The Meaninglessness of Tasting Notes

Tasting notes are hard things to get right. Here’s some which don’t quite get the job done...

“Good bitterness levels...” As opposed to bad ones, presumably.

“The flavour has a good balance of malt, fruit and hops...” Any particular type of fruit? What about the malt and hops?

“Hoppy finish and aroma...” Phew.

“A strong copper coloured premium bitter with a good malty taste and full hopped aroma.” How to describe a beer I don’t want to drink.

“A well balanced and traditional brew.” That’s all you’re getting for this one.

Here’s one for the IPA police: “An authentic strong India Pale Ale, brewed to a traditional recipe. Beautifully pale with an intense grapefruit hop flavour.”

“A single delicate hop added...” Not one for hop heads.

“A sprung beer, triple hopped, with a complex fruity taste.” I love complex fruit.

“...a gentle bitterness.” They didn’t put enough hops in it then, did they?

“...this strikingly malty beer...” Strikingly malty?!

“Ideal for St George’s day.” With love from the Marketing Department.

“A smooth, medium-strong bitter, full of malt and hop flavours with a sweet aftertaste.” Mmm, I love those delicious generic malt and hop flavours.

“A speciality beer with fruit and hops on the aroma and in the taste. Dry and faintly astringent on the palate leading to a strong, dry and moderately astringent finish.” So it’s dry and astringent? Exactly what I look for in a beer.

There was, however, one note which stood above all the others as the epitome of a lame tasting note: “A gold-coloured beer with an aroma of malt and hops. Well-balanced malt and hops taste is followed by a hoppy, bitter finish with some fruit notes.”

...

These were all taken from the Planet Thanet beer list. With over 200 beers on for the weekend there are a lot of tasting notes to be compiled, written and edited, and it’s a difficult job given the limited word allowance for each. Aside from these, most of the others were good and gave some interesting information (A classic: “Pale, straw coloured. Strong citrus aroma. Well balanced bittering, long dry finish. A fruity, zesty character.”), so it’s not a criticism of the writing, because it’s a thankless job pulling those together, instead it’s a look at how meaningless some tasting notes can be when describing beers.

I’ve also noticed that I didn’t try any of the beers used as examples above. I wonder how many others didn’t order them because they had no idea what the beer would actually taste like. Ultimately, a tasting note has to make a person want to drink the beer, whether it’s a long form ode or just ten perfectly ordered words. If it doesn’t give some indication of what it looks and tastes like, or some push towards why you should try it, then it’s essentially meaningless.

What are the worst, funniest or most meaningless tasting notes you’ve read? (RateBeer and BeerAdvocate aside)

Last year I wrote about the 10 words used too often to describe beer and they are all on display here. I’m also sure that if you trawl back through the 450+ blog posts on here you’ll find some terrible examples which I’ve written. Consider them circled with a virtual red pen with the words ‘must try harder’ scribbled beside them.

The Flavours of Beer (on Toast)

Here’s a beer description; what’s the style? "Dark chocolate, coffee, berry fruit, vanilla and coconut; smooth and full bodied, strong, lots more chocolate, roast bitterness, boozy bourbon, vanilla..."

Now this one: "Grapefruit, orange pith, tropical fruit, caramel sweetness; a mouthful and it’s sweet first, then fruity followed by a bang of bitterness which clings to the tongue..."

Both are fairly simple, generic examples of tasting notes. The first is a barrel-aged imperial stout and the second is an IPA, right? But, in real terms, do these beers actually taste like the flavours described in them? In other words, does the flavour in IPA actually taste like a segment of orange or grapefruit? And can you recreate the flavour of beer using real ingredients?

There’s only one way to find out...

Here is some beer on toast. Also known as beer canapés. Or deconstructed beer.

There’s an American IPA, a dubbel and a barrel-aged imperial stout. The IPA is golden toast topped with caramel, piled above are oranges, satsumas, grapefruit, mango and some pith from each for bitterness. The dubbel is lightly toasted bread, tea-soaked raisins, a little ground pepper, mixed spices and some milk and dark chocolate. The imperial stout is made from burnt toast, dark and milk chocolate, cocoa, vanilla extract, toasted nuts, a few drops of bourbon, a flake of salt and some coffee. 

