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.
Remember back in high school when someone thought that were being clever and asked “How do we know reality isn’t a dream and the dream isn’t reality?” Well the answer is that it doesn’t matter because we just chose words as labels for each state. A set of sensations we experience can be labeled as the smell of vanilla. We experience those same sensations when we smell vanilla and when we smell a beer with vanilla character. Its caused by olfactory epithelial cells in our nostrils detecting the presence of vanallin.
My current favorite beer reviewer who I won’t name, is coming up with some utterly ridiculous descriptors these days and has turned beer reviewing into an art form that regularly veers off into self parody
Vanilla should smell like the beans from which the extracts are made (usually by soaking in grain alochol – you can do it yourself by splitting the beans open & infusing in neutral-tasting vodka or Everclear & then diluting w/water) – I got the “how to” lesson from an experienced cook recently. What we call “vanilla” however, is based primarily on our 1st “imprint” as a toddler – probably our 1st taste of vanilla ice cream (I always preferred chocolate). Way back when, someone “goosed” the basic ice cream recipe (cream, sugar, & maybe a little gelatin/cornstarch for smoothness), & it took off.
To address the “tasting notes” issue, I cite a tasting “event” I attended circa 1987 @ Pacific Coast Brewing Co, sharing a table w/Brett Nichols (one of the “Celebrator” founders – he moved to Canada & turned it over to Dalldorf). A Woodruff Ale from Hollister’s San Andreas Brewpub (I’m pretty sure it died yrs ago) hit the table, & I’m tasting a flavor that I knew from my toddler days kid, but blanked on the descriptor, as I think did Brett. Then it hit me – graham crackers (which I love to this day & dunked in milk as a kid)!
Bottom line is what a long-lost contemporary once said to me: “There’s no accounting for taste”. Taste is purely subjective, no matter how the “scientists” try to segregate/quantify it. You like what you like, hate what you hate, & discuss the whys & wherefores.