courses before and could perhaps share ideas on how I could structure this meeting. I'm doing it for free to any homebrewers who are interested in coming out and am only asking for them to cover the cost of the materials and the beer to be spiked. So far I've come up with this:

- Spike 1L of beer for each flavor.
- Have a side by side blind taste test with a double shot glass of normal beer and next to one spiked beer.
- Use a common lager everyone is familiar with (Heineken prob) so that the off flavors are more pronounced and distinguishable from the normal beer
- Have the more experienced brewers give advice on how the off-flavors arise, how to avoid them, how to fix the, etc.
- Ask homebrewers to bring their own brew to share.
- Finish

However, I still feel like this lacks any structure and as a beginner it's hard for me to grasp how such a class should be. Being a thousands of miles away from America, I'm just not able to go to one of these classes to learn from them. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Braufessor]

One thing you could do is perhaps have people write down (just a piece of scratch paper or a pre-printed form) a few quick descriptors of what they are tasting in each spiked sample BEFORE you tell them what they are "suppose" to be looking for.

If you give them a spiked sample, and tell them - "This is diacetyl, it tastes like 'x,y,z"....... everyone will look for it and find it no matter what.

Instead, give out the sample with no explanation and see if people can identify and articulate things about it. Nothing major - but, maybe a minute or two to scribble down some flavor/aroma/mouth feel descriptors that they personally are noticing. Then maybe share thoughts. Then, after everyone has had a chance to make their own assessment, tell them what it was, how it might present itself, causes, etc.

Also - be a little careful of the "common lager" you use - some common lagers are brewed or packaged with common flaws (like diacetyl or skunking from green bottles, etc.)

 

[Dcpcooks]

We gave the class to our home brew club. We used PBR as the base beer. You really want something in a can as light struck is an off flavor that's in the kit. So a green bottle beer is a bad idea for this.

We got pitchers for the samples and dosed each one. They tasters had a clean can of sample beer to taste against.

Then we told them what each sample was dosed with and allowed them to taste it. We then backed that taste up with common causes for each off flavor.

The flavors are not subtle. The samples are designed to help people have a place of reference going forward. The big take away is you now know what X tastes like and what causes it. I would not complicate it, I'd keep it simple.

 

[eyebrau]

+1 on both of the above. For my BJCP classes when I was studying to get certified, we used Bud Light as the base beer. Not just because it was a common lager, but specifically a lager with very little flavor of its own. Side by side, even crappy macro lagers have their own flavors, and corn is a big one of them (which can hide DMS flavor dosing), and Bud Light doesn't use corn; the rice it uses gives no flavor of its own.

I agree with your idea of doing side by side dosed beer with undosed beer, but I agree with Braufessor that you shouldn't tell them what the dosed flavor is. Keep it blind all around. And actually, if you can find somebody to dose and serve it for you, make it blind for you as well! You'll definitely benefit from such an activity yourself, done blindly.