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5 Comments

  1. Beer30
    August 20, 2018 @ 4:07 pm

    Great taste test. Love the responses.

    Couple thoughts/things: Karl Strauss finally got an IPA right with Aurora. One of my favorites, though I find it’s much better on tap than in bottles. Haven’t tried from a can yet (I don’t think…)

    And on Thorn’s multi-use can, the name of the bee is ink-jetted on the bottom along with the Canned On date. Not the bottom bottom, per se, but around the lower “rim” just below the label. Just gotta find it. And the either the pull tab or the plastic 6-pack holder is color-coordinated to match the color of name on the label. (Can’t remember!)

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    • GT Wharton
      August 23, 2018 @ 10:34 am

      Thank you for the info! Yes, the Thorn St can we had was delivered as a single, so we didn’t get to see the 6-pack holder. At Trader Joe’s recently, I saw the same beer and the 6-pack holder has a sticker on it telling you the beer name. We checked the bottom of the can and just saw a canned-on date. It’s possible that on the outer rim was the beer name, but we missed it.

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  2. Carl
    July 10, 2018 @ 12:27 pm

    I just ordered Karl Strauss Aurora Hoppyalis at the bar which I previously would not have considered. Thanks for the review! And yes, it was solid.

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  3. TableHop Games
    July 6, 2018 @ 8:21 am

    Great article. I like how there’s a mix of beer experience in your friend group, since it’s interesting to hear what non-beer geeks think of standard IPAs they have access to. I also like & agree with the editor’s note that these beers are reflective of what is currently sitting on shelves and what a normal consumer would pick up (it’s not fair just to review extremely fresh IPAs that the Full Pint gets access to b/c of its connections). I was equally surprised that you rated Karl Strauss as highly as you did, and I think that shows the importance of doing a blind beer tasting and not just going in with preconceived notions of the breweries. Now that you’ve done two of these tastings (20 mixed styles & 20 of the same style), which direction are you going to go with next time?

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    • GT Wharton
      July 7, 2018 @ 10:13 pm

      I think next time I would like to tackle the issue of freshness and try to have our group bring the freshest NE-style hazy IPAs to the blind test and do the methods like our first tasting where, sure, each person knows at least one beer in the lineup. But hazy IPAs are incredibly uniform for the most part. I don’t think that will give anyone a huge advantage. I would love to do it East vs West Coast and get some freshies from Trillium, Tree House, and others to pit against Monkish, Modern Times, and maybe some more well-known hazies from Sierra Nevada, New Belgium, and Sam Adams.

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