Figured this would entertain at least one person here, it’s definitely entertained my parents.
Backstory: I don’t really drink alcohol of any kind, not a fan of the taste. I expressed my mild frustration at lack of drink variety (i.e., water and tea) to my parents, and they suggested I try a couple different beers to see if there are any I liked.
I then escalated things as I normally do, which has resulted in a spreadsheet built over the course of several months. So if anyone here is interested in the in-depth beer opinions of someone who doesn’t like beer, this post is for you! I mostly just went to a local liquor store that let me build my own six pack and randomly grabbed stuff that looked interesting.
For reference, filtered tap water is probably a 70/100 for me.
I added the beer advocate rating just to see how my scores compared to beer nerds for fun. The subcategory column is sourced from BA, if anything is wrong there, blame them and not me. The main category is me though, if I screwed something up in that column I will take the blame. I don’t really understand the differences between types of beer, other than stouts/porters being generally decent.
I added the Alc/Vol column early on to see if there was any correlation to my scores, but in the end there wasn’t. It’s kind of unnecessary at this point, but I left it in for the hell of it.
Lastly, I say I don’t like beer, but honestly the top 3 or 4 I would call “good.” Not sure if I’d ever buy a 4/6 pack of them, but I enjoyed the singles. With that in mind, if someone has a recommendation for me, feel free to send it. Maybe I’ll expand my spreadsheet in the future, lmao
What a great project. What I like most is the attitude of ‘it’s not my thing, but let’s explore’. My motto is ‘the more you taste, the better you know what you (don’t) like.’ I’ve worked with beer a lot and I dislike it when people dismiss things without properly trying.
A couple of observations. You like roasted barley a lot, big stouts/portres have your preference. The coffee like flavor suits you. Normally people disliking beer are turned on by bitter flavors like hop or dark malt, so the IPA’s scoring high surprised me.
Like others said, some fruity sour types like Neipa, kriek and gose could be fun to try. Also Belgian heavy dark ales and tripel like Rochefort or Chimay if you can get them. Belgian dark sours like duchesse du Bourgogne are interesting (dark/balsamic).
Interesting transformations with food: combine some dark chocolate with a heavy stout, and it taste differently as the chocolate and dark malt filter each other out. Second: combine salty food (or even a couple of grains of salt) with hoppy beers (IPA’s) the salt fiets out the bitter.
Anyway, thanks for the inspiring life attitude!
Hell yeah, the way I think about it is the best case scenario is I find drinks I like, and the worst case is I become more knowledgeable about something other people like. Win-win.
That double IPA, to my untrained senses, tasted pretty close to a stout/porter which is why it scored highly. That Slightly Mighty one though, no clue. It didn’t taste like any other beers I’ve tried (including other IPAs), so there might be a promising path somewhere in IPA land that I haven’t quite identified.
I will see what I can find from neipa, kriek, etc. I might need to try expanding my search since I don’t remember seeing any of those at the liquor store I go to, lol
I definitely enjoy some dark chocolate with stout beers. I hadn’t considered the salty combo yet. Will have to give that a shot.
I’m thinking they might love a good sour. Sour Monkey from Imperial is really good for a basic one.
I agree but that was recommended a lot already, so I wanted to suggest some niches that weren’t mentioned yet.
We were talking about lambics in another comment. I think that could be perfect. Also I won’t think he had any Belgian tripels but I admit I skimmed.