- The New Tongue Map, Mosher, R. (2009). Tasting Beer: An Insiders Guide to the Worlds Greatest Drink.(p. 32)
There have been many new discoveries in the realm of taste but not many have been talking about it. The most I have read as it relates to beer is in Randy Mosher’s Book, Tasting Beer. So what exactly is new you ask? Well, what we have been taught since we were kids about how the tongue perceives flavors is completely wrong. The sad thing is, many places are still teaching the old tongue map, where you taste sweet at the tip of the tongue, salty on the front sides, sour on the back sides, and bitter on the back side of the tongue. What they have found, is that all of these flavors are tasted equally over all over the tongue. However, there does seem to be a bit more sensitivity to bitterness on the back and some sour on the sides. This does make sense to me, because when I have something sour, I do taste it everywhere, not just on those front side portions of my tongue. I taste it throughout my whole mouth.
If you look at your tongue, you will see many small bumps, these bumps are not taste buds, but rather papillae. Inside these papillae are your taste buds, and there are many contained within one papillae (usually between 50 to 150 taste buds per papillae). These buds taste many different flavors and the combination of what we have been taught sweet, sour, bitter, and salty among other chemical components give us taste. Aside from these traditional flavors it has been discovered that fat is a flavor as well, and people can taste fat. There is also a new member to the arena and this new one is called umami, which mean savory or deliciousness. Umami occurs when foods or beverage with glutamate is eaten or drank, MSG (Monosodium Glutamate) for example is a glutamate. Beer can contain Umami, and will usually occur in the bigger beer styles, I think it mostly comes from the aging of the beer and breaking down of the yeast cells, but I could be wrong. Umami can come across as mushroomy, meaty, or just overall a savory sensation. Now on a personal note, I have seen Umami being described in beers that I personally couldn’t see there being the sensation of Umami present, but just like anything new, people want to jump right on it and appear to be in-the-know. So just be careful when describing Umami, just because a beer tastes good or is delicious, does not necessarily mean Umami.
Another important consideration, especially if you are tasting and talking with others about a beer, is that not everyone perceives chemicals of the same concentration the same. Contrary to what people think a beer (or wine) judge or expert should be, we are not identical machines manufactured to the same specs. All people perceive different concentrations differently, even not at all. For example, over time I have learned that I am not sensitive to Diacetyl. This means that if I pick up diacetyl in a beer, chances are the concentration is pretty high. When it comes to this, I need to rely on other judges to pick this up in lower doses. What I am sensitive to is Dimethyl Sulfide, or DMS when it comes to aroma. I seem to be able to pick this up in many beers. Since I know I am almost overly sensitive to it, if I pick it up in very low amounts, I probably don’t even bring it up. But if it smashes me in the face, I know it is at least at the level to mention it as a flaw. Being aware of your level of tolerance for different chemicals is important when working with others. If they ask you if you get DMS in the beer, but you can’t normally pick it up, you should explain that.
Being honest with what you taste is also important. Because we all perceive flavors and aromas differently, nobody can tell you what you taste and/or smell. They can suggest what they smell or taste, and you can agree or still not get it. Just because someone thinks a beer has a winelike character, does not mean it does. It means that according to that persons experience, and their perception, they think it does. When in fact you may think it is more like dark fruit, like a plum. Both of you are right. What bothers me the most when someone tells someone else what they taste or smell. Granted, some people are more accurate than others, but you have no real way of knowing that someone is not in fact tasting caramel in a beer, even if that other person does not get it.
This holds true for all aspects of both flavor and aroma perception. Just remember that if you are honest with what you perceive and how you perceive it, you are doing your job. If you are faking what you taste or smell, that does nobody any good.
Surprises me what search engines bring up for “is beer poisoned with harmful chemicals”. Everybody (including home brewers) seem to dismiss the idea. The reality is that anything in a convenience store is outright terrible for your health, even the news and magazines, even the air itself is toxic in a convenience store. The beer products are in the fridge, next to the soft drinks, and every drink in those places is terrible for our health, including the bottled water, which is usually just tap water packaged in a plastic bottle, and when heated (or cooled) the toxins in the plastic leach in to the water. That is why sometimes drinking bottled water actually makes our mouths drier. Anyways, why, if every single item in the store is poisonous, why would the beer not be deceptive too? One major beer company owns the vast majority of commercial beer products, even many labeled microbrew. They (the chemical industrial complex and so on) are probably the suppliers of the brewing ingredients, brewers yeast and such, oh and they (Monsanto) likely has utter control over the genetic make up of Hops. Or perhaps there is heirloom seeds for hops, I’m not sure. What I am sure of is that people (especially in America) are up against a daily onslaught of chemicals in their food and water, and most of us are not conscious to that fact. Every item in a large chain supermarket has been manipulated in one way shape or form, really. It is agronomic warfare, poisoning people on purpose, under our noses of course. So why, if every single item in these stores has MSG or some other sci-fi chemical adulterants, would the beers not be to? Because it is not labeled? It just contains wheat hops and water? B.S. The food labeled “natural” today is their code for poisonous, and the term “organic” is far gone today, too. We are being assaulted with food. And think of all the obscure chemicals today. In the 60′s all we had was LSD and MDMA, but today there are literally hundreds of derivatives of those molecules, and you can not drug test for them. Don’t you think if one of the corporate beer giants could get away with sneaking something addictive or mind controlling into their products, that is untraceable, it seems logical that they would go for it, full steam ahead, because “they” have been caught doing this is way too many subtle ways already. They been caught. They have been slowly acclimating people to accept this abuse, to return to the store and buy more, to repeat the process over and over. Taking advantage of people. Taking people for stupid. When people are not stupid. I have seen some totally stupid stuff before that is for sure, but I have never in my years met someone that is stupid, just varying degrees of how much of a threat they could be to me – but people are not stupid. And beer commerically sold today is poisoned, with something, be it in the brewing process itself, the metallic equipment, or just flat out they pay someone tons of money to keep their mouth shut about chemicals added to their beer. It is overdone, whenever a formula is “perfected” to the point that a can of their brand tastes the same, looks the same, any county in the world, with zero variety to its taste, pour and appearance it’s not true beer. It is far fetched to think, that it is sci-fi beer, it just “tastes, looks, feels” like beer, it is labeled as beer, but really there is no way of knowing the secret recipe. There is something not right about it, and the corporate giants aren’t batting their eye, but they are battering and bruising a whole of eyes of customers in their process.
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