A Note on Tasting Notes
A dear friend has said to me he loves catching up with me but going out dinning with me takes alcohol to a whole new level. When we crack open whatever we are drinking from wine to beer to gin to whisky or rum, he knows it always starts with a swirl of my glass and long inhale of the aromas swished about my glass. Thoughtfully I explain every single aroma I detect, usually at least seven. Then I taste. A quick sip to acclimatise and then a long, large mouthful, rolled and tossed about, then swallowed slowly. In rapid fire I then articulate everything I’ve just encountered. I’m like “mouthfeel is this, and I can taste a, and b, and c, and d, with some top notes of blah, supported by 1, 2, and 3, and it finishes with z, y and x”. My friendly politely nods throughout this ceremony and offers “ah ha, ah ha, ah ha” to the otherwise monologue. He’s admitted to me though that all that’s going on in his inner thoughts are “yep I get none of that”. I then always ask him what he thinks about the drink and he looks me straight in the eyes and says “Yep, it’s nice”.
Taste is a subjective and personal phenomena. Being able to communicate what you’ve experience is definitely learnt. No one was born being able to do this. While certain individuals can start off with a tasting advantage, as a general rule, unless you have damaged cranial nerves or something, everyone can get better with practise, regardless of where you started out. I like to break being able to articulate tasting notes down into three main steps:
You have to be able to perceive an isolated flavour; and
You have to be able to associate that flavour with something in your memory; and then
You have to be able to communicate that flavour either by name or by association.
Your descriptions don’t have to be orthodox or follow a flavour wheel, but they do need to be relatable to others so that you can share your experience. It’s totally fine to say a wine smells like “my grandmother’s cupboard” as long as you and your audience both understand that means dank and moulding with notes of staleness and talc. With practise, you will find you get faster at being able to roll through the three steps. The faster you are at that, then the more flavours you can regularly identify per sip before the experience wanes and leaves you wanting.
Articulating tasting notes is like commenting on a live horse race as its unfolding. Sometimes it’s a simple one horse race where you have time to gather your thoughts, such as tasting lemonade. Sometimes there’s a bunch of horse galloping in the race seemingly heading straight for you, like a hard hitting IPA. Whether one or several in the race, what is consistent is tasting is always a moving target. It’s an experience over time. Add to that the pseudo doppler effect as tastes mutate as they zoom past coming in and then out of focal point changing as they do. So, like when tuning an analogue radio, taste like a radio station signal has a bandwidth and you need to practise to know when to make a call of what the flavour is and when to wait a little longer until the flavour mutates a little more. Learn to call the flavour when it’s “in focus” or “tuned in”, letting the head and tail transitional flavours go by the wayside.
It’s always a good idea to do your commentary, and notation, in the order you perceived the flavours. It’s like this, the experience of tasting is a story with a beginning, middle, and end. So keep it in that order so it continues to make sense. Transcribing tastings in their natural order also helps the person you are sitting with following along with your storytelling and recognise when you describe a flavour they perhaps were struggling themselves to pin point.
Don’t get stressed out about it all. If you find describing the taste helps you enjoy the drink – do it. If it doesn’t, then don’t worry about it. Paramount should be you enjoying what you are drinking. Everything else to that is just take it or leave it. If you ARE interested in developing your beer tasting skills then a great place to start is learning the corner stones of beer: malt, yeast, and hops. Be kind to yourself and try to just focus on one corner stone at a time to start with. This simplifies the experience, removing a lot of the white noise. It will clear the deck so that you have the space and time to hone in on what you are trying to describe as the taste experience rolls past. Here are some corner stone suggestions:
Focus on Malt by trying some traditional German pale lager styles such as Pilsner and Helles. Focus on picking up bready notes and biscuit qualities. Be mindful when you are at the bakery next time. Lots of the flavours of breads can be transposed into beer. Common beer malt flavours can be described as White Bread, Vienna Loaf, Fruit Loaf crust, for instance so knowing what these breads smell and taste like is important. Also, I’d encourage you to pop into your local home brew store and ask for 100g of a half a dozen very different malts. Take them home and taste them. If the store milled them for you, or you are handy with a mortar and pistil, get some hot water and make a “tea” with the grains. Taste the flavour in the water.
Focus on Yeast by drinking a selection of yeast driven beers such as a Belgian Tripel Ale, Hefeweizen, Saison, or Lambic. If you’re a home brewer you could also make a batch of pale wort (unfermented beer) on a base malt such as Pilsner Malt or Vienna Malt. Divide the wort into three and ferment each mini-batch with a different yeast. Keep the alcohol tolerance of the yeast all the same so that varying alcohol content isn’t at play. An example of three distinct yeast strains sharing the same medium alcohol tolerance (5-10%) would be WLP300: Hefeweizen Ale Yeast, WLP080: Cream Ale Yeast Blend, and WLP013: London Ale Yeast.
Focus on Hops by enjoying a flight of beers starting with a Pale Ale, then an Extra Pale Ale, move to an East Coast India Pale Ale, then finish with a West Coast India Pale Ale, tasting that hoppiness intensify with each beer. For an appreciation of how different hops can bring forward different flavour profiles, hang out for single hop beers when they hit the shelves. Generally these only appear in limited batches from the craft breweries and often around hob harvest time. If you’re curious but can’t wait, visit your home brew store and buy some different hops. Defuse them in some hot water and see what you can smell and taste.
Happy tasting!