Beer By BART, your guide for getting wasted not too far from public transit, has created a terrific how-to for those new to the concept of "flight tastings," which is a way to taste lots of beer without drinking 12 ounces of each kind:

The first thing beer tasters are likely to discover is that a favorite beer can taste bland if preceded by a similar but sweeter, more bitter, more roasty, more yeast-flavored or higher alcohol beer. That’s easy to notice when the flavor of the known beer is strongly committed to memory, and the contents of your glass are no secret. It’s harder in a blind tasting situation, or where the known beer is not a recent favorite. When you get to a second beer in a tasting flight that’s one you have never had before, there is no way to know exactly how the prior beer is changing your perception of the current one.

The usual suggestions for coping with this are:

1. Milder, lighter (in flavor but not always in color) beers should be tasted first.

Get the whole flight guide at Beer by BART.

[Photo by edkohler]