Smell training, for those who miss litter box IPAs

Because of Covid-19 I’ve dropped in on homebrew clubs meetings in every time zone in the country. And because of Covid-19 when I am (virtually) in Cincinnati or Kansas City or wherever and talk about anosmias I can almost see heads nodding beyond my computer screen.

(Should you not know, anosmia, that is loss of ability to smell, is a prominent sign of SARS-CoV-2 infection. The loss, in this case, may be total, but partial anosmias are not unusual in everyday life.)

This week, Wine Spectator columnist Robert Camuto wrote about “Getting Back My Nose After a COVID KO.” He lost his sense of smell for 14 days beginning Dec. 19 and figures he has about 20 percent back so far.

"What the Nose Knows"Looking for answers he turned to “What the Nose Knows: The Science of Scent in Everyday Life,” a book I found essential when writing about aroma in “For the Love of Hops” and one I recommend for anybody interested in unraveling the mysteries of our most complex sense.

Camuto eventually called author Avery Gilbert, who explained the upper nose has about 400 odor receptors. Covid-19 is believed to infect surrounding support cell tissue, shutting down the whole olfactory operation. As cells regenerate, smells return.

“It’s like when your Internet goes out and the router comes back on with those blinking lights,” Gilbert told him. “Like those lights, your receptors are coming back online, and which one comes on next is like pulling a number out of a lottery bucket.”

He suggested smell training to speed the recovery.

“Throughout the day, I spontaneously embark on smell-a-thons,” Camuto writes. “Last week, I was excited to pick up on the scents of the dried-out Christmas tree, lemon leaves (though not the lemon), WD-40, soap, wild thyme, burned match, buttery pastry and the anachronistic scent of a very old edition of Charles Dickens’ ‘The Old Curiosity Shop.’”

An aside. At the outset, Camuto writes, “Some odors I don’t miss at all. Like the cat box.” Curious to read from a wine writer, given that he probably knows Sauvignon Blanc well. And Sauvignon Blanc contains some of the same thiols, or sulfur compounds, as hops — such as Citra, Mosaic and Galaxy — popular in modern IPAs. Working in partnership with other compounds they help produce exotic aromas and flavors currently in style. In excess, and this may also happen in Sauvignon Blanc, they may smell catty. That’s the word you use in polite company instead of cat pee.

Call it destiny, but Bell’s Hopslam Ale arrived in Atlanta this week. This is a beer about which John Mallett, Bell’s Brewery vice president-operations, once said, “It smells like your cat ate your weed and then pissed in the Christmas tree.”

So my recommendation for your weekend pleasure is a copy of “What the Nose Knows” along with a glass of Hopslam.

Is beer an agent of change? Should it be?

The headline itself — The Cultural Triumph of Craft Beer — evokes my questions, but you really should read Jeff Alworth’s post at Beervana from start to finish. It is not easily summarized, but I’ll go with what he wrote for the front page:

“The sense about craft beer right now, with assaults from a global pandemic and hard seltzer, is often morose. In purely financial terms, beer seems to be sputtering. But as a cultural force, it has never been stronger.”

The headline above gives away the questions the post provoked for me. Is (craft) beer changing our culture? Or is our culture changing (craft) beer? Put another way, is (craft) beer keeping up with a changing culture? And, of course, beer is made by brewers at breweries. So we have another set of questions, including, Are brewers and breweries keeping up with a changing culture?

Additional reading
– Martin Luther King, Jr.’s final unfinished struggle.
– Introducing the Imbibe 75.

You want hop flavors? Here are 107 to choose from

Hopsteiner lupulin pellets
This is how Hopsteiner introduces its new Lupulin Pellets

In case you can’t read Jeff Alworth’s tweet (above) from Wednesday, this is what it says:

“Trends shift, fashions change. Reading @StanHieronymus’s latest hops newsletter about development of new hops and I began to wonder if fruitiness will continue to dominate preferences. Spice and herbs have a long, august history in hopping. Might they become the next big thing?”

As is often the case, it takes some clicking around (start by hitting the date) to follow all the comments, but there were some people agreeing with Joe Stange (“Selfishly, hedonistically, I hope so”) and some interested in taking the conversation in another direction.

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Is it possible to be ‘a little too New Orleans?’

Dixie Brewing 2016Abandoned Dixie brewery, five months after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans

The New Orleans brewing company formerly known as Dixie announced this week that its new name is Faubourg Brewing.

The name comes from the French term for settled areas outside a city. As New Orleans grew in the 18th century expanding neighborhoods were called faubourgs and many still are, such as Faubourg Marigny and Faubourg St. John.

You’ll recall that in June, Dixie was one of several brands (think Dixie Chicks becoming The Chicks or Uncle Ben’s rice becoming Ben’s original) to retire its old name. The company asked consumers to submit possible new names (5,400 did) and conducted focus groups.

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