THE PHYSIOLOGY BEHIND WHY BEER GEEKS WILL NEVER BE SATISFIED
I was reading a back issue of
Smithsonian on a recent flight. It was the food issue and frankly, I was giving
the magazine an honest test drive as my pre-reading impression was that it was probably
going to be ‘too heady’ for a vacation flight and, worse yet, it might be
fodder for the guy next to me to strike up a conversation. I was captivated by Tom
Vanderbilt’s article, “Accounting for
Taste’ because it explained why I hesitate to answer the question of
“What’s your favorite beer?” While I do have a have a current favorite, I
struggle with commitment because my taste seems to be a moving target. This article
explained why we continually seek out more flavor as our tastes evolve.
In my case, my gateway beer was a
stout so it was an easy jump to malty browns, winter warmers and dubbels/tripels.
However, my move to hops was much more gradual as I was about six months behind
my husband in acclimating to hop-forward beers. I would taste his IPA, make a
face and then go back to my rock candy in a glass. However, a funny thing
occurred along the way, the more I sampled IPAs the less bitter they seemed. Soon, I was ordering IPAs in the mid-range of 50 IBUs. So, what happened here?
According to psychologist, Robert Zajonic, I
experienced the “exposure effect.” The mere repeated exposure to a stimulus is
a sufficient condition for the enhancement of his/her attitude toward it… or…
the more you try something, the more you’ll tend to like it. This effect can be
applied to everything we experience with our senses (food, drink, art, music,
etc.).
Another curiosity happened while I was drinking mid-range
IPAs - I craved more hops. I started looking for a ‘hop-punch in the face’ and
moved to IPAs with IBUs in the 90 range. Again, what happened?
Howard Moskowitz, a Harvard psychophysicist
and food industry consultant explains it as follows, ‘When we learn to like
more complex sensory responses upon repeated exposure, we tend to tire of simpler
ones.’ In other words, simpler beer with a single identifiable flavor or,
“salient sensory cue” may be pleasing at first be we quickly become bored and
seek out increased stimuli.
This is why, as a beer geek, my
interest is piqued when I’m offered a beer with unusual flavor combinations and
why, as a home brewing hobbyist, the more combinations I try get my mind tweaking
amalgamations of recipes. Physiologically, humans are wired to keep looking for
bigger, better, faster, more (pardon the 4 Non Blondes reference). Combine that
with the creative combinations coming from the craft beer industry, as well as home
brewers, and it keeps beer geeks continually pushing their palates.
After all, what if the super
limited release of the polyspecial IPA infused with asparagus pollen and shed
rattle-snake hide that was pitched with yeasts derived from the coat of
Canadian brown-bear while in heat really IS the best beer ever made? And, does
that come in a taster?
Reference: Vanderbult, Tom. (2013) Accounting for Taste. Smithsonian. vol 44, no 3, 61-65.