Can’t help myself, it seems.
I’m not sure I understand Zarfhome, or who Zarf might be, but he or she has done the heavy lifting with a rather complete list of Flavor Wheels of the World.
You’ve got stuff from perfume people, beer, wine, coffee, chocolate, maple products and some other lists.
A cheese flavor wheel is mentioned but without a chart. The most complete I could find is Sartori Foods’ Italian Cheese Flavor Wheel.
What did I learn from Mike Steinberger’s three-part series at Slate about sensory perception and tasting wine?
Probably more if I had I wanted to dive into the science. Give him credit was not being afraid to get geeky. This was a serious investigation into tasting physiology, but in a tongue-in-cheek (yes, tongue) way that meant his ears were surely burning when we read it. Who is this guy who thinks he is a supertaster, and why should we be impressed by his über wine-tasting skills?
For me, he confirmed what I already knew: You, me, we don’t want to be supertasters, Super Tasters, or whatever you want to call somebody with an abnormal number of taste buds. I first read about concept in Elin McCoy’s Emperor of Wine, her biography of wine critic Robert Parker.
Sounds cool doesn’t it, to be super when it comes to tasting? But do you think this is what sets Parker apart? After all, he had is nose insured for a million dollars, not his tongue. What’s amazing is his ability to taste, blind, a wine he had 20 years ago and tell you what it is. Makes your realize there is as much happening in his brain as his nose or his mouth.
Fact is that supertasters experience flavors, and sensations on the tongue, more intensely. Chiles? Maybe not such a good idea. Hoppy beers? More bitter than Sam Calagione intended. Artichokes? No way. Gee, you’d be looking over your shoulder every time you dipped your bread in olive oil.
Does that sound like fun to you?
Then there is the other question. As scientists learn more about the relationship between nose and taste is there the chance they will find that our perceptions are so individual that looking to others for recommendations has little value?
All of which raises, for wine writers, a truly buzz-killing possibility: Is there a grand fallacy at the heart of what we do? Those of us who review wines do so in the belief that our evaluations, while obviously subjective, are of some value to consumers. But a growing body of scientific evidence suggests that taste perceptions may be even more individualistic and idiosyncratic than previously imagined — and if our noses and tongues all operate on such different wavelengths, then who’s to say what’s good or bad? Is it really possible to agree about the attributes and virtues of, say, a Napa Cabernet, or are we — wine writers and wine consumers — just conning ourselves into consensus?
Might we not say the same about beer?
There’s another Ballantine Burton Christmas Ale on eBay – and this one was brewed for Harry Truman.
Here’s the history of these ales – coveted by beer lovers interested in tasting what’s inside the few remaining bottles even though the beers were brewed 60 and 70 years ago.
What’s different about this one is that the label states that this one was brewed on May 12, 1934 and bottled for President Harry S Truman in December 1949. This bottle comes with a note citing its provenance written on a White House note card with the presidential seal. The card is written by Mrs. M. Esperancilla, whose husband was chief steward on the presidential yacht, the U.S.S. Williamsburg.
So what makes this bottle more valuable – the Burton Ale is inside or that it was bottled for a president?
There other question. Why didn’t he drink it?
Before we get to the Slate three-part series on sensory perception and wine a few words of wit and wisdom on that topic from Lauren Salazar of New Belgium Brewing, who spoke Friday in Denver at the National Homebrewers Conference. (That’s her on the right, during a mock judging last year in Seattle, staged for the shooting of American Brew.)
Things I learned I would have added to the earlier discussion here about the mysteries of how (and how we might measure what) we smell and taste:
– To those scientific types who argue that senses of sight, touch and hearing are concrete and smelling and tasting are not her answer is simple. “Yes they are,” she said. “Seeing is not believing. Smelling and tasting is where it’s at.”
– There a second “flavor” wheel (I put the quotation marks around flavor because we’re really talking flavor and aroma), this one just for byproducts of oxidation. If you’re sitting on a tasting panel at New Belgium and call out a beer for being oxidized you can’t stop there – you have to be more specific. This goes to quality control, and more about that in a few paragraphs.
