Top 10 Things about a Beer Tasting at Home

If you’ve been in the craft beer game for a bit, you’ve probably attended a few at-home beer tastings with your friends in your lifetime. At-home beer tastings usually involve people getting together at a home of your choosing and engaging in a pissing contest to see who brought the rarest or best-tasting beer to the party.

I recently attended my friends’ monthly “Ball So Hard” beer tasting. Per usual, we discussed the latest releases, what brews we’ve tried recently, and who’s going to the next big beer festival. We then got into a discussion about what makes an at-home beer tasting so great in comparison to the big pomp and circumstance beer festivals. We were able to come up with a list of about 10 things that make an at-home beer tasting so great.

1. Ultimate Relaxation

Hosting a small beer tasting at home provides a comfortable and pleasurable experience, allowing you to create the ambiance you want to achieve. No set time limit, no security guard ushering you toward the exit door, and no rushing to gulp down as much beer as possible before last call.

2. No Set Beer Limit

Many beer festivals set a limit on how many beers you can taste during the event. Typically, the number of 8 oz. pours you get is between 10-15. Now, I know the taster limit is for safety reasons, but at a home beer tasting, the pour limit could be infinite.

3. Inexpensive

The bigger the beer festival, the pricier the tickets. I have definitely spent many paychecks on beer festivals that can sometimes cost upwards of $90. Beer tastings at home usually are the cost of the beer, some snacks to satisfy your drunchies, and some gas money. You could end up tasting a couple hundred dollars of rare beers for less than what you would pay to attend a beer festival.

4. Fun Themes

To make things interesting and challenging, our beer group likes to add fun themes to our beer tastings. One month, we’ll taste all sour beers, and another month, we’ll all bring beers from one brewery to try. The options are endless.

5. Meeting Fellow Homebrewers

Some people in our beer group are good friends with a few notable homebrewers. What’s great about at-home beer tastings is you get to meet and talk with these individuals in a more personal setting without all the hype. Sometimes they’re even nice enough to bring over some of their award-winning batches that you can’t buy off the shelf.

6. Swap War Stories

Everyone in our beer group has attempted to homebrew at some point. At-home beer tastings allow fellow homebrewers to swap war stories and share their best and worst brewing tales in a more personal setting.

At-home beer tastings bring a good sense of competition since we are all bringing bottles of our own choosing, rather than letting a major event team or brewery decide which beers we can taste. Everyone tries to outdo each other by bringing the most expensive, rarest, or highest ABV beers. We’ll even pit our homebrews against each other just to see how we rank amongst the group.

8. No Big Crowds

Nothing beats tasting some good craft beer with your friends without all the extra couple hundred other beer-goers pushing and shoving to get their tasters refilled. Plus the bathroom line is a lot shorter than at big beer festivals.

9. Food, Food, and More Food

Many beer festivals offer food, but it’s usually pretty pricey and a very limited selection. My friends make some incredible delectables for our tastings, such as homemade guacamole and carnitas. Plus when you start to get the drunchies, you can raid the fridge or kitchen pantry for goodies. Just don’t forget to spot your friends a couple of bucks to replenish the kitchen.

10. Whales Bro

If you’re not familiar with the term, white whale is a phrase used to describe craft brews of mythical proportions. If you have a group of savvy craft beer people, you’ll most likely get to indulge in several of these whales procured through intense beer trades. A person would have to spend a huge chunk of change at a beer festival in order to try just a couple of whales. You’ll usually see it on an event map designated as the “rare beer” section.

Although I will never shy away from a local beer festival, there is just something great about hosting your own beer tasting at home.