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Beer Taste Challenge II - The Return!

A few years ago when we conducted our first blind tasting of Thailand's beers we could only find ten to try. On that occassion Tiger came out on top. But these days there are some new kids on the beer block so we decided to hold a bigger, badder, beer taste challenge to find out once and for all which is Thailand's best beer.

The Panel
We assembled a panel of seven experts - in this instance "expert" means someone with more than a passing familiarity with beer. These included owners, managers and chefs from Morgan's in Kai Bae, and Paddy's Palms, Monkey's and 15 Palms in White Sand Beach. To broaden the panel's range of experience the panel also featured a publisher and layabout, and a layabout.

The System
The rules were simple. We tasted 16 beers, about a half glass of each, compiling tasting notes - some legible - and gave each beer a mark out of ten.

The Candidates
The beers tasted were, in no particular order; Cheers, Tiger Crystal, Leo, Chang Draught, Heineken, Asahi, Beer Laos, Archa, Chang Light, Singha, Federbrau, Warsteiner, Cheers Extra, Tiger, San Miguel Light and Chang.
We were unable to find, perhaps fortunately, San Miguel or the infamous Red Horse and besides there was a compelling argument that 16 beers was more than enough.

The Tasting
You know in wine tastings where they take a sip, swirl it around their mouths and spit it out. This seemed a bit wasteful so we swallowed.
The beers began to arrive every five minutes or so. The first one divided our panel provoking comments such as; "oily and unpleasant", "bitter, sharp" but also "pleasant", and "fairly drinkable". This split of opinions was reflected in the final score of 36 for what turned out to be San Miguel Light. And by and large this is how things went on. As the beers came out one after another is became apparent that there were a lot of beers around that appealed to the palettes of some of our panel but not to others. This meant that half of the beers tasted ended up with a middle ranking score of between 36 and 40 - not great but not terrible.
There were some beers though that pretty much everyone agreed on. Few people who have tried them would be surprised to find Cheers Extra and Archa at the bottom of the list. Cheers Extra trades on its high strength and clearly taste comes a distant second to this if comments like, "rank", "cheap and nasty" and "cheesy, smelly socks aftertaste" are anything to go by. Archa is clearly the cheapest beer around for very good reason. Comments like "rotten egg smell, taste gets worse", "smells like cigars" and "smells bad... tastes bad" paint a grim picture.
We were all a little surprised to find Beer Laos in third from bottom place though. Praised by many as South-East Asia's finest beer, Beer Laos by all logic shouldn't have been so comprehensively disliked by the panel, earning comments such as, "Bland, no taste", "Horrible aftertaste" and the memorable "piss (rat piss)" which suggests the panelist has an alarmingly specialised knowledge of urine flavours. In the defence of Beer Laos it was the last but one beer we tried and there is every possibility that the panel's taste buds had become tired and emotional by this stage.