Blind Taste Test: Sprecher Winter Brew vs. Capital Winter Skal

Today, I've got a blind taste test set up between two of Wisconsin's most well-known microbreweries and their respective winter seasonals: Capital Brewery winter seasonal Winter Skal will be going up against Sprecher's Winter Brew.  I'm going to have one marked and one unmarked glass, and have them poured without my knowledge.



I've had both Winter Skal and Winter Brew before, most recently drinking both in the same night a couple weeks ago.   I wasn't trying to rate or compare them at the time, but from what I remember they tasted pretty similar.

Beer A has a nice medium-dark amber color.  It developed a thin head that faded quickly.  While a lot of beer geeks feel that the head on a beer is highly important, I'm one that doesn't.  The best reasoning that I can come up with is the fact that I'm still in college, so conserving even a small amount of beer makes a difference

The smell that I came up with was nice and malty, with a slightly sweet hint.  This was confirmed with the first sip.  The body of the beer isn't the thickest I've ever come across.  I would rate it to be on the light side of medium bodied.  I'd say this is a very drinkable beer.  It's not very thick and not at all bitter.

Beer B is a dark brown color that's barely translucent.  The head was much thicker than the one produced by Beer A, and a thin layer remained on the beer for the duration of the testing. 

Beer B gave off a strong chocolate aroma.  My initial thought that the two were pretty similar seems like it was way off.  Maybe I drank the two beers a little too quickly?  The first sip reveals that I was definitely wrong.  The smell is similar to the taste--a definite chocolate flavor.  Normally I'm not a huge fan of the unsweetened chocolate flavor, but I think that this beer does it right.  There's no bitter aftertaste.  It doesn't have the drinkability of Beer A, but for a beer this dark it is definitely drinkable.  I could see going through several of these on a cold night. 


Now that I've come up with review for both beers, I'm going to try drinking them in different orders.  Somehow I came up with the conclusion that they were similar, when the reality is that they're very different. 

First I drank Beer A before Beer B.  The flavors of Beer B are very noticeable.  When I drank Beer B before Beer A, The flavors of B lingered a lot more.  Something tells me I had Beer B before Beer A when I had them back to back a few weeks ago.

I would say that Beer B is the better of the two.  It's noticeably more flavorful, and I like the taste.  While it isn't as drinkable, it's very drinkable for a darker style of beer and the flavor more than makes up for the drinkability differences.

And the winner is.....

Sprecher Winter Brew



Ok, I'll admit it.  I knew that Winter Brew was a Bock and that Winter Skal wasn't before the taste test, so the second I saw that one beer was significantly darker than the other I knew which was which.  The blind taste testing will need a little refining (and some cups you can't see through), but being able to alternate between the two in different ways (rather than drinking an entire Winter Skal, then an entire Winter Bock) allowed me to differentiate the two in a way I couldn't before.

Do you agree with my take? Disagree? Let us know in the comments.