They of course tasted nothing like the beers they represented. The IPA was too juicy and the caramel was too sweet; the dubbel was delicious on its own but not remotely like beer; the chocolate overpowered everything in the stout. I could potentially have tried them over and over again to tweak the toppings and try to get it as close as possible to a ‘beer flavour’, maybe I could have added some alcohol to replicate that missing component, I could even have tried blending them with water and alcohol, but I don’t think any of those would’ve got it just right. But then, getting it perfect wasn’t the aim...

What I’m interested in is how representative of real flavours the things we write in our notepads (or the things we register in our mind’s palate) when we drink something actually are. Tasting notes are reductive. An IPA isn’t just oranges, grapefruit, mango and some indiscernible floral; it’s a lot more than that, made up by the unique coming together of its ingredients, and these flavours are easy to scribble down and give an idea of what the beer is like when we drink it. It’s not about tasting notes; this is a sideways glance at flavour, perception and how we describe (or think about) the two. Beyond this it’s about understanding flavours and what they actually taste like: is it coffee or dark chocolate; chicory or botanic bitterness; mango or papaya; crackers or brioche; lemon juice or vinegar (see: Gary Vaynerchuk). It’s also a fun experiment I wanted to try out.

From this test, deconstructing beers to their discernible flavours does not create the same effect on the plate as it does in the glass. However, especially in the case of the stout and the dubbel, it does make for delicious beer canapés! 

Bitten Bullet Beers

It all started on twitter (again). This time it happened while I was drinking a Ballast Point Big Eye IPA (see the video here) and waxing lyrical about the Centennial hop. Then a tweet popped up from Barry, of The Bitten Bullet fame, along the lines of ‘If you like Centennials then you’d like my homebrew hopped with Chinook and Centennial’. Fast-forward three weeks and there I was drinking it with Pete (that’s where we had awesome Spag Bol with Rochefort 8, by the way).

Now, I don’t have any experience with homebrew so didn’t really know what to expect. To be honest, without wishing to do any injustice to Barry, I was preparing myself for something drinkable but perhaps not comparable to the normal, commercial beers which I drink all the time. I was very wrong.
We started with Spiral Galaxy H1N1, a 5.2%, 35IBU single hop pale ale. I know Barry brewed this while house-bound due to swine flu, so there was a little inherent danger in this beer (a week later and I’m showing no symptoms…). It’s golden with a tropical fruit aroma, kind of like fruit salad sweets and passion fruit. The malt was really clean and crisp, biscuity. The bitterness was good and I could’ve drunk a lot of this one. I hadn’t heard about Galaxy hops before so it was good to see it in action. Anyone know any beers which use Galaxy?
Next came the Alternative Munster Altbier, a 4.6%, 38IBU Alt hopped with Northern Brewer and Hallertauer Perle. Barry tells me that it isn’t lagered, hence the ‘alternative’ in the name. I’m not a massive Alt fan, not really getting their point, but there was plenty going on in this: caramel, berries, brown bread, chocolate and an earthiness. Very nicely brewed, very clean and tasty.
Then we opened the one which kicked the whole thing off: Klosteiner Pale Ale, 5.9%, 40IBU and hopped with Chinooks and Centennials (that just reads like beer erotica to me). Now this really was something special. Deep orange-gold in colour with a great orangey, perfumed, fruity nose which went straight through into the taste, along with a caramel sweetness, giving loads of Centennial bite and a whole spectrum of oranges and citrus. Pfwoar! I wanted a lot more of this one but apparently I had the last bottle. Please brew it again!
Finally came the Bitten Bullet Barley Wine, a 10.5% beast, hopped with Cascades, Chinooks and Centennials with an IBU of 106. Wowza! We had this with an incredible oozing piece of gorgonzola and it was a real winner. The beer is big and brooding, as you’d expect. It has a huge hoppy aroma, like Sierra Nevada’s Bigfoot, then beneath that it’s chocolate and dried and stone fruit. It’s earthy and unforgiving, there’s loads of burnt citrus, over-done brown bread toast and then more banging hops. Only 22 were made and I think Barry has the intention of aging them for quite a while, allowing the hops to mellow right down. He also sent a very rare version of this aged over oak chips with the specific instruction of not touching it until Christmas, when it’ll be a year old. I look forward to it.

