Sposborth hearts APA

Only to give you guys an idea of the scale to which the makers of Sposborth like to make APA, I submit the following picture. Over the course of the last year Matt and I have bottled 8 five gallon batches of American Pale Ale (and have made another 2 five gallon batches yet to be bottled). Clearly we like the APA. Matt has the wherewithal to store beer for the long haul, and we did a big taste test last Friday night. This was extremely fun. The flavors/intangibles were diverse.

Matt poured the selections out and numbered them from 1 - 8. He turned his back and I mixed them up (keeping track of the changes) and then we sampled. We rated each on a scale of 1 - 10 for flavor, aroma, head/carbonation and overall quality. Then we compiled the results and compared against our memory of brewing the batches. somewhat surprisingly we rated the partial mashes highest. And alcohol content was also a good predictor for which we preferred.