We are living in a transitional era of
beer. The popularity of beer is at one of its highest levels in over
100 years (we still haven't bounced back to the peaks of the 1800's,
when beer was so popular, an exploding vat of beer was so big, it
drowned eight people in the streets of London), yet people still
don't know how to taste their beer. For one, even in the United
States, where the craft movement has become a juggernaut, it still
only controls 11% of the market (I use the word “only” lightly.
This is a monumental achievement.) That means that still 89% of all
beer sold is "MacBeer". The craft movement is incredible, but
many people are just jumping on this wagon as a trend and could jump
off in favor of craft gin or aquavit just as quickly.
Even as people seem to be valuing the
flavor of beer more, we are still stuck in the same bad habits from
the days when most beer didn't taste very good. We are much better
at drinking good beer, but still not at tasting it. Few give it the same type of respect and attention they give
wine. Rarely do you see people drinking wine straight from the
bottle or out of pint glasses filled to the brim. Even the most terrible of wines gets the courtesy of wine glass.
Brewers give just as much attention to process as winemakers (some
may even argue they give more, as they are focused on producing a
consistent product. Could you imagine the uproar if your favorite
brewery made a worse beer this year because of seasonal variations?),
so why is it you rarely see a hipster contemplate over the fine brew
they have in their hand?
My own opinion is that we'd been
living in a world of such bad beer for so long, the industry has just
gotten used to suppressing the flavor as much as possible. Not all
is lost though. You, yes, YOU can help point our culture in the
right direction. The first step is actually learning how to taste
beer.
Um, sorry you
SNOB, but um, what do you think I do every time I drink something? I
have a tongue.
Oh, not you again.
I'd hoped you'd been abandoned for a more creative technique. But
to answer your question, there is a difference between drinking
something and tasting something. Think about your own habit of
consumption. When you take a sip of water, do you hold it in your
mouth and think about it? How does this differ from when you drink
wine? Or what about tequila? I'd like to argue that most people try
to avoid tasting many of the things we consume. Beer is no
different. Most people view beer as a buzz-conveyance, much as we
view water as a hydration-conveyance. This is the first step to
tasting anything. Anything you eat or drink should be a
flavor-conveyance. When you have so many options for food and drink,
why would one ever choose something that doesn't taste good? Sure,
tasty things cost more, but that's why there's a concept called
moderation.
Step one:
whenever you consume something, take one moment and think, does this
taste good?
Whenever I go to a nice pub, I am
always dumbfounded by way beer is served. If they have taken the
time to invest in 100 taps, why can they not invest in a glass that
actually encourages proper tasting? The standard glass seems to be
the pint-sized shaker glass. You know the type, they are v-shaped,
usually with a brand logo printed on the side, then beer is filled to
the rim, allowing no chance for any aromatics to come through until
you've finished nearly half the beer (by this point, most of the best
aromas have dissipated.) Even worse are those who serve it straight
from a bottle or a can, which give no aromatics whatsoever. (However,
a new, interesting trend has emerged. Many new beer cans have an
opening, where the whole top comes off, leaving behind a
slightly-tapered cup to drink from.
If you go to a
fancy beer pub, you'll see any number of fancy glasses. It seems that
every single beer in Belgium has its own special glass. The brewers
will claim that they engineered the glass to perfectly enhance the
experience of drinking that particular beer. It need not be that
complicated. Yes, it is best to drink a hefeweissen from one of those
foot-tall glasses that leaves plenty of room for the huge fluffy
head, yet still give a chance to concentrate the aromatics at the
nose, but you don't need it. A good beer glass should have a stem, so
the beer stays at a constant temperature, a tapered nose to
concentrate aromas, and big enough to leave room to swirl. I think
you have one of these already in your cupboard.
Step 2: Use a
proper glass
You keep talking about the
aromatics, but last time I checked, my tongue is in my mouth, not my
nose.
I'm glad you brought this up actually.
Our tongue is actually a crude sensory organ. Scientists have yet to
identify only five basic flavors: sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and
umami (this is not including tongues ability to pick up on other
arguable non-tastes: minty coolness,
chili's spiciness, clove's numbness, red wine's tannins, and fat's
creaminess). Now, these flavors can combine together in many complex
ways to produce what we call taste, but the real work horse is our
nose. Our olfactory sense can identify hundreds of chemical
compounds. Ask anybody who doesn't have a sense of smell, they are
missing a lot!
I find that the aroma is often one of
the best parts of beer. Some beers smell like a bowl of fruit salad
(for example, the amazing Garagista by Garage Project
http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/garage-project-garagista-ipa/286255/),
coffee, chocolate, caramel, fresh baked bread, a pine forest, a
sweaty horse. Some beers smell amazing, but taste very lackluster and
some the opposite. Ultimately, if you don't smell your beer, you are
missing more than half the fun.
One little trick is to smell your beer
when tasting it (yes, this is possible) and thus open up a whole
world of flavor possibilities. When you take a sip, breath out your
nose immediately afterwards. You'll get both the taste and the
aromatics at the same time.
Step 3: Smell your beer
So,
you've smelled your beer, you've tasted your beer from a proper
glass, and you've given it some thought. Congratualtions, you are
officially tasting. If you follow these steps, you might find that beers you once
thought are good, are no longer are great as you thought. Don't
worry, it happens to everybody. The
final step is to write something down and evaluate. Get ratebeer,
beer advocate, or untappd for your phone. Log what you've had and
look for trends. Maybe you'll find that IPA isn't your favorite
style. Maybe you'll learn that your favorite hop is Mosaic. You can
then use this information to pinpoint exactly what you like and that
can help you buy the beers you prefer (I'll resist the urge to go in
depth on tasting notes. I'm a currently writing a whole entry on
tasting notes.)
Step 4: Take
notes
It's all very simple. With these four
steps, anybody can learn a new appreciation for beer. Now go get a
real glass and start tasting!
(sorry for the wiki reference, but I
don't have time to do intense amounts of research)
