How To Host A Virtual Beer Tasting
The Pandemic may be approaching our rearview mirrors now, but one of the things I’ve learned while hosting Virtual Beer Tastings is that there will never be a shortage of friends, family, and co-workers that have found themselves far apart and are looking for a way to get back together. If you are looking for a great event to set your family reunion around, look no further than a Virtual Beer Tasting. Perfect for company morale events for teams that work remotely for any reason!
Hosting a virtual beer tasting is easy as pie, and I’m going to show you exactly how we do it here at Cycling Cicerone with step-by-step instructions plus a few tricks I am not able to incorporate into my tastings! However, if you don’t want to put in all the work and you want a professional Certified Cicerone to guide you through your beers, then click this link and we’ll take it from here.
Step 1 - Make the Guest List
There are few things to consider while putting together the guestlist for your virtual beer tasting. We won’t waste too much time on this step since you’re an adult (you are, right?) and can figure out how to choose your friends. Nevertheless, we have a few tips. Is it a company function or a “friends and family” one? Don’t try to mix the two! Alcohol never brings out the best in your family, and you don’t want your coworkers to see that. We assume. A virtual beer tasting is fine for a double date, but it really starts to break down if you have more than 12 folks. Unless you have a designated guide to keep everyone on track, it just turns into an unorganized Zoom cluster. Make sure everyone knows what they’re there for! They can lollygag and catch up after the tasting. Get everyone’s address, email address, and phone number. These will all be needed later when you’re sending beer out. The states they live in might make a big difference when choosing how you get your beer as some companies cannot ship to certain states.
Step 2 - Select Your Beers
Choosing beer is the most important step. You have to weigh considerations like cost, availability, group preferences, shipping, and creating a cohesive flight of beers that go well together. Unless you already know exactly what beers you want to have at your virtual beer tasting, the best place to start is with the styles of beer you are hoping to find. Is your group a bunch of macro, fizzy yellow beer drinkers? They need to be eased into craft beer. Start with something easy-drinking like a Kolsch, a Helles lager, or a blonde. Craft Beer has plenty of options that can be used to convince even the most fanatic Budweiser fan to come to the light side, bit by bit. Is your group seasoned craft beer drinkers? Then you might be interested in rare and unique barley wine, imperial stout, and barrel-aged sours to appease their distinguished pallets. We’ve found that a lineup of three different beers is perfect for an hour-long virtual tasting (Any more than that and you’ve opened too many bottles and cans to finish by yourself), so we split the difference between those two types of groups. One craft lager or “light” beer, one fancy imperial nonsense beer, and one craft crowd-pleasing IPA in the middle, that way there will always be something for everyone. If you know you have IPA fanatics though, go ahead and grab 3 different kinds! Aim to please, but also mix it up. In the IPA world especially, it is easy to find diversity. Your “Three IPA” flight could include a west coast IPA full of pine and grapefruit, a hazy IPA with a pillowy smooth mouthfeel and flavors bursting with mango and pineapple, and a Black IPA (aka Cascadian Dark Ale) with its bitter coffee and chocolate notes. A typical flight from Cycling Cicerone might have these 3 styles so there’s something for everyone:
Helles Lager - easy-drinking crowd-pleaser. Even seasoned craft beer drinkers love a nice, clean crispy boi and craft newbies will find this a richer and more flavorful version of what they are used to drinking
Hazy IPA - IPA is the most popular craft beer style by far and Hazies are an exciting take on the style. Adored by craft beer nerds and low enough on the bitterness to appeal to newbies, its a perfect middle to our flight.
Fruited Sour - These go by many names, Berlinner Weise, Kettle Sour, Fruited Sour, but they all have one thing in common - they’re weird and they’re delicious. Even wine drinkers can find something they like in this beer and each is unique and trendy enough to impress even the most up-to-date craft beer fanatic.
Whatever you choose, be prepared to be a little flexible because sourcing and supplying beers is a little harder than it should be.
Step 3 - Source and Ship Your Beer
You’ve chosen the beer styles you want to see at your tasting, now comes actually sourcing it for your attendees. You might have noticed you haven’t bothered with choosing specific beers yet. That’s because sourcing a specific beer to every person regardless of where they live in the USA can be a real nightmare. A remarkably small amount of craft beer is available nationally, most are only available in their state or region. Or even more rare, only at the brewpub where they are made and served. There are three options available to you, and one of those is one that the Cycling Cicerone can’t even consider trying.