Also in the box he shipped were a few German beers and a beer mustard. Herren Pils was pretty much my perfect pilsner, light and fruity and so drinkable (I had just spent five hours walking around Ikea though, so even this would've tasted like heaven). Boltens Ur-Alt was malty, nutty, bready and slightly roasty, although again, Alt’s not really my thing. And a Fassla Zwergla, a Bamberg Dunkel (Bamberg Dunkel sounds like a character from a Vonnegut novel…) which had a really nice simplicity to it with apples, toffee and toasted brown bread.

I like this homebrew thing. There's definitely something in it... All my expectations were blown away and I was massively impressed. These weren’t just good beers, these were excellently brewed beers that I’d want to drink again and again. If you would have placed these in front of me and asked my honest opinion, without any prior knowledge of them, I would’ve guessed a well established and quality commercial brewery. Barry, you should be very proud of those beers, now hurry up, get back to brewing and ship me some more over!

A Few New Beers

I’ve opened a few new beers recently as well as trying to get through some of the bottles which have been filling the cupboards and fridge. Here's a few notes.

Ramsgate Brewery Gadds’ India 8.3%
A cloudy pale ale. Boozy nose of candy sugar alongside citrus and earthy hops. Really surprising mouthfeel, all thick and biscuity and bready without tipping over into too-sweet. It’s got big hops, earthy and peppery and strong and there’s more booze too. There’s a great middle moment when you aren’t sure whether it’ll go sweet or bitter, it balances on a tiny point, see-sawing, then drops over into bitterness. Really drinkable for the strength and even though it wasn’t super-fresh it still tasted good. I went down to the brewery last weekend so expect more from Ramsgate to come.

Lovibonds Henley Dark 4.8%
Coca-cola colour with a thick and creamy tan head. Aromas of milky chocolate and sweet smoke. Drinking it brings out much more roasted bitterness with dark chocolate and coffee alongside smoke and a pleasing earthiness. It’s packed with flavour and complexity which is great for its fairly modest strength. As it warms it gets earthier and the smoke comes through more (edging towards a great phenolic complexity). I served this with lasagne and it worked really well – the smoke buffers the rich tomato sauce.

Mikkeller Stateside IPA 7%
Hopped to buggery with Chinook, Cascade and Centennial (that's what the bottle says, the website says it's got Amarillo?). It’s a deep amber with little carbonation. The nose gives off caramel, bread, pine, booze and burnt tropical fruit. There’s plenty of sweetness which is balanced by a great bitterness with pine, grass, grapefruit, tangerine and tropical fruits. I don’t think it was especially fresh and so it could be even better, but I really enjoyed this (but then how could a beer with those hops not be good?!).

Kasteel Cru Rose 5.0%
I might write-up a larger blog about this beer but in the meantime let me tell you this: the beer is pointless and completely shit. One word: drainpour.

Nils Oscar God Lager 5.3%
I didn’t expect too much with this one but was pleasantly surprised. It’s a great golden colour with a nose of brown bread, toast and distant lemony hops. The flavours are really clean and crisp with plenty of biscuity malt and some toffee bread finished off with some simple, earthy-lemony hops. Nice one. Follow the link to go to beermerchants, that's where I got mine from.

Kasteel Triple 11%
I don’t really get triples. Maybe I just haven’t had one that I love yet. This was gold with tiny streams of bubbles. It’s boozy at the back of the throat with a gin-like dryness. There’s some spice, something vaguely sweet and more booze. To be honest it just didn’t taste quite right.

Brasserie Dupont Saison Dupont 6.5%
I was sitting in the garden reading in the sun and needed a cold, refreshing beer to open. This was my choice and I’m glad I went for it. Wheaty, earthy, spicy with a faint orange peel aroma and distant twangs of sourness. It’s fresh and quenching, some fruitiness, some earthiness, some peppery spice and a great lingering dry bitterness.

Mikkeller Warrior Single Hop 6.9%
A flame colour with a juicy aroma of peach, orange and mango closely flanked by a leathery-pineness. It’s completely hop-heavy and condensed in its bitterness but it’s great for that reason. It’s very bitter, fruity, floral, pithy and roasted tropical fruits with that requisite clawing finish. Nice and I think this one is up there alongside the Cascade single hopper. I picked this up from Gadds' Beer Shop, where you can also get the India.

