1st Beer Tasting in Tucson

Tucson- how I love you so- your warm days in the Winter, your beautiful mountains, your incredible Estate sales, as well as BEER that you can not get here. (Thank you Total Wine, Plaza Liquors and Time Market!)  Stella and I flew out there to buy a new car and I drove it back from Tucson, which made it much easier to stop at some good beer stores along the way (and pack my car with some nice treasures for our beer cellar).

So I figured, with doing a beer and chocolate pairing here, I would bring them a few bottles of beer that they can't get in AZ like Russian River's Consecration, Saint Somewhere's Lectino Divina and Dogfish Head's Theobroma.

It was my first solo hosting experience minus my better half, so I was a bit nervous, but it went even smoother than I expected. It was a bit more intimate, about 12 people altogether, all sitting around this grand 1960's vintage teak table that is my sister's.  They ate, they drank, they paired- I educated.

Overall, everyone seemed to have a grand time and got to experience some new flavor sensations and combinations while trying new beers that they have never had before. My goal in these is to open people up to the incredible range of flavors and tastes that you can get in beer- while you may not like every beer being tasted, you are able to talk about why. For example,   you may not like hops or barley wines or sours. But then you do find new styles that you may never have known even existed as well as finding your new favorite beer.

Overall, their top 3 favorite beers were:
1-Dogfish Head Fort
2-Russian River Consecration
3-Stone Smoked Porter

Their top 3 favorite pairings were:
1-Dogfish Head Burton Baton + Vogue's Naga Bar
2-Dogfish Head Theobroma + Chauo Firecracker
3-Alesmith Speedway Stout + Green and Black's Organic Toffee

So I asked everyone, as I always do, to try some different pairings and come up with some new ones on their own.  Chris Kaufman said that pairing Speedway Stout with Vogue's Naga bar (which has curry and coconut in it) = LOVE! He really liked the flavor combination of curry and coffee. Melinda really liked the Theobroma paired with the Naga Dark Chocolate Bacon bar.

Everyone had a great time and ended up hanging out drinking some more beers (of course) afterwards.
I look forward to doing another tasting the next time I visit the land of the Desert!