Hey, regular gal and guy beer drinkers, if I wrote a tasting note and described a beer as phenolic, what would that mean to you?
This is a serious question and I’d appreciate any comments off the top of your head (no Googling) — remembering that a sentence is better than a treatise.
(I promise to explain why I ask.)
Myself, I think of aromas in the range of banana & cloves but also ranging into “band-aid” category. Phenols.
But that’s because I’ve read a lot of homebrewing and beer books, and tend to think like that…
Medicinal, band-aid
There is a medicine taste that I get off some Belgian goldens. It’s the first thing I taste and I don’t care for it. Others have described that taste as cloves or soft biscuits (???) and like it fine. I’m thinking it’s that phenolic taste. Jon’s “Band Aids” is as good a name for it as I can think of. 33 Beers (the booklet) lists it on their wheel o’ flavors.
Makes me think of chemistry class, so a bad smell.
Medicinal, iodine, ozone, perhaps some sense of light smokiness.
glue, solvent, burnt/char, wax, wood finish. Just word association.
There are a number of different aromatic compounds that are phenols… The first aromas that come to mind are clove, pepper, any spicy aromas, smoke, and sulfur.
anything reminiscent of plastics or cleaning agents
For me it’s marker pens, and it’s also that medicinal iodine kick from peaty scotches, Laphroaig in particular.
Smelly. Other than that I look it up.
Solvents (nail polish remover), band aids/Bentadine/Iodophor
I had no idea. Reading the comments, band-aid seems common and often I get a smell of meat when I taste band-aid.
It is odd that someone mentioned smoke. I too every now and then get a smoke like thing going on with something infected. I thought I was the only one.
Not good off the top of my head. If it had been used in a conversation I’d have sniffed my beer and asked for an explanation.
That said, I know I use my own vocabulary when speaking about beer aromas and flavors. I’m by no means a BJCP judge.
Bland plastic.
Any of the subtle medicinal aromas; band-aid, aspirin, plastics. I’ve heard it used when there’s “difficult” aromas that defy common associative qualities, or when the aromas are yeast-driven , like banana/clove. I use it for all three. If yeast is the culprit, it’s phenolic.
Without further description it wouldn’t mean much to me. As demonstrated by the many phenolic aromatic compounds listed by others, ‘phenolic’ is a very broad descriptor with good and bad connotations. In general though, I’d conclude it came from the type of yeast, a stressed fermentation or special ingredients (including some malts). Which, truth be told, is not much of a conclusion.
To me this means hard medicinal phenol taste, like TCP. Definitely a fault and often caused by contamination with a chlorine based detergent,
Estery.
It would mean that I need to look it up in the dictionary again – for some reason often escapes me.
I didn’t read any of the previous comments so they wouldn’t taint my response so I apologize if it’s more of the same.
I tend to call a beer phenolic as a pejorative only. When a beer stinks of Band-aid, pool liner, sewer drain I refer to the beer as being off and phenolic.
On the other hand when a beer has an awesome phenolic character I don’t call the beer that. I tend to call out the wonderful phenols specifically but not describe the beer as being phenolic generally.
I definitely think it’s useful. Human sensitivity to phenols varies by a few orders of magnitude, so one person’s “light phenolic, cough syrup” could be another person’s “medicinal disaster!”
Once a person realizes that they’re “gifted” with respect to phenol perception then “phenolic” may be all they need to see in a review to proceed with caution.
I’m not certain if sensory perception varies according to the type of phenol – which does have a very broad range, but I believe most people refer to medicinal aromas as phenolic whereas clovey aromas are simply called clove.
Maybe I’m reading too much into this.
You said: Regular gal and guy beer drinkers.
Are you trying to capture non-brewers and exclude people that are supposed to know?
People that are supposed to know might still give you wide range of answers too, I guess.
olllllo – I don’t want to exclude anybody. But I do want people who haven’t heard the term used, or who have thought “Phenolic? What am I supposed to be tasting?” to feel welcome.
i’ve seen the word many times. i consider myself a beer enthusiast and a pretty enthusiastic homebrewer, but the best i can come up with off the top of my head is estery, or at least some effect pertaining to the yeast.
There are lots of phenolic flavors and aromas. Bad ones include plastic, burnt plastic, medicinal, and band-aid. Good ones include the clove character of German weizen, and the spicy aromas and flavors of many Belgian and Belgian-style beers.
Ok, Stan.
I guess it’s a term that need context and perhaps brewer intent if I’m just reading a tasting note.
If you said that you had a phenolic stout, I’d wonder if smoked malt was used or perhaps a Belgian strain of yeast or if there was an infection.
If it was a beer with a wheat bill then I’d think of an entirely different set of descriptors (banana, clove, et al.)
Still none of this on it’s own (including the infection) necessarily tells me if this was a good or bad experience.
Phenolic is an off flavor that has to do with band-aids, packing tape, and maybe copper coins.
a medicinal odor
Phenolic means plastic to me. In the paint industry roller covers have phenolic cores that make them solvent resistant.
I generally usually use that term to describe a bite and/or aroma presence that is not fruity, smokey, nutty, floral (usually leaving – medicinal, plasticky, herbal)
Of course, I first came across the word after I brewed my first batch of beer with heavily chlorinated water, when trying to figure out why it tasted the way it did (in a bad way.)
light medicinal but natural flavors or medicinal alcohol
I would think funkiness/yeast by-products–maybe floral or Belgian in nature.
pepper, clove, spicy.
I don’t think of it as necessarily an off-flavor. The clovey ones can be nice. It’s the medicinal and band-aid ones that are nasty. Like when you chew on gum for way too long. Ick.
I immediately think of good and bad phenols. I think good phenols are cloves and bananas of a nice Heffe or a Belgian with some other harder to identify aromatics tossed in.
I think of bad phenols as a band-aid medicine smell, like my elementary school nurse’s office; a place I spent too much time in. That conjures up a variety of other smells too, like iodine and cotton balls, but I try to repress these. I remember her fondly, so those smells might not as unpleasant for me as other people.
Stan,
Problem is that there are a lot of phenolic compounds and many occur in beer with fairly pleasant effects. Examples include the clove of weizen and the peat smoke flavors of some Scotch/Scottish ales.
But for me the word “phenol” means another specific flavor that is altogether different: it has a solventy, minerally trait (also bandaids, disinfectant) that can certainly be harsh when present in excess as it might be in a beer infected with wild yeast. But a touch of even this harsh form of phenol can be a pleasant thing in something like a Belgian strong ale.
That’s my take.
Cheers,
Ray