Ten seconds more of fame.

A local Jaycees group was doing a fundraiser for some disease of the month or another, and it happened to be something I'd be interested in doing: a blind taste test of beers. They very carefully avoided calling it a competition or having any tangible prizes (Virginia's ABC laws prohibit such inducements to drinking beer; your tax dollars at work), but that's what it was.

Taste 12 beers and identify the (a) style, (b) brewery, and (c) name of each. (Scored at one point for each item, so three points possible per beer and a perfect score was 36.) Harder than you might think, especially when you have to identify them with no assistance (no list of 50 beers that they were chosen from, for instance). All you knew was that they were currently on tap at that particular beer bar, which has 70 taps, and you didn't get their current beer list to help you, either. So sometimes you were left figuring, "It's a crappy hefe-weizen - so what crappy hefe-weizen do they still have on tap here?" (Answer: Widmer, and no, I couldn't think of that one.)

I came in second, out of the 20 or 25 participants, with a grand total of 12 points, probably 2/3 of which were from recognizing styles. (And 3 of 3 for identifying Pilsner Urquell.) The guy who took first place had 13 points, so it was close. And since he's a professional beer writer, my story will be that he won the professional division, and I won the amateur division. I was especially pleased to beat the people sitting at the next table: home-brewers who were loudly convinced they had the entire contest completely sewn up.