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December of a Dozen Dubbels

[I recently finished my blind tasting of a dozen examples of Abbey Dubbels. The tasting was spread out over a week, with my lovely fiancée providing beer pouring services, ensuring that I had no idea which beer was which. These are my results. Standard Disclaimer: I paid for all of these beers.]

A few months ago, I was browsing through the “Best Beers by Style” on RateBeer, looking at examples I enjoy. Perusing the Belgian styles, I noticed that there were easily a dozen or so readily available, highly rated examples of Abbey Dubbel that I had not tried. Studying the list further, I was sure I could get about eight at my local store, and with a little more hunting track down a few more. After purchasing the first few, I thought, “I should rate these blind.”And so I did.

At first, I wrapped them tightly in paper bags and masking tape. My fiancée saw this desperate effort to conceal the identity of the beers and offered to pour them for me, since she thought that I would probably remember which paper bags held certain beers. I could not refuse, as my goal was utmost objectivity. Granted, no blind tastings are completely objective. I knew every one of 12 beers was in the sample set. I’d tasted some of them before. My palate was subject to the whims of what I’d eaten that day, the condition of my sinuses, my mood, and probably atmospheric pressure. That being said, blind sampling in this matter likely eliminates a large portion of the bias associated with rating beers (~70%). Furthermore, the results seem to indicate that I really had no idea what I was drinking.

This is how it went. Over the course of a week, I drank the beers. Two nights I had only one example, the rest of the evenings two examples. I drank them from a tall pilsner glass, so that my pourer could provide a single full pour, with good head formation and plenty of glass space for aroma gathering. They were all at cellar temperature (~55F) and they were all approximately 330mL bottles. I used the RateBeer rating scale and offered a first and second guess for each sample. The results are provided below, ranked from top to bottom. Discussion follows. To view the full notes, please visit my ratings page

I’m not going to provide a bunch of stats, because this was a relatively small sample. However, one can notice that the average is about 3.6, with a majority of the ratings falling with 0.1 of the mean.

Probably the most shocking and surprising result, is the remarkably low score given to the Rochefort 6. I had high expectations for this beer all along. However, it was easily the worst sample in the batch. It tasted like overly sweet unfermented dark liquid malt extract with raw fridge-stale East Kent Golding pellet hops slobbered all over it. The top two examples are not particularly surprising. Both Westmalle and La Trappe are wonderful trappist breweries that make a stunning line of great Belgian beers. The same could be said for Chimay, but somehow this personal favorite of mine fell in with the rest of the lot. The Westmalle was slightly anomalous to me, because it was notably hoppy, a character I enjoyed considerably, but thought slightly off-style.

The two American breweries came out in the middle of the pack, which shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, since both of them specialize in Belgian-style beers. I would imagine that if I had included, say, Blue Moon Full Moon Winter Ale, the Americans would have fared differently. Remember, I was sticking to top examples.

Along with the ratings came guesses for each sample, a first guess and a second guess. I was zero for 24, sufficient evidence to suggest that this was a respectably blind tasting. However, one strong bias remained, a potential issue for all blind tastings: bottle condition. A couple of samples (La Binchoise and Urthel) were noticeably and significantly oxidized (purchasers of Zeno’s Pub bottles beware!). This certainly had an impact on my rating, yet was something beyond the control of my experiment design.

The final line-up, in order, after they were revealed to me.

Overall, rating in this way was an incredibly rewarding experience. I became intimately familiar with a particular style of beer with which I’d had limited experience (only 13 rates of the style before this event). I had the opportunity to put my palate, my nose, and my pen to the test on evaluating a particular style of beer. But most of all, I got to wash away the impact of expectation, prior knowledge, and predilection and examine each beer as objectively as may be possible. With this information under my belt, the next time I want a stunning Abbey Dubbel, I will be more likely to reach for a La Trappe or a Westmalle.

Finally, I want to encourage everyone to give a blind tasting like this a try. Round up a dozen samples, cajole your closest confidant into pouring beers anonymously for you, and see what happens, without any pre-conceived notions of how you think the beers will taste. You may turn your conceptualization of those beers on its head.

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