Adrian Tierney-Jones — who was my editor when I worked on 1001 Beer You Must Try Before You Die — had an interesting post the other day on his blog, Called to the Bar, entitled What does vanilla smell like? It’s about the difficulties of accurately describing any aroma we encounter in beer, but with vanilla as the jumping off point for the discussion. Especially interesting is the idea of how do you describe aromas without using too much cliché, an inevitable problem when you write a lot of tasting notes. Adrian specifically mentions something he read in the introduction of the Penguin Guide to Food and Drink. Editor Paul Levy notes “how you might find a raspberry note in Burgundy but no Burgundy notes in a raspberry. But what does a raspberry smell of? Raspberry.” It’s a thorny problem for reviewing beers, and worth a read if you want to write thoughtful tasting notes, or just understand the difficulties inherent in them.
On Food Navigator, there was an interesting short interview with Matthew Patrick, VP of R&D for TIC Gums where he suggests that “food and beverage product developers spend a shockingly low amount of time examining how texture may impact a finished product.” In beer, of course, texture is more often referred to as “mouthfeel.” And while when judging beer, mouthfeel is a consideration it’s usually not the primary one. Honestly, I’m really not sure how often brewers tinker with their recipes specifically to get a particular mouthfeel though it’s clear that many beers have great ones and many otherwise solid beers suffer for having a less than pleasant or ideally suited mouthfeel.
He’s talking primarily about texture in food and non-alcoholic beverages, though he singles out what he refers to as “low-viscosity beverages” like “tea” as products who didn’t give much thought to their texture. Beer’s viscosity has quite a range, from thin pilsners and golden ales to thick, rich oatmeal and imperial stouts so I can’t say where beer falls in TIC Gums’ viscosity scale. But there’s no doubt that mouthfeel is at least one of the many factors that add up to a beer’s overall taste profile. What a brewer can, or should, do about it seems like a worthy discussion to have.
Speaking to FoodNavigator-USA at the Research Chefs Association conference and expo in Atlanta, Patrick explained that texture can have wide-ranging influence on consumer perception of a food or beverage product.
For example, texture can influence the way saltiness or sugariness is perceived, meaning that different textures can make a product seem more or less sweet or salty even if the level of sugar or salt remains the same. That effect is something that product developers need to be particularly aware of, as many are cutting sugar or salt in products in response to demand for healthier foods and drinks.
Patrick added that low-viscosity beverages, such as teas, represent one area in which there is particular potential for enhancing consumer experience of a product through subtle textural differences.
Eric Asimov, who writes The Pour for the New York Times, had a very interesting post today on simplifying tasting notes for wine, entitled Wine in Two Words. Here’s the crux of his idea:
While it may seem heretical to say, the more specific the description of a wine, the less useful information is actually transmitted. See for yourself. All you have to do is compare two reviewers’ notes for a single bottle: one critic’s ripe raspberry, white pepper and huckleberry is another’s sweet-and-sour cherries and spice box. What’s the solution? Well, if you feel the urgent need to know precisely what a wine is going to taste like before you sniff and swallow, forget it. Experience will give you a general idea, but fixating on exactitude is a fool’s errand. Two bottles of the same wine can taste different depending on when, where and with whom you open them.
Besides, the aromas and flavors of good wines can evolve over the course of 20 minutes in a glass. Perhaps they can be captured momentarily like fireflies in a child’s hands, yet reach for them again a minute later and — whiff! — they’re somewhere else.
But the general character of a wine: now, that’s another matter. A brief depiction of the salient overall features of a wine, like its weight, texture and the broad nature of its aromas and flavors, can be far more helpful in determining whether you will like that bottle than a thousand points of detail. In fact, consumers could be helped immeasurably if the entire lexicon of wine descriptors were boiled down to two words: sweet or savory.
Asimov goes on to give greater detail to his idea of simplification, going so far that at the end he gives a list of varietals and where they fall in the sweet or savory list, admitting obvious exceptions will occur. And while I believe beer flavors are somewhat more complex, because of a greater number of ingredients and the endless combinations of them along with variations in the brewing process, the basic notions are sound and applicable.
Like wine, it’s true that the flavors of a particular beer change as it warms, too, and on any given day there are numerous things that can effect how a beer tastes. But even so, I don’t think you could distill beer down to just two descriptors. But I could see a smaller number being devised that could be useful in communicating basic information about the expectations of how a beer might taste, or at least its core components. There are specific styles that certainly have very recognizable characteristics, but just as many don’t or are exceptions to any rules. In a sense beer is like the English language, where there’s an exception to virtually every rule. Still it might be worth the effort to try and see what emerges and whether it could be useful. Anybody have any thoughts?
Here’s a gentle remainder that Open IT! Weekend begins today and runs through this Sunday, so get cracking … those bottles open.
