Long an indispensable flavoring ingredient in beer, hops famously have one of the most complex aromas of any botanical ingredient. Hop experts I know suggest that there are at least 700 known terpenoids in hops, and that’s a conservative estimate. And as you can see from the chart below, there are many other chemical types contributing different characters to hops’ amazing aromas.
On its face, choosing a beer seems like a pretty simple proposition. And It would be, save for the fact that this liquid is one of the most fragile of all packaged products, vulnerable to time, heat, light and other forces. The single biggest factor in making sure you have great beer in your glass is getting it reasonably fresh.
Sunrise in Porto, the view from our hotel window. Situated along the Douro River estuary in northern Portugal, beautiful Porto is one of the oldest European centers. Port wine, one of Portugal’s most famous exports, is named after the city as its metropolitan area is the heart of the packaging, transport, and export of this world-famous fortified wine. Recently my wife Nancy and I had the occasion to visit lovely Portugal and spend a little time enjoying its scenic and gustatorial delights.
Our minds work hard to parse every sensory impulse into psychological qualities that help us respond appropriately. Among the most important is determining the value of the sensation and the object it represents.
Whether individual tastes travel exclusively along dedicated pathways or are encoded to allow multiple taste signals to travel through shared nerves is an active argument within science that is still unresolved. This is not just an academic question. The nature of these connections determine the kinds of sensations we perceive.
Kokumi is another effect, like umami, that we have experienced for millennia, but until recently had no understanding of what it truly was. You think about traditional processes that a fine chef might use to deliver a full-bodied desirable food – making stocks, long simmering, even aging of cheeses and meats.
Recently reviewing some of the bits and pieces of text we cut because they were just a bit too detailed for what we were trying to do, I marveled again about all this neurological clockwork. There’s an awful lot more going on, but I think the capabilities, concerns and mechanisms of these brain regions I have plenty to say in the upcoming book, but
This chart lists some selected products of kilning, baking, roasting, frying and other cooking methods. Just to put it into some kind of context, these flavorful chemicals arise from several fearsomely complex chemical processes involving heat: Maillard browning, caramelization and pyrolysis, which is essentially burning.
Back in 2018, at the very beginning of my work on Your Tasting Brain, I reached out to some experts in various aspects of the chemical senses and the things we use them for. One of them was Mary Svoboda, a director of R&D for a flavor company. Her insights helped me shape the character of the book.
Watch an expert pick up a glass, give it a quick sniff and instantly the complexities of a wine or beer are translated into a few choice words. It looks like simplicity itself, but try to do the same thing as a novice and it’s often an epic struggle. Experts may make it look easy, but it takes a long time to get there. There are many barriers, not the least of which is that tasting is a deeply unnatural act.