We need more adjectives for smells & other things you may not know

MONDAY BEER AND WINE LINKS, MUSING, 06.12.17

And the themes this week are . . .

AROMA AND FLAVOR

Talking About Talking About Taste And Smell With Linguist Ilja Croijmans.
“The Jahai, a hunter-gatherer community in Thailand, have about 12 words for smells that can be compared to our words for colors. Those words are short, abstract, used very often, and can be applied to many different smells. For example, ‘the smell of bat droppings, smoke, ginger root, and petroleum are all described with the word cnes.’ Those are missing in Western cultures. [Via Sprunge]

Vaping Hops With Lagunitas.
The lessons learned here (which is what you’ll care about) are new, but the idea of collecting hop vapor it not. In 1788 in England, William Kerr patented a device that used a pipe to collect vapor leaving the kettle, then cooled the vapor before brewers separated the hop oil and water. They returned the oil to the boiling wort. [Via October]

Rocky three.
They may have been past their prime. “I think I can see the gap where the bright and banging citrus hops are meant to go, but they’re gone.” [Via The Beer Nut]

Wine descriptions make people more emotional about wine.
“Cleverly written wine and producer descriptions when coupled with unbranded wine tasting can evoke more positive emotions, increasing our positive perception of the wine, our estimation of its quality and the amount we would be willing to pay for it.” So is that a good or bad thing? [Via Phys.org]

Scientists discover a sixth sense on the tongue—for water.
“When you find a counterexample to the dominant view that there are only five basic taste groups, [Patricia Di Lorenzo] says, ‘it tells you you need to go back to the drawing board.'”[Via Science]

BECAUSE

Broken.
I don’t know if a Lisa Zimmer warned the 3,726 other people (as of Sunday afternoon) who follow her on Twitter that “Are you sure about this? I tweet a lot.” But if you are one of those followers you have a sense how much she can communicate in 140 characters. This is longer, and worth the time. [Via @Zimmerino]

TRAVEL

A district for u; American craft beer and innovation center.
[Via Utica Comets]
Cape becoming a bona fide craft beer destination.
[Via Boston Globe]
Sketches of Spain: State-of-the-Art Wine Tourism Does More than Sell Wine.
[Via The Wine Economist]
Felicity Carter on the importance of wine tourism, at MUST.
[Via jamie goode’s wine blog]
Wonderful story in final link about the worst wine tour in the world. Why? For starters, “because everyone was being treated like a wine geek.” So . . . “Wine tourism is a subset of experiential tourism. Most people aren’t wine geeks and they embed the wine in a larger context, which is usually gastronomy tourism, which is growing. ‘They don’t want to be treated like future wine geeks.'” I think you can take it from here.

HISTORY

Key Moments in History.
Funny how these things work out. Bonus video: Michael Jackson visited the brewery when he was filming his Beer Hunter series in the late 1980s. [Via Beervana]

Bert Grant, One Of Canada’s Gifts To Craft Brewing.
The story, actually the pursuit of the story, starts with a vial of hop oil. Be sure to stick around for the comments and consider sliding on over to continued thoughts at Beer et seq.
[Via A Good Beer Blog]

TRENDSPOTTING?

Taproom boom: Faced with slowing sales growth, craft brewers try out a new model.
[Via Chicago Tribune]
Pushback Against Brewery Tasting Rooms Threatens The Growth Of Craft Beer.
[Via Forbes]
Or not.

Why the Next Phase of the Craft Beer Revolution Will Happen at Home.
Homebrewing for non-homebrewers, and gose to boot. Yes, I’m intrigued. [Via VinePair]

Two Oregon brewery closures: Juniper Brewing, Plough Monday.
“Relationships have died. Hearts have been broken, and unfortunately the worst is likely yet to come.” [Via The Brew Site]

FROM TWITTER

2 thoughts on “We need more adjectives for smells & other things you may not know”

  1. The people that ran the tasting panel at my last workplace made sure that for most tasting the vocabulary was clearly defined, limited and specific e.g. DMS, light struck, sulphidic and sulphitic. If people keep choosing their own terms to describe flavours it can’t be quantified and is of very little use. Things may be different when writing tasting notes though!

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