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ast night, six of the NYC crew got together and did a blind tasting of classic gueuze, based on an idea I presented a long time ago here.
The idea was to only drink the classics, and stay away from all special editions, alternate barrel treatments, hop additions, etc. We drank everything as fresh as possible. Although in one case (the Boon Mariage Parfait) we had no fresh bottlings available, so we opted for a Vintage 2003 bottling over nothing.
We drank the beers in pairs, 3oz of each, and each beer had about 20 minutes to breathe before being poured. We also did our best to avoid yeast, and all pretty much used the same glassware.
The beers drank were as follows (in this order):
Cantillon Gueuze
Oud Beersel
St Louis Fond Tradition
Lindemans Cuvee Rene
Cantillon 50N4E *
3 Fonteinen
Hanssens
Girardin black label
Boon Mariage Parfait (2003)
* Dickinsonbeer brought this in as a ringer and didn’t tell anyone what it was until after the tasting was over.
We rated on a Ratebeer 5 point scale, but realized towards the end that it gave people who used a wider range of scores more clout in the results, so at the end we used a basic ranking, 1-9, each number is used once.
The results were very close, and as always, rather surprising.
The first order of note was that the 50N4E finished dead last in everyone’s list. It was the only beer that everyone agreed upon it’s quality — in this case, crap.
The full results, from worst to best:
9) 50N4E
8) Oud Beersel
6) St Louis
6) Girardin (these two tied from the ranking numbers, however the Girardin was slightly ahead with the RB #s used)
5) Cantillon
4) Hanssens
3) Boon MP
1) 3 Fonteinen (tie, as above)
1) Lindemans Cuvee Rene (!)
I don’t have the exact scores available, but everything was very close. I personally picked the St Louis first and the Boon second, and a few small tastes of what was left at the end confirmed my liking the St Louis the best by a fairly wide margin.
It is important to note that gueuze has a ton of variability batch to batch and even bottle to bottle, and the same experiment repeated in a year would likely yield very different results. We plan to repeat it to confirm. But for now, you can rest easy knowing that 6 experienced tasters picked the most common, most affordable gueuze in the world as their favorite, Lindemans Cuvee Rene. 
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We’re going to do a blind tasting of tripels next with similar conditions.
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As an aside, we all tried to guess what each beer was as we drank them. MaxxDaddy won with an astounding 2 of 9 correct. I had one (the Oud Beersel), and I think one other person may have had one right also. Suffice it to say, trying to figure out what everything is when drinking them blind is extremely difficult.
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We did a very similar thing here in OH a few years ago, me, JSturm and a non-RB member. The only thing was that we (well, JSturm’s wife) poured them all at once and we went back and forth, repeatedly, putting our thought on a large chalkboard. There were 7 "gueuzes"
Lindeman’s Cuvee Rene 1994
Drie Fontainen Oude Gueuze
Cantillon
Hanssen’s
Mort Subite Gueuze
Girardin
Cantillon Vigneronne 1997
The Cuvee Rene was not well liked at all, and that was of course a classic vintage. We did relatively poorly in guessing; for example we had no idea which one was the Vigneronne, but we knew it was absolutely the best. Drie Fontainen and Mort Subite were super well liked.
I love blind tastings. Thanks for the info, Andy!
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Cool exercise. We’ve been doing a lot of these kinds of things at Blue Palms with our "Brown Bag Night," and very often have surprising and interesting results. Our tasters don’t have quite the diligence (and probably not the same experience, in most cases) that your New York group has, but it’s still eye-opening to see what beers are standouts and which beers "underpeform" relative to their reputations.
We’ve done like 5 double-blind tastings so far, starting with IIPA’s, then Imperial Stouts, then Sour Beers, then "Belgian Beers," then IPA’s. In each case, there were some very interesting findings (Saison Dupont in 330 mL bottles falling way down in the "Belgian Beers" line-up, for instance; Angel City Rahsaan Roland Kirk Stritch Imperial Stout scoring in the Top 5 [out of about 18] in the Imperial Stouts line-up). I love these kinds of tastings. Very educational-- you get as much out of it as you put into it-- but also still fun and relaxed (it IS beer, after all!) for those who just want to taste and have a good time without being quite as analytical/obsessive.
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I always pick on Nick (crosling) for this, but I recall him saying how easy it is to pick out specific examples. We had the EXACT same lack of a good record as you guys in our tasting.
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Do so and let us know how it goes! I’d to see how other groups would rate the same line-up. The ringer did indeed make guessing way more difficult, but I’m not sure it would have really changed much had we known what it was.
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Damn. 2 out of 9??? That makes me want to try these beers again. I would think that the Drie Fonteinen and the Hanssens at least would stick out a bit with some unique house character. But I know these things can be REALLY damn tough.
It’d be hard to replicate the effect of using that "ringer" (because you guys didn’t know about it until afterwards, right?), but I still want to get a group together and try this same line-up.
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it is really tough, believe me. Have you done this with IPAs?
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Great post Puzzle.
I wish I could get even just one of those where I live.
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We talked about doing an IPA tasting, but you’re at the mercy of the freshness of the bottle. I don’t think that is always that easy to do.
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