Last night, while attending a book launch at a local brewpub, I fell into a conversation with a fellow who insisted on professing to me in great detail his love of pubs and bars. He called himself a drinker, and did so with pride. He also claimed to be a big fan of beer.
It will likely come as no surprise to readers of World of Beer that I also consider myself to be a beer enthusiast of significant degree. Yet my argumentative drinking partner and I were about as far apart in our views on beer as two non-teetotallers could be. He frequently drank without serious consideration of what was in his glass; I seldom patronize bars that don't offer at least one good beer or suitable substitute. He claimed that the finest act a bartender could do was to have his drink waiting on the bar for him as he pulled up to his stool; I never know what I'm going to drink until I have a good look at what's on offer, even if I am familiar with the bar. He - and I admit here that I'm just guessing - probably has no idea what a beer smells like; I take a sniff of every glass that approaches my lips.
It's a funny thing, our sense of smell. It is one of the most acute of our five senses, yet we have becomed conditioned to use it sparingly. In fact, if you take stock of the number of times over the course of a day that you notice a smell, you'll probably find that the majority of those times the smell is a bad one. This despite the fact that a good smell, a really good smell, is as capable of delivering great pleasure as is a good flavour or a fine sight.
In beer, smell is of paramount importance. Ever wonder why mainstream beers tend to taste so much better when you drink them out of the bottle and ice cold? It's because you can't smell them. Believe me, I've sniffed many a cellar temperature mass-produced lager and I'm here to tell you that, more often that not, what I smell is not exactly the most enticing of scents.
Give me a fresh pint of cask-conditioned and dry-hopped best bitter, on the other hand, and I can smell a walk in the autumn woods, an undercurrent of fruit and perhaps a hint of spice as an accent. All of which makes the experience of tasting the beer that much more pleasurable.
Brewers the world over go to great lengths to get just the right aromas in their beers, be they Belgians brewing potent ales, Germans producing fragrant bocks or American craft brewers making...well, just about anything under the sun. To induce these fragrances they use mostly hops, but also spices, herbs, roasted or caramelized malts, fruits and even specialized yeasts. And they do it to improve your beer drinking experience.
While I seriously doubt I will ever talk my friend from last night into considering the aroma of his beer, I think that even he would find himself deriving more pleasure from his pint if he were to stop and give it a whiff from time to time. It might even be enough to convince him to order a different beer from time to time.
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