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HOMEBREW Digest #5344
HOMEBREW Digest #5344 Fri 13 June 2008
FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
Digest Janitor: pbabcock at hbd.org
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Contents:
mouthfeel/SD Fair ("Chad Stevens")
Subjectivity in Tasting ("Alexandre Enkerli")
Mouthfeel and body (Fred L Johnson)
Mouthfeel ("Jerry \"Beaver\" Pelt")
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Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2008 21:21:56 -0700
From: "Chad Stevens" <zuvaruvi at cox.net>
Subject: mouthfeel/SD Fair
A nice rundown on gustatory perception:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taste
San Diego County Fair Craft Brewer's Competition & Festival June 21st, noon
to 8:00 p.m. Winners here:
http://www.sdfair.com/fair/index.php?fuseaction=events.wine_beer
Hope to see some of you!
Chad Stevens
San Diego
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Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 00:38:17 -0400
From: "Alexandre Enkerli" <enkerli at gmail.com>
Subject: Subjectivity in Tasting
Piggybacking on the mouthfeel discussion.
Well, honestly, as a social scientist and an artist, I can't really
say I share Fred's frustration over difficult or impossible to measure
characteristics. I understand the frustration, I respect it. I just
don't share it.
In fact, I often wonder why it seems important to *reduce* perception
to measurement, in the case of something which is meant to be enjoyed.
No offence intended, of course. Fred and others aren't at fault. It's
just that the perspective puzzles me.
>From what I gather, human perception is, by definition, subjective. A
subject perceives an object. Characteristics of that object only
matter if they are perceived and the perceiving subject adds a lot to
the perception event which is not present in the object. We could talk
about sensitivity to certain flavours, taste memory, expectation about
what different styles taste like, the "power of suggestion," etc.
These all have an impact on perception. And perception is the basis
for enjoyment.
Yes, this perspective shifts some control away from the object's
creator into a kind of ethereal domain. But it also helps explain why
some things are enjoyed, in specific contexts. A "lawnmower" beer on a
hot summer day. A luxurious Old Ale with a heavy meal. A Sour Ale with
someone you love...
A neat thing about subjectivity is that it can lead to
intersubjectivity. It's quite different from objectivity but it's also
more "powerful." People can "share about" some perception of an object
all the while knowing that their perceptions remain resolutely
distinct. Through this sharing, the experience may be enhanced. People
can take pleasure in tasting a beer because, with the help of somebody
else's subjectivity, they discover something new about it.
Personally, I think "mouthfeel" is an appropriate category for certain
descriptors. And it's helpfully subjective.
Sure, there are many factors influencing mouthfeel. And, sure, as
brewers we like to find out what those factors are. But, IMHO, the
main thing here is about a subjective experience, not about a
measurable value.
We probably all know what a "smooth finish" is. Sure, many dimensions
of the "smooth finish" can (and probably should) be analyzed. But
there's enough in "smooth finish" to encompass multiple dimensions of
an experience.
Same thing could be said about "crispness," another term I find
helpfully subjective. It may depend on mineral content, carbonation,
astringency, alcohol, finishing gravity, etc. It's probably even more
complex. And, along with all sorts of beautiful thing, it makes for
beer being a wonderfully complex beverage.
Ale-X in Laval, Qc [888km, 62.5deg] AR
http://enkerli.wordpress.com/
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Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 07:25:53 -0400
From: Fred L Johnson <FLJohnson52 at nc.rr.com>
Subject: Mouthfeel and body
There have been a lot of great points offered regarding my questions
on mouthfeel, body, and viscosity. Undoubtedly there are several
contributors to mouthfeel and body that I failed to include in my
list. I did fail to mention protein as one of those. Protein would
certainly affect viscosity just as the sugar and alcohol content of
the beer would.
I am just trying to get at a simple measurement of something that
strongly correlates to what a taster might mean when he says "This
beer lacks body". I am still betting that viscosity is going to be
the single strongest predictor of what that taster means. Such a
relationship wouldn't be too hard to establish. This topic is
certainly nothing new. The relationship between the sensation of body
and the liquids viscosity value is probably covered in Food Science
101. Food scientists probably understand these things like the back
of their hand. In fact, a quick search on the internet of the food
science literature will yield several papers in which body and
viscosity are essentially equated.
(Any bona fide food scientists out there listening who could lead
this lost soul into the light?)
Regarding mouthfeel, I must agree that there are other tactile
sensations that tasters would lump into the mouthfeel category.
Something that is gritty certainly has a mouthfeel that would not be
captured in a viscosity measurement, but gritty isn't something we
usually encounter in a description of beer, except in Josh's humorous
reference to the broken glass one might have found in a beer on the
shelf recently. (Thanks, Josh, for keeping me laughing.) Here is
where carbonation certainly comes in to play. Astringency is another
mouthfeel that is independent of body. I guess I was thinking of
those times when a taster would say, "This beer has lots of
mouthfeel." One could argue that such a statement simply isn't a
very meaningful one. Perhaps such a taster meant the beer had lots of
body. I suppose mouthfeel is not something that one can assign a
numeric value. Rather, mouthfeel is relegated to having only
descriptive terms. (Sigh--just one more thing my homemade brewing
software will never be able to calculate.)
I'm not so sure that carbonation level actually affects body,
although one's perception of body might be altered, just as the
perceived bitterness of a beer is affected by the amount of sugar in
the beer, but sugar doesn't affect the IBU levels.
Thanks again for the feedback. This is fun!
Fred L Johnson
Apex, North Carolina, USA
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Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 07:04:45 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Jerry \"Beaver\" Pelt" <beaverplt at yahoo.com>
Subject: Mouthfeel
Hi, Most of the time I lurk but would like to weigh in on this.
Everyone so far has made good points.
The one thing I've yet to see is the human factor.
In beer tastings I've done with friends,
Mouthfeel has been all over the map.
Most agree or at least come close in their description,
but there are always one or two differences.
If this factor wasn't involved,
we'd only need one judge at contests, right?
Jerry "Beaver" Pelt
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End of HOMEBREW Digest #5344, 06/13/08
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