Thornbridge Brewery

Yesterday I met Stefano and Kelly from Thornbridge Brewery. It was a meet the brewer event held and arranged by lovebeeratborough. Basically, we beer fans turn up and get to listen to the chaps from the brewery talk about their beers while we sit there drinking them. It was brilliant fun!

Thornbridge Brewery’s tagline is ‘Never Ordinary’ and I like that; it’s fun, playful, open, experimental, forward-thinking. Hearing these guys talk about their beers, enthusing passionately, eloquently, intelligently, articulately, is fascinating. They are more like rock-stars or movie-stars, with their good-looks, cool dress sense and long, dark hair, than they are brewers. Stefano, the Head Brewer, is Italian and has this shy-blasé-cool thing going on, he’s softly spoken but everything he says I want to listen to. And Kelly, the Production Manager, a New Zealander, is like a mate you haven’t met yet, instantly friendly and a guy you’d love to sit down with and ’chat beer’ for hours. Seriously, these guys make the whole science of brewing super sexy and they know so much; they speak the language of beer like poets.

The first beer we tried was Seven Heron, a 3.8% pale golden ale created by Melissa Cole (a partner with LoveBeer and a cool beer writer). The beer is light and quenching with plenty of nibbling hops to finish. A good way to ease us in to the sampling session.

Next came Jaipur, their most known beer and a quality drop. It’s a 5.9% IPA hopped with Chinook, Centennial and Ahtanum. There’s a big malty base beneath the biting hops, with lots of grapefruit and tropical fruits. I’d had the bottled version which was ‘softer’, fruitier and more buttery caramel malt, but the cask stuff was super. Jaipur is one of the best British IPAs around right now (Punk IPA, Meantime and Skrimshander are up there for me too). They call it dangerously drinkable and have even verbalised the name - I am Jaipured – as an expression of drunkenness.

A special edition of Halcyon, a very gluggable 7.7% IPA, followed. It was a 2008 vintage of a new idea at Thornbridge (the idea, if my fuzzy head remembers correctly, is to take the big base of Halcyon and add a different hop to it each year creating a vintage which shows off the qualities of that individual hop and the hops’ terroir). This beer is wet hopped with Green Hereford Targets (there’s some Derbyshire Fuggles in there too and they use a Belgian yeast) and was fantastic; unbelievably fresh with citrus fruits and strawberry aromas, biscuity malt and then great aromatic hops.

Things stepped up from here and went into awesome mode. The chaps brought out Alliance, an 11% strong ale which was only bloody brewed with beer mega-star Garrett Oliver! But they didn’t just bring one, there were three… The normal Alliance; one which was then aged for another two months in Pedro Ximinez Spanish oak casks; and one that was aged for three more months in American oak casks which previously held Madeira. We had them in a vertical-style tasting and that was insanely good. The base beer is stunning, fruity and bold; the sherry cask took on a dried fruit quality and a big richness; the Madeira cask was nutty and full of juicy stone fruits. Matt, my date for the event, loved the original one best, while I was torn between the other two, changing my mind with each sniff and sip of the gloriously intoxicating beers. This was an incredible and unique experience and fascinating to see how barrel-aging imparts its own characteristics. Wow-inducing.

We valiantly continued. Next came Handel which was around 6% (I don’t remember the specifics; I was already reminiscing about the Alliance) and created in collaboration with a young American girl who visited the brewery to try her homebrew on a larger scale. This was another special beer, a one-off. It had all the qualities of a Belgian beer with the spicy fruit aromas suggesting it’ll be thick and syrupy, but it’s actually wonderfully light and drinkable, surprisingly so. It’s a Euro-American mix and a damn good one.

One more. And it ended with a bang: Bracia. I had tried this the week before and adored it. It’s 9%, thick and dark, brewed with Italian chestnut honey (which is surprisingly bitter) and bottled conditioned with Champagne yeast. This is one of the best looking beers I’ve seen in ages with its deep brown head (excuse the poor picture quality; I was in such lusty admiration of the beer that I had to hurriedly snap it). It has amazing aromas of chocolate and honey, loads of nuts and coffee. My tasting notes from home even features the word Pfwoar! There’s a load of dark chocolate in the mouth, bitterness, some berries, smoke and a hint of something zingy and fresh. It’s boozy and strong, rich and complex and there’s a fascinating earthy/beefy/savoury note which will make it a brilliant match for chocolate desserts.

