As mentioned Monday, when asked to contribute a list of “best books” to a new-ish book recommendation website I chose five related to aroma and flavor. You can see my picks here.
Whether the books did or did not specifically mention beer mattered little when I made the selections. However, since you are here for the beer, a couple of beer-related excerpts.
First, from Luca Turin in “The Emperor of Scent.”
“Look at beer, which is a very interesting cultural product. Beer smells like a burp. Gasses from someone’s stomach. Lovely. Again a product of fermentation, which is to say decay. Decay enhances smells and flavors, yet we have a sharp ability to identify decay, because decaying things will kill you. Bacterial and yeast decomposition.
“Which can give you ‘I wouldn’t touch that in a million years’ and, at the same time and in the same culture, mind you, ‘I will pay great sums to consume Rodenbach,’ which is a miracle of a beer from Belgium. A miraculous, powdery apple flavor. Those Rodenbach yeast have an I.Q. of at least two hundred. Fucking genius yeast.”
Second, a rather simple* table from “Nose Dive,” which really is the field guide the full title promises.
* Simple compared, for instance, to the one for “pungent spices: mustards and peppers.”
If you click around the site you will see each entry includes a “closely related book lists.” It pleases me that the one list related to mine is from Gordon Shepherd, since one of his books is among the five I point to. But, dang, I wish there were more lists related to aroma and flavor.