How to Host a Beer Tasting Party

This year my husband Eric turned 30! Eric isn't typically that excited about Birthdays but I absolutely LOVE them. Any excuse to celebrate is ok by me and having given birth to someone myself I now realize how truly worthy of celebration Birthdays really are. I wanted to do something fun and different to mark the occasion, you only turn 30 once after all. I decided on a beer tasting party as a fun way to get some friends together and party. Here's how it came together.

The Drinks: We asked everyone to bring a favorite craft beer to share and picked up a few of our own favorites to get the party started. We ended up with a great selection and everyone had fun trying different flavors. Since I knew a few of our guests wouldn't want to drink beer I told them it was ok to bring hard cider too, it's bending the rules a bit but it was worth it to make everyone happy :-) We also provided beer tasting score sheets to encourage guests to try and discuss the different beers. We downloaded these great free printables for beer tasting here.

 The Food: My favorite part of any party is the food of course! We tried to stick mostly to salty pub fare that we knew would go great with beer. Here's what was on the menu.

A meat pie party tray from our beloved Australian Bakery in Marietta. We got half steak and pepper pies and and half barbecue chicken pies.

A meat and cheese tray courtesy of my family.

Garlic and herb popcorn.

Soft pretzels with a variety of different mustards for dipping

Potato chips and peanuts

Spiced Guinness brownies for dessert

The Decorations: Not too much in the way of decorations but we did have some lovely flowers brought by family and friends. We also served the beer in small mason jars and served food on wooden trays and bowls for a rustic feel.

The Music: Pandora Irish Pub station, to put everyone in a drinking mood ;-)

Unfortunately this is about the only picture I got of the party, too busy playing hostess and running after my extremely fast crawling baby. 

It ended up being a great low key kind of evening which was perfect since there were babies in attendance. All in all I think it was a wonderful theme for a 30th Birthday party, maybe I'll do one again next year when I turn 30 :-)