Deep, elegant, and beautiful explanations of our world.

I just ran across Edge.org’s Annual Question for 2012. Each year, they ask a number of intellectuals and public figures for their thoughts on a particular topic. This year’s question is “What is your favorite deep, elegant, and beautiful explanation?”.

I’ve read only a handful so far (picking out the contributors whom I routinely enjoy reading), and many of them are pretty interesting.

One that stood out for me, and is somewhat on-topic, is Richard Dawkins’ discussion of “Redundancy Reduction and Pattern Recognition”, and it briefly explains how our brain chooses which sensory signals to pay attention to and which to filter out.

You may also enjoy Vilayanur Ramachandran’s discussion of the question of consciousness and where it may arise. I’ve always found Dr. Ramachandran’s work fascinating, particularly his work on phantom limb pain and synesthesia (mixing of sensory signals in the brain; ie something tastes “brown”). You can find a bunch of his material on the internet, and he has done a couple TED Talks, too. Google it up!

More beer topics soon!

Portland Beer Tour

So last Saturday, some friends and colleagues of mine and I met in Portland Oregon to look for some good beer. There were three of us: one from academia (we’ll call him “Joel”), and two from the craft brewing industry (myself, and “Sarah” for the purposes of this article). Sarah was on a Voyage of Discovery to find out what kinds of sour beers are being made and which ones are popular, but we also wanted to discuss the current state of sensory science in our own organizations as well as across the brewing industry. A Summit of Sensory Scientists, I guess you could say.

Now, sour beers are really not my preferred style of beer so my goal was just to find some beers and food that I enjoyed. I would have no problem trying the sour beers, but I certainly wasn’t going to be ordering any for myself. I also didn’t go into this trip with the idea that I’d analyze, or even remember, each beer I tried, but I did want to form some general opinions on the bars that we visited, and some of the food and beverages that they served. Below is a general overview of the places we visited, and what we thought about the products they offered.

Beer Sensory Science’s First Cake Day!

About 60 posts in the 370-some days this blog has been up. That’s about a post every week, so not too bad for frequency, I guess.

Hope to keep it up well into the future!

Sour times in Portland

I guess it’s going to be one of those blogs where posts come few and far between.

Anyway, this weekend some sensory colleagues of mine and I will be assembling in Portland to discuss various matters, as well as to tour local facilities. Part of the focus for some of us is to be tasting various sour beers. Here’s where you come in: know of any pubs and breweries in Portland, Oregon with any sour beers on tap? It’s been awhile since I’ve spent any appreciable time in Portland, and there are likely a number of breweries which didn’t exist the last time I was there.

So if you have any tips or suggestions for establishments that we can darken with our presence, please let me know by the end of the week!

(Maybe I’ll turn it into a post as well)

Teasing out the underlying aromas of complex flavors

One of the most interesting things about flavor science is the fact that certain aromas and flavors are so complex that no single compound can replicate the experience. Even flavors which are represented fairly well by a single compound (like the isoamyl acetate in bananas, or the methylanthranilate in concord grapes) are more of a simulacrum to their natural inspirations, often times having a slight “artificial” quality. While this “marquee” compound may make up the bulk of that particular flavor, there are probably a half-dozen or more other compounds at or below threshold levels which are contributing to the overall impression of the flavor, adding to its complexity and depth. In some cases, these compounds may have aromas in the same category as the main flavor, but sometimes they seem to come out of left-field…

Chocolate, maybe not surprisingly, is one of those flavors that is made up of a strange hodge-podge of flavor compounds which, taken on their own, have no relation or similarity to the flavor of chocolate. Research from the Technical University of Munich is starting to show just how complex chocolate flavors are. They’ve found that there are up to 600 different aromatic compounds in cocoa beans, but you really only need about 25 of them to make a decent chocolate flavor. Twenty-five is still a big number for a single flavor and the ones on that list come from a wide-range of flavor categories, many having no obvious connection to chocolate: potato chips, cooked meat, peaches, raw beef fat, cooked cabbage, human sweat, earth, cucumber, honey… etc etc. Certainly not the types of flavors you contemplate as that decadent Swiss chocolate melts in your mouth, are they?

While not part of the research mentioned in this latest press release (for an ACS meeting), here is a table from a book about ‘chocolate science’ which includes data from the same researcher (Schieberle) which shows a large list of compounds found in the aroma of chocolate (milk chocolate, pg 67; dark chocolate, pg. 69). Since chocolate also undergoes Maillard reactions and is fermented as well (like beer in both regards), a number of these flavors are also found in beer: maltol, phenylacetaldehyde, diacetyl, dimethyl trisulphide (ew!), gamma-nonalactone, butanoic acid, various furans and pyrazines, just to name a few. Fascinating stuff!

How to swirl wine.

It’s not really about beer, but it is about sensory analysis of food products so it will fit in here. And I just can’t pass up the opportunity to share it with you.

I stumbled upon this gem of an article written by a “very knowledgeable” winery tour guide from the Napa valley area. In it, he discusses how the aroma of wine depends on which way you swirl the glass, clockwise or counter-clockwise. The reasons he posits for this are… interesting. You’ll just have to read it for yourself.

Enjoy.

Please also note the link at the top leading to an equally entertaining follow-up article where he further attempts to explain his wine prowess and reasoning.

Facepalm, headscratch, mouth agape, etc.

A light at the end of the tunnel

Boy, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted, hasn’t it? Well, I’ve been a bit busy, to say the least. We replaced our driveway and front stairs and did some landscaping at home, traveled to a distant state to attend a family wedding, and I’ve been covering various shifts at work and training new employees and working overtime (summertime tends to be busy in the brewing industry and our plant has had elevated shipping goals these last few months, which we’ve beat by double-digits). I think the employee training phase will be over next week and I can move back to my normal shift/duties (sensory), although I’ll be distracted by a couple trips I have coming soon: one to the summit of a large snowy mountain, and another relatively normal backpacking trip a few days later.

But I’m starting to plan the next topics, and hope to post again soon!

Cheers!

Busy busy busy.

Things are getting busy around here, both at work and at home.

Next week, I’ll be starting to cover for a personnel shortage which will significantly increase my workload for a few weeks. I’m also having a new stamped concrete driveway put in at home and will be re-building my house’s entryway staircase, so my weekends will be busy as well. A vacation or two is looming in the near future and production schedules are tightening for the increase in beer-drinking normally associated with summer.

In other words, I’d really like to put up some new material soon and frequently, but I may not get around to it as much as we’d like.

This is not a post

Yeesh, 15 days since my last post…

I’ve been covering for vacationing co-workers, installing various upgrades to our lab’s infrastructure, attending meetings, shipping training standards out, and creating various Powerpoint presentations to educate certain members of our workforce. I’ve kind of been a “Jack of All Trades” around here recently since I’m somewhat able to do a number of different things that need to be done in various departments. It’s fun, but I feel like I’m running to stand still…

I hope to post again soon.

Here I am.

I’m not going anywhere, but I’m not exactly doing much with the blog at the moment. And I feel terrible about it. But frankly, the sky is falling here at work and I’ve got my hands full. In fact, in the last two days I’ve done about 130 zahm/air samples in an effort to suss out some aggravating packaging issues, and this is on top of my regular duties: taste panels, meetings, etc.

So I haven’t forgotten about you, dear readers. I think about you every day, and about how you must be yearning for new material. I’ll try to get something out soon, but I can’t promise that it will be as quick as you’d like.

PS: “Zahm/air samples” refers to the Zahm-Nagel device used to test for carbonation and headspace air levels in packaged beverages, in case you were wondering.