How beer tastes (part II)

In part one I only discussed the way beer reacts with the taste buds in the mouth. Flavor perception is by no means limited to what the tongue can do. Let’s look at how beer smells and feels.

Aroma is the way that your beer smells. This might include scents like citrus, pine, smoke, sweetness, spices, or fruit and so on.  The possibilities are almost endless.  Most of the flavor that we enjoy is not perceived from the tongue alone but from cooperation from the sense of smell as well.  Try this, go eat or drink anything without breathing out of your nose. There is little to nothing there. In fact, all you will get are the four basic tongue flavors described in part I. They won’t be as vibrant as you would have perceived them if you had your sense of smell to complement and back them up.  

Aftertaste is a word with a bad rap. I hear “after taste” and I don’t associate that with a good thing but it is not a bad thing by necessity.  The finish of your beer is the flavor you have left over once the liquid has passed on its way to making you happy. Some beers are made to have a clean finish; they are described as dry, clean, fresh. In fact, whole marketing campaigns have been devoted to selling beer without an after taste. Japanese beers are known for the use of a dry hopping technique where hops are added to the beer after the beer is almost done fermenting or when it is aging. This leaves an aroma but little lingering flavor in the beer. Still other beers are made to be complex and offer an evolving taste profile during each stage of the drinking process. Barley wines are a class of beer that comes to mind. These high alcohol beers are aged, for years some times, and have a very large amount of hops and malt included in their ingredients. The flavor in these beers lingers by design.

"Mouth feel" is a term you hear the wine guys throw around quite a bit. It describes the weightiness of the liquid in your mouth. Milk is thicker than water, honey is thicker than milk, and Jell-O is thicker still. Beer will have much more subtle changes than this, but with a little practice you may begin to notice the weight or the thickness of your favorite beer. If you have a light American lager and a Stout at the same time it is easy to appreciate how much thicker the stout is.