Wine Affairs IPA Night

It's SF Beer week so we rallied our friends together to go to IPA tasting night at Wine Affairs in San Jose.  They hosted a blind tasting IPA event where for $15, you blinded sampled 8 beers, taking notes, making guesses and then ranking your favorites.  If you stayed until the end of the event, they told you what the brews were.  We left early though so had to wait until the newsletter came out to find out the results.  I had to turn in my notes card so don't have notes on all of the brews but here's the results of my favorites. 

#1: Beer C- Grand Teton Lost Continent Double IPA.  This beer was less powerful, bitter hoppy than a traditional IPA so more up my alley.
#2 Beer A- Black Rampage Imperial IPA.  Similar flavors to the first, less bitter. 
#3 Beer F- Firestone Walker Double Jack Imperial IPA- More hops and bitterness than the first two but still a flavor I really enjoyed. 

I think the 3 beers that my 3 choices ended up as goes along well with what I know about my IPA taste buds.  I like hops but I don't like the high bitterness that also often goes along with IPAs.  All of my choices were Imperial or Doubles and lacked that bitterness to them. 

Mark ended up liking the Grand Teton Lost Continent, the Black Rampage Imperial IPA, and then also the Green Flash IPA. 

All the other IPAs that were in the mix were ones we had tried before like Lagunitas Hop Stoopid, Stone Runiation Imperial IPA, Russian River Pliny the Elder, and Ballast Point Sculpin.  Funny I wasn't able to pick out any of them by name when blindly trying them!  Even Mark didn't get the Stone Ruination.  Although his favorite is the standard IPA, not the Imperial.

Overall, this was a fun event.  We got our friends together to drink some beer.  However, Wine Affairs is hosting a number of these type of events this week and I won't be going to any of the others.  The sample beers were very small.  Like 1-2 oz. small.  This means tops, we were each poured a pint in all.  That's an expensive $16 pint.  Flashforward to Tuesday night at Harry's Hobrau where Mark and I each got 2 pints (4 pints in all) and were able to keep the glass (review to come soon) all for $27.  Much better bang for your beer buck.  I know you are paying for the novelty and selection at a tasting night but the pours were still small for what I think we paid for.  Also, it was hard to get a good taste for the flavor of the beer with such a small pour.  Glad we went to the event but I would have hoped for bigger pours (obvious though right?)  The evening contined with more beer, friends, and at our house after too!