Find a company that ships beer to everyone on your list. This can be a little tricky since every state you are trying to ship to has different laws and hoops to jump through. No companies in the US that we have found can ship to every state. You can probably already guess some of the states that are hard to ship to. The ones with the “family values”, reprehensible bad new voting laws, or with North, West, or South in their names are all going to give you a bad time. Our favorite option for great beer at a good price to most states is Tavour. They have gift boxes for $35 that have up to 6 beers. A company with more reach, but fewer options is Craft Beer Club. Their membership-like service allows for single crates to be sent to folks but you are at the whims of what they are shipping that month. Regardless, if you need an option that can ship to most states, they are your best bet. For either one of those, you’ll want to reach out to the companies before placing your order to make sure everyone will be getting the same beer. If you can’t wait for shipping, want to avoid shipping costs, or just can’t find beer you like available to be shipped to your state, you’ll want to go with the next option.
Source your beer locally. When we’re organizing a tasting for folks who are mostly in shipping states but have just a few friends in Utah where shipping is illegal, we have to find some local options so they can have beer. Unless your attendees live in the middle of nowhere, these days there is always a craft brewery or bottle shop around the corner. Search “Breweries” on google maps in the area and start clicking through their websites. A bottle shop is going to have more variety, but in states where shipping is illegal, bottle shops are unsurprisingly uncommon. Liquor stores in this case are your best bet for a local selection of good beers. No guarantee on that one. Either way, you are going to have a bit of a hunt in front of you. To provide a seamless experience for your guests you can call ahead and prepay for beer. Depending on your budget, you can even book a courier on TaskRabbit.com to pick up the beer for you and drop it off at your attendee’s home. If all of that seems like too much work (it is a lot of work, take it from us because we do it all the time) there is one option that a legit business can’t try, but maybe you have a higher tolerance for breaking the law.
Clandestinely Ship Your Own Beer. It is technically illegal for a person to ship beer to another person. Businesses get away with it but only after jumping through lots of hoops to accommodate different states and their laws. If you want to ship your favorite beer to your buddy in a different state, this is totally illegal. I’m not saying you should confirm that a 6 pack of mixed beers from your favorite brewery can fit in a USPS flat rate shipping box. I’m just saying that tons of folks in the market for rare beers have to find ways to move beer around despite these rules and they sometimes engage in illegal activities. You could theoretically, not that we’re suggesting it, put well bubble wrapped and secured beers in a sealed box before bringing it to the post office then neglect to mention the contents of the box and ship it. We’re definitely not recommending anything illegal, though we’ve never heard of anyone ever getting caught.
Once you’ve figured out how everyone is going to get their beer, you can finally figure out what you are going to talk about at your tasting.
Step 4 - Host The Tasting
This is the part that is totally up to you. If you were doing a Virtual Beer Tasting with the Cycling Certified Cicerone, you’d be getting a full hour of tasting techniques, history, and all kinds of beer trivia and fun facts to go along with your beer, but if you are hosting a casual gathering with your friends you probably want to spend more time catching up than you do tasting beer. There are a few “Art Of Gathering” techniques that you can keep in mind to try to host a stellar event. Set expectations for your group - let them know that a certain portion of the evening is committed to tasting and discussing the beers you went out of your way to select and get to them. If folks are expecting a casual hangout with beer, they won’t naturally spend any time discussing your beer. Be the leader - step in and take charge. Don’t let anyone side-track what you came here for! In our tastings, we know that after a few beers, folks can start to feel pretty comfortable stepping outside the bounds of the tasting. A little bit of that can be a lot of fun, but make sure the tasting doesn’t go too far off the rails. Bring some discussion topics. If your goal is to have an activity that a group of coworkers can complete together, consider creating or finding a tasting worksheet for everyone to fill out together. In the end it’s your event now, so run it however you like!
We hope this little step-by-step guide has helped you put together your beer tasting in some small way! If this is all too much work for you and you want someone else to take the reins for your tasting, consider booking a tasting through Cycling Cicerone. We’ll take care of all this nonsense so you can sit back and drink beer!