And that was that. We stayed around after chatting to Stefano and Kelly which was great. They are so friendly and approachable and hearing them talk about their beer is brilliant; they speak with pride and love and their enthusiasm is contagious. It’s fascinating to hear about the brewery and their set-up, the way they have progressed and the way they think as brewers. They stand behind the terms ‘Innovation’, ‘Passion’ and ‘Knowledge’ and spending just two hours with them and their beers, these terms shine through: when you hear about it from these guys, beer is not just beer, it’s a whole lot more than that.

Afterwards we went down into the Rake to drink some more of their beers (they are on tap in there all week so make sure you hurry down, if not you can buy their stuff from Utobeer in Borough Market). Between us we had a Seven Heron (lovely), a Halcyon (fantastically drinkable, big), Jaipur (much hoppier off cask compared to the bottle, but brilliant for that reason) and we were lucky enough to grab a cheeky half of Saint Petersburg Imperial Stout (7.7%) which was mind-blowing: rich and creamy, smoothly chocolaty, just gorgeous.

Then I had to go home and I left for the train suitable Jaipured. Thank you Thornbridge and LoveBeer, I had a fantastic time.

As-Live Tasting: Belgian Style Triple Ale

20.10pm. This is an as-live tasting of the Belgian Style Triple Ale which is a collaborative brew between Stone Brewing Co., Mikkeller Brewery and AleSmith Brewery.

Basically I decided to open a beer tonight and thought I’d write my notes straight into the computer and publish them right now, unedited.

Allow me to set the scene: Location, Location, Location is on in the background (I love Kirstie Allsopp) and I’m at my desk. The beer is downstairs. I do currently have better things to be doing, but I’m feeling lazy and I want a beer. Let’s go!

20.13pm. Beer opened and poured, photo taken and back to desk.

20.14pm. Pale gold colour, not a massive head and few bubbles. Aromas of bread and oranges; an oaty-ness; subtle spice; citrusy fruit developing with more oranges, maybe lychee too. Some booze.

20.16pm. Let’s drink! It’s so smooth and creamy (there must be oats in it?), feels way below its 8.7% ABV and it’s light. Loads of malt; clove spiciness; toned-down American-style hoppy finish; orange pith and peel. The booze is coming through more now.

20.20pm. I’m reading the bottle… It has a tag-line of ‘Triple the Breweries, Triple the Brewmasters, Triple the beer…’ That’s pretty cool. The whole concept is good; I like it. These are three of the most forward and progressive breweries in the world so a collaboration is really interesting.

20.22pm. I’m distracted by Kirstie Allsopp.

20.24pm. I get back to the beer. More fruit comes through now and it’s more mellow, creamy. There’s something biscuity about it, maybe the malt-yeast combo? I get some pepper and pears too. There’s spice, there’s malt and there’s plenty of hops to finish and it’s Europe meets America. It has a definite Belgian twang, whatever that indeterminate description may mean. It’s very drinkable for a beer of its strength, but I’m wondering when it’ll blow my mind?

20.30pm. Masterchef begins (goodbye Kirstie), I notice Southend are beating Chelsea as I skip channels. I laugh heartily.

20.33pm. This beer is sliding down quick. But it feels a little flat, as if the carbonation has let it down.

20.35pm. Is this as-live thing working? It’s doubtful. I’m cruising Beer Advocate right now. I’m desperate to drink more AleSmith beers. I’ve got some Stone downstairs but I won’t have another now. I’m going to Utobeer on Saturday (before/after the Thornbridge tasting at the Rake) and I think I’ll pick up some more Stones.

20.40pm. I’m enjoying the beer-buzz, that airy sensation of feeling relaxed after the first beer (especially a strong one).

20.44pm. The beer is gone. I’m left kind of perplexed and undecided by it. I enjoyed it but I wouldn’t buy another one. It’s very drinkable and light for its strength - fruity, spicy, bready - but I have a feeling that it’ll be soon forgotten (except that it’s been posted here for eternity, or so).

20.47pm. Right, let’s get this thing online. As-live tasting done!

20.59pm. We are live.