Last night we got together to hang out with Bree for a bit before he flew back to Texas.  As an activity (that I had been itching to do for a while) we decided to conduct a blind beer taste testing.  It went over rather well.

Our format was as follows.  I wanted to see if we could easily identify the differences between all the “crap”/”light” beers.  We ended up purchasing Bud Light, Miller Lite and Coors Light as our first batch of competitors.  Our first group of testers included Mike, Jess and Bree.  We filled up nine cups with the 3 different types of beer and marked a number on the bottom of the cup.  Newbs and I made sure to record what number referred to what beer and then proceeded to hand out the samples.  The testers were instructed to try and identify a) what beer they were tasting and b) which of the 3 they liked the best.  Something we picked up on right away was that it would be best if you had something to wash/rinse your pallet out with something like pretzels and water.  Also, we found out half way through that you should leave some in your cup for the end so you can go back and re-sample to determine which you like best.

The problem we had with requiring tasters to identify which was their favorite, was people always have predispositions.  For example, of the 3 beers Coors was Mike’s favorite (before testing), so he’ll be more inclined to identify the best taste with whichever beer he things is Coors.  In the end, after the 3 of them, then Nick, Newbs and I had done all the samples,  we concluded that Coors by far had the most distinctive taste, with Miller and Bud Light tasting nearly identical.  No one was able to identify all 3 beers correctly (except for me )  It was a fun experience and something I’d definitely recommend if you enjoy a beverage or two.  In my opinion it showed that marketing can have a large influence on choice, even if taste is the same.  I’d like to try it again sometime with a larger selection of “bar” beers including maybe some Sam Adams, Rolling Rock, Corona, etc.

After the light beers we moved onto attempting to identify a Stout, an IPA and a Red Ale.  This was  little easier to pick out, but not easier to drink.  Going back and forth between the much heavier and tastier beers was a little overwhelming.

Tonight I’m planning on going to see 300.  I’m very excited for this movie.  It’s basically going to be a bunch of Spartan dudes kicking Persian ass for 2 hours.  There will be lots of gore, swearing and possibly dude-ity so if thats not your thing I would skip this one.  Along with the comic book/video game visual style, I’m expecting a cross between Gladiator and Sin City.  Even though I haven’t read Frank Miller’s 300, I heard that every panel was recreated during the film, which should make for an awesome comic to movie translation.

The past few months I really haven’t seen any movies come out that have given me the urge to get up and go pay 10 bucks to watch. Maybe it’s because I’ve had football to watch all weekend long, or because the Fall TV season started back up and I have way too many shows that I like to keep up with. Or maybe recent movies have just sucked, but October is looking to have quite a good selection.

This weekend, The Departed comes out staring about 20 named actors. Looks pretty good if you’re into the cop/crime drama sort of film. Following that we have The Prestige and Flag of our Fathers. I’ve already talked about The Prestige in a previous post, and I’m still just as excited. It should be a good October movie and I’m ready to watch anything Chris Nolan puts out as long as it gets him closer to working on The Dark Knight. Flag of our Fathers is based on a book of the same name that tells the story of the Battle of Iwo Jima. I had heard about it a few months back, but hadn’t seen anything on it till last night. There was a 30 second HD trailer on during Lost and it looked amazing. I’m definitely going to try to catch this one. It’s directed by Clint Eastwood and will have a second one that comes out later in the year called Letters from Iwo Jima that tells the battle from the Japanese POV. I’ll be very interested to see how the second film is received here in the United States compared to Flags. Also I’m curious if there will be storylines that are continued/concluded between the two films. It’ll be a cool mix of 2 seperate movies that run parallel so they contain some same plots and some very different. Wonder if sometohing like this has been done before.

Finally late in the month we have Borat and Babel. Borat is going to be hilarious (if you’re into that kind of funny), and from the trailer, Babel looks very cool. Something like Crash or Traffic. I can see it getting lots of talk for Oscar season if it’s any good. I would expect that I’ll probably see 2 or 3 of these in the theater which is more movies than I’ve seen at the cinema in the past 3 months.

For those of you who don’t’ know, my sister is down in New Orleans for a few month helping out with Katrina clean-up. The few times I’ve talked to her she sound very busy, but is having a good time. I helped her set up a blog that she can use to keep people updated.

You can find that here – LifeofKim