– She presented four samples of Fat Tire dosed with chemicals that reproduce flavors such as acetaldehyde (green apples) and diacetyl (butterscotch; buttered popcorn at higher levels). Although we often cite these as off flavors when judging beer (there are even boxes to check on a BJCP scoresheet) they aren’t inappropriate in every beer.
A bit of green apple in Budweiser is part of its flavor profile. Hints, heck more than hints, of butterscotch make British ales taste like British ales.
“Diacetyl is one of the first words you learn (in judging beer),” Salazar said. “We are American brewers. We are paid to hate diacetyl. You know how much British brewers hate us for that?”
When I posted the flavor wheel last week, Jonathan wrote that the majority of the descriptors on the wheel don’t describe particularly pleasant flavors. Yep. And I think figuring out how to keep the good ones in and the bad ones out – sometimes in beer that is going to be shipped across the country and maybe mishandled along the way – is a craft.
During the lengthy discussions of “what is craft beer?” (start here) I’ve seen it suggested that Sierra Nevada Brewing and Stone Brewing were craft but no longer are because they grew into production breweries.
That’s poppycock. Both Sierra Nevada and New Belgium have new state-of-the-art bottling lines that will take your breath away, but we’re back to the early question: Is the Big Foot (or Mothership Wit) in the glass any different because it passed through a technically superior bottling line?
Salazar and her husband, Eric, oversee the New Belgium barrel program. La Foile is essentially hand bottled. That beer is something we expect from a great brewery.
Salazar also administers a quite sophisticated quality analysis program at New Belgium, with 24 tasters sitting on her in-house panels. A couple of months ago at the Craft (my italics) Brewers Conference Matt Gilliland of New Belgium talked about “Total Oxidation: Exposure and Increased Flavor Stability.” One measure of success is that after beer changes hands several times over the course a few weeks in the distribution system it is still “true to brand” in the glass.
That’s something else we expect from a great brewery.
I looked up the word conundrum to make sure I was using it appropriately (a question or problem having only a conjectural answer). I already knew I couldn’t look up “craft beer” – thus the conundrum.
We’ve debated the challenge of defining craft beer in this blog and maybe 80 percent of those listed to the right, as well as at Rate Beer, Beer Advocate, the Real Beer community and in at least 1,387 American brewpubs. Good bar talk – as witnessed by the scores of comments in the most recent discussion started by Lew Bryson.
A lot of good – and important – reading, but I don’t see a succinct definition emerging. It’s pretty obvious that debating the meaning of craft beer could occupy an entire semester of Beer Philosophy 101 and still there’d be no conclusion.
I can live with that. I spent a good portion of my working life as a copy editor and supervising copy editors. Writing and editing is a lot easier when you’ve got a dictionary to fall back on. And have I little choice but to use the term craft beer in some stories that I write. I just did a quick search in a story I filed last week for New Brewer, the publication that goes to Brewers Association members, and I see I used the phrase three times. In all three cases, even though the definition is imperfect, no other would have worked as well.
So perhaps whenever I type craft beer here I should include a link to the 50th comment, posted by Mr. Bryson himself.
The real subject is beer, or as Lew writes the beer in the glass.
Which takes us back to where the discussion started, a Anheuser-Busch Beach Bum Blonde Ale tasting note, and Lew’s column earlier in the month about the benefits of tasting beer blind.
I have this blog with a name – that to many people doesn’t exactly make sense – predicated on the idea that where your beer comes from (way before it gets in your glass) and how it is made changes what is in the glass and how you feel about it. So I think it’s OK to give extra points (were we scoring the beer – which of course we don’t do around here) to New Belgium Mothership Wit beer because it’s organic or because of the brewery’s commitment to sustainability or because you like bicycles.
But you are shorting yourself if you don’t objectively evaluate what’s in the glass. That means you don’t give a brewer you like a pass when he or she conjures up a below average beer. It means that if you see a good reason to try a beer from a brewery you’re not a fan of that you give yourself an honest chance to like the beer.
Craft is not a synonym for good or an antonym for evil empire.
I started to write a comment to meet Lew’s request to describe the “characteristics (of craft beer) that you can see, taste, and smell in the glass” before I realized (d’oh) the description wasn’t about craft beer, but just beer itself.