The brainchild of UK beer writer Mark Dredge, who writes at Pencil and Spoon, he’s designated the first weekend in December — the 3rd through the 5th — as “Open It!” weekend. What that means is it’s time for you — and me — to open some of those special bottles we’ve been saving for … a special occasion that never comes. Instead, let’s open them now and, in the spirit of the holidays, start sharing.
Here’s how he put it a few weeks ago, in his initial post, Announcing Open It:
So here’s the idea: let’s create a special occasion. Let’s call this special occasion Open It! and let’s drink the good beers. Let’s find a bottle from the depth of the cellar and open it, drink it and then tell others about it (in blogs, blog comments or twitter or facebook).
Open it alone or open it with others; hold an Open It! party or take it to the pub to see what people think. Most importantly, get that bottle open and drink the thing and then tell everyone about it.
Open It! over the first weekend in December — Friday 3rd to Sunday 5th — and then blog about it in the week after. Use the #openit hashtag on twitter while you are drinking it and like the facebook group. It’s just about opening something special and enjoying it.
Doesn’t that sound like fun? The key, I think, is letting everybody know what you opened. That should be the best part, our collective stash. So just open it! Today, tomorrow or Sunday. Yum!
Here’s a fun idea from UK beer writer Mark Dredge, who writes at Pencil and Spoon. He’s designating the first weekend in December — the 3rd through the 5th — as “Open It!” weekend. What that means is it’s time to open some of those special bottles you’ve been saving for … a special occasion that never comes. Instead, let’s open them now and, in the spirit of the holidays, start sharing.
So here’s the idea: let’s create a special occasion. Let’s call this special occasion Open It! and let’s drink the good beers. Let’s find a bottle from the depth of the cellar and open it, drink it and then tell others about it (in blogs, blog comments or twitter or facebook).
Open it alone or open it with others; hold an Open It! party or take it to the pub to see what people think. Most importantly, get that bottle open and drink the thing and then tell everyone about it.
Open It! over the first weekend in December — Friday 3rd to Sunday 5th — and then blog about it in the week after. Use the #openit hashtag on twitter while you are drinking it and like the facebook group. It’s just about opening something special and enjoying it.
Which was echoed in a reminder posted yesterday. It certainly encouraged me to take up the cause and try to spread the word. I could see this becoming a fun annual event. I do a monthly tasting that’s somewhat similar, insofar as I try to share the samples I get every month so they don’t end up in the back of the refrigerator in the first place. But despite those efforts, I still have four of them, two of which are filled with beer I’m reluctant to open on a whim.
The first day of Open IT! weekend also coincides with December’s Session, and the topic is Unexpected Discoveries. There’s no reason that discovery couldn’t be that forgotten bottle hiding in your beer cellar.
But the key, I think, is letting everybody know what you opened. That should be the fun part, our collective stash. So just open it!
I woke up again in Seattle, my second day here. Yesterday I helped to choose the winners of the Hard Liver Barleywine Fest at Brouwer’s Cafe. It’s the eighth year of the festival and it’s really grown into an impressive event in the several years I’ve been coming up for it.
But the weekend has got me thinking, not about barley wines, but tasting in general. At these types of festivals, people often try to taste every offering — in small quantities of course — of some very big beers. You see it at the Toronado Barleywine Festival and you see if at Brouwer’s Hard Liver, where this year 50 barley wines will be judged and something like 62 or 66 will be served, owing to multiple vintages of the same beers.
And as impressive as that is, it’s today that has me worried. Each Sunday, the day after the Hard Liver Fest, Matt Bonney hosts, with his business partner Matt Vandenberghe (a.k.a. Vern) and a cast of characters, the private, invitation-only Keene Tasting, named for Dave Keene, who owns the Toronado in San Francisco. With Dr. Bill now working at Stone and no longer doing as many of his legendary tastings, the Keene Tasting is one of the few that follow the format Dr. Bill (at least as far as I know) pioneered.
It’s a simple, if punishing format, where a new beer is opened roughly every five minutes over a period of several hours. So while you never get a large portion of any single beer, you do ultimately taste a lot of different beers. Still, it adds up. There are snack breaks and a lunch break, and those that stick with it can expect to be there eleven or twelve hours. Like many other types of marathons, very few actually reach the finish line, tasting every single beer.
Last year something like 160 beers were tasted, beginning around 11:00 a.m. and going well into the evening. That year I made it to 110 beers before reaching my limit.
The year before, I only made it half-way, and dropped out at beer 75, owing to getting very, very sick — not from the beer, just a feverish flu — which I detailed then in Pride Goeth Before A Fall. And that brings me to my point. We all have our limits, and it’s not only good to know them, but also pay them heed.
