Rotten Asparagus Ale

In brainstorming how I should best run the near-beer tasting last week, I asked reputed foodie George for suggestions. In response, he forwarded me a score sheet used by the American Homebrewers Association that detailed the scale of its rating system and by which criteria judges evaluate beer. Even better, the sheet included a list of “descriptor definitions” that opened my eyes to how many ways you can say “tastes like beer.”

The list reads as follows:

• acetaldehyde — green apple-like aroma and flavor.
• alcoholic — the aroma, flavor, and warming effect of ethanol and higher alcohols; sometimes described as “hot.”
• Astringent — puckering, lingering harshness and/or dryness in the finish/aftertaste; harsh graininess; huskiness.
• diacetyl — artificial butter, butterscotch, or toffee aroma and flavor; sometimes perceived as a slickness on the tongue.
• DMS (dimethyl sulfide) — at low levels a sweet, cooked or canned corn-like aroma and flavor.
• estery — aroma and/or flavor of any ester (fruits, fruit flavorings, or roses).
• grassy — Aroma/flavor of fresh-cut grass or green leaves.
• light-struck — similar to the aroma of a skunk.
• metallic — tinny, coiny, copper, iron, or blood-like flavor.
• musty — stale, musty, or moldy aromas/flavors.
• oxidized — any one or combination of winy/vinous, cardboard, papery, or sherry-like aromas and flavors.
• phenolic — spicy (clove, pepper), smoky, plastic, plastic adhesive strip, and/or medicinal (chlorophenolic).
• solvent — aromas and flavors of higher alcohols (fusel alcohols); similar to acetone or lacquer thinner aromas.
• sour/acidic — tartness in aroma and flavor; can be sharp and clean (lactic acid), or vinegar-like (acetic acid).
• sulfur — the aroma of rotten eggs or burning matches.
• vegetal — cooked, canned, or rotten vegetable aroma and flavor (cabbage, onion, celery, asparagus, etc.)
• yeasty — a bready, sulfury or yeast-like aroma or flavor.

A pretty cool vocabulary lesson, really. Some, like grassy and yeasty are pretty obvious, but others, like estery, seem to be words only used in descriptions of brewed beverages. (No, Google, I don’t mean estuary.) Now I’m have to wonder whether beer that smacks of canned corn or cardboard or plastic adhesive strips would necessarily be bad or if it such flavors could actually exist in a good-tasting product. Thinking back to the comment cards that I had my near-beer tasters fill out, I can see where some of this vocabulary would have been appropriate. They called certain brews out for tasting sulphurous or metallic. Would tasting like tomato paste mean a beer tastes estery or vegetal?

I was most curious, however, about where the term light-struck came from, since it sounds like it should mean something more pleasant than what it does. The term, it turns out, is quite literal. Beer takes on a skunky flavor when after being exposed to ultraviolet or visible light, or so says Wikipedia. Light causes riboflavin to react with hops-derived isohumulones to create a flavor that is chemically similar to a skunk’s spray. Incidentally, Miller High Life lacks isohumulones and therefore apparently cannot get skunky. Furthermore, the purpose of the brown beer bottles is to keep out any isohumulones-affecting light. Green and clear bottles offer the beer inside no such protection.

Stray Puffins and Ponies

I’m happy to report that I’m not the only one who found Vergina beer sniggerworthy. The below photo, which I originally snagged from my cousin Melissa’s blog when she wrote about the Monterey Greek Festival, now appears on the site of name and brand name expert Nancy Friedman.



She manages to one-up Vergina, however, with an even more terribly named beverage. It’s a British product, so it can’t even blame translation errors for this bummer of a handle, as Nancy points out.


There’s a market for it, I suppose.

A small note: The above image, which also appears on Nancy’s site, comes directly from the official site for the energy drink in question. I tried to find a better image of the container — perhaps one that wasn’t weirdly cropped at the bottom — but, upon seeing what my Google image search turned up, I instantly regretted this attempt. I won’t link it, but you could imagine ways in which this all went very wrong.

Beer as Brains

Ever since I realized I was in no hurry to make a full alphabetical loop with my words of the week, I’ve been more okay with repeating a given letter. Here’s another “T.” Thank Dina, who emailed me about it.

toby (TOH-bee) — noun: a drinking mug, usually in the shape of a stout man wearing a large three-cornered hat.

I can hear you saying it now: “Oh, that toby.”

How Dina came across it: “So I’m playing Scrabble and I get 27 points for toby. Wondering what a toby is, I stumble upon this amusingly specific definition.” Really, that’s what online Scrabble is for. Why else would we know words like adz and vita?

Dina also included a link to what she and everyone else should refer to as a “vaguely terrifying example.” It is below:


Wikipedia’s example photo is no better:


I can’t imagine why people would want to make it seem like they were drinking brains, but I suppose it wouldn’t necessarily strike everybody that way. (It certainly didn’t to the people who designed my mother’s Christmas punch bowl.) Dictionaries aren’t much help for where this term came from. Most entries for toby are actually just entries for Toby, the nickname for Tobias. Which I think we all knew. However, the etymology doesn’t interest me so much as the knowledge that such a specific term exists.

Now mind how much you drink, lest you end up looking like a toby.

• tiffin
  
• shebang
  
• roynish
  
• qualtagh
  
• quacksalver
  
• pismire
• orf
  
• nobiliary particle
  
• mongo
  
• lemniscate
  
• longicorn
  
• kakopygian
  
• jehu
• itaiitai
• grandgore
• fissilingual

I Am a Crazy Crane

My cousin Melissa writes about food on her blog, Melissa Good Taste, the name of which makes me think of some Bond Girl that Ian Fleming might have created on a day he was feeling rather unsubtle. Bond Girl or not, she recently wrote about the Monterey Greek Festival, the post for which included some photos.

Here's one that caught my eye:


I'll assume it takes its name from the town of Vergina and not some Greek approximation of one of the two English words it sounds like. Until I read Melissa's post, I'd never heard of this beer before. I assume they've had some troubles marketing it abroad.