Dirty South What?

So, I think we need to back up a bit. What the heck is this blog about anyway?

Here, let Creative Loafing explain. Or, let me explain:

This, if you haven't figured out by now, this is a blog about the thoughts and actions of a group of (wannabe?) beer geeks. A "club" in fact. A club whose members reside in the "dirty south" - in the "the A" (AKA the Atlanta). Many of said geeks happen to live in the quaint town of Decatur - you've heard it mentioned in famous Outkast songs. Yes, you have. What you haven't hear about in Outkast songs are the beers that we love. You also haven't hear about the way that beer club works. Let me tell you a thing or two about the method to our madness.

We meet once a month. Each meeting has a theme. We learned the hard way that tasting the entire rainbow of beers at a single meeting left our palates exhausted and ours mind F'ed! So, some of the themes we've done include:
Fall Seasonal Beers - October(fest);
Regional Southeastern Beers - November;
Winter Seasonal Beers - December;
A Festival of Lights and Darks - January (see below for the wrap up on that one!); and
Your Favorite Pairing - February (you know, for Valentines) - which was mostly interpreted as food and beer, but a couple of our more creative members took some liberties. More on that in a future post.

Our tasting and rating methodology goes something like this:
Step 1: Everyone brings a beer or two.
Step 2: We take stock of the beers that were brought and decide on a rough tasting order.
Step 3: We choose a "Dirty South Secretary" for the night.
Step 4: We commence tasting.
Step 5: We discuss the taste of the beer and the Secretary takes notes.
Step 6: We rate the beer using our own very precise (and accurate!) thumb system. Thumb up = +1; Thumb sideways = 0; Thumb down = -1. The secretary tallies up the thumbs and records the rating. Now, just as fruit-heads don't like comparing apples to oranges, and we don't like comparing pilseners to porters. So, we rate beers against their self-described style (i.e. "This is thumbs up for an imperial stout).
Step 7: At the end of the night everyone is allowed to retroactively apply an additional thumb to their favorite beer, thereby giving that beer "Two Thumbs Up."
Step 8: Based on this scoring system we award a "best in club" prize to the beer that wowed us the most.
Step 9: We put our junk in the box (we recycle!)

Get it? Cool. Go drink some beer. Some good beer that is. Not this beer. It is the worst beer we have ever tried at a beer club meeting.