Impressively, one of the improvements Bonney employs over the average Dr. Bill tasting is that a clean glass is used for every beer, a Herculean task if ever there was one.
There are, of course, myriad ways to taste from settling in to drink only one beer, exploring it thoroughly from start to finish, lingering over it as it changes when it warms, really letting it sink in to the very opposite, tasting as many beers as possible, very quickly, and everything in between. Generally, when judging beers in competition, you want no more than nine or ten in a flight and 30 or less for a single session. But that’s just one legitimate way in which beer can be sampled. That may be too many at a time for some people and too few for others.
I know there are people critical of the rapid fire Dr. Bill-style tasting, but I’m not. Is it my favorite way to sample beer? Not necessarily, but it is still quite enjoyable and while you can’t linger over every single beer, you can get a sense of it all the same. There’s a Danish proverb, “better thin beer than an empty jug.” And that’s the rub. I still prefer the opportunity to sample some truly rare beers, even if not under the most ideal circumstances, than not at all. So yes, I’m a relativist when it comes to the marathon tasting but I’m just fine with that. The important thing is to have a good time and know when to walk away. I already know there will be some spectacular beers poured later today and I’m looking forward to giving it another go. Will I make it to the end? Probably not. But that’s okay, there’s no shame in that as far as I’m concerned.
In the words of the immortal Kenny Rogers, equally applicable to drinking as gambling. “You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away and know when to run.” With any luck, I’ll know when to fold and can walk away. Stay tuned for details.
Below is a slideshow of the 2009 Keene Tasting. This Flickr gallery is best viewed in full screen. To view it that way, after clicking on the arrow in the center to start the slideshow, click on the button on the bottom right with the four arrows pointing outward on it, to see the photos in glorious full screen. Once in full screen slideshow mode, click on “Show Info” to identify each photo.
My good friend Fal Allen, who’s currently brewing in Singapore (and used to be the GM at Anderson Valley), apparently had a block of time he could devote to thinking about tasting beer. He’s compiled a great list of tasting terms specific to beer. He’s invited people to re-post it so I’m taking him up [...]
Remember Vintage No. 1, which Denmark’s Carlsberg Brewery — actually their Jacobsen Brewhouse — created a $400-per-bottle beer, for no better reason than to “challenge luxury wines in the gourmet restaurant market and capitalize on rising individual wealth?” Touted as the world’s most expensive beer, due in part, at least, to there being only 600 [...]
The full quote from Proverbs 16:18, at least in the King James’ version, is “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall” but the more common shortened version says it all. Essentially, the modern meaning of this proverb is not to be overly confident, especially in yourself, or you’re likely to have [...]
It’s time once again for our eleventh Session, and this time around we’re highlighting Doppelbocks courtesy of this month’s host, Wilson at Brewvana. I recently spent two weeks in the home of Doppelbocks — Germany — when many breweries I visited were just debuting their winter seasonal, which more often than not was a doppelbock. [...]
Saturday afternoon there was a fun little event at the fabulous new City Beer Store, dubbed Chanukah vs. Christmas — because marketeer extraordinaire Jeremy Cowan, founder of He’Brew, was behind it. Essentially it was just an opportunity to taste around thirty different winter beers, including He’Brew’s Jewbelation 10th Anniversary Ale (last year’s beer) and He’Brew’s [...]
If you’re a regular Bulletin reader you might think I drink nothing except beer, but that’s not at all true. I enjoy many different alcoholic beverages such as wine, especially heavy reds and fortified wines like Late Bottled Vintage Port, along with sake, hard cider, gin and other spirits. But I’m especially fond of whisky [...]
A day after praising Eric Asimov for leading the way toward detente between beer and wine, his “Ales of the Times” column today is entitled More or Less Pale but All Belgian features a tasting of several lighter Belgian beers suitable for summer. As usual, it’s a reasoned look at several lighter style Belgian ales [...]
This has been a brutal month for me, in the last few weeks I’ve been to Denver, Portland and am writing this from Mammoth Lakes, California, where I’m attending a CSBA meeting and beer festival. So the Bulletin has suffered, but I didn’t want to miss this month’s Session because it’s an idea that I [...]
After the parade on Thursday was the annual media tasting led by Noel Blake. In years past it was conducted before the festival began, but because of the parade this was no longer possible. But that also meant we were crowded around all of the other early festival-goers, which happily turned out not to be [...]
Monday night I attended a presentation at the Toronado for the San Francisco launch of Krusovice, a beer from the Czech Republic. An old friend of mine, Dave Deuser, is the local rep. for the beer, which is (or was, but more on that in a minute) part of the Binding Group, a German company [...]
I was one of 42 beer writers who contributed to this big 960-page book telling the stories of 1,001 world-famous beers. The book is now available at Amazon.com and other fine booksellers.
