I have a fifth sense

My wife has burnt her cake. I can tell, even though this happened two floors away from my desk, because minuscule pieces of it have found their way into my nose.

Expelled from the oven, they have drifted on the air from the kitchen into the hallway, up the stairwell, and in through our bedroom door. They have turned a corner, doubling back on themselves to the desk where I sit, and there I have unwittingly inhaled them.

Somewhere just inside my head, below my eyes, these microscopic messengers find their journey’s end in two small patches of sensitive skin, about an inch square all told, that contain my olfactory receptors. I can smell the char, its slight acrid quality reminiscent of certain stouts and porters, and recognise what must have happened, all without leaving my chair.

Our sense of smell is fascinating and also a bit freaky. The way it relies on us ingesting tiny amounts of whatever — or whoever — we smell can make your head spin. And although we often overlook or ignore it, smell is hugely important in connecting us to our surroundings, to our lives as we live them. People who have lost their sense of smell often report feeling unrooted, disconnected, shut off.

In my work I’m often telling people how important smell is to taste — how it fills out the sensation, giving it the third dimension that the mouth misses out. You can’t taste a beer properly without smelling it. Wafting your wine beneath your nose isn’t just poncing about; it serves a purpose.

But you probably knew all that already, didn’t you? You, my target audience, are the sort of people who value flavour, and who understand its workings — at least a little bit, possibly a lot. But perhaps you want to know in more depth how smell works and how it affects us? If so, I have a book to recommend.

Late last year Harold McGee published Nose Dive, A field guide to the world’s smells. It is... hefty. The hardback is almost as thick as a ream of photocopier paper. (The pages aren’t A4, mind you.) And it is captivating. Well written, thoroughly researched, and full of amazing things, for instance how some basic smells have been around since not long after the beginning of the universe. Yes, when we smell the eggy whiff of hydrogen sulfide we’re smelling stardust. Duuuuuuuuude...

At this point in the conversation people usually start to lament their own sense of smell. “Ah I can't smell like you can, I get next to nothing when I sniff,” they'll say. Maybe they’re just being down on themselves. Maybe it’s true. But they’re always interested to hear that smelling is a skill, and once that can be learned like any other. (I wrote about this for Ferment not too long ago.)

Another book, Cork Dork by Bianca Bosker, is excellent on this subject. She tells how she crammed her way through an abbreviated sommelier training, and came out with her brain physically altered at the end to resemble the brains of those who had spent years huffing fermented grape juice. Humans may not have the most impressive noses compared to, say, a dog. But that doesn’t particularly matter. It is the brain to which said nose is connected that does the heavy lifting. And our noses are incredibly sensitive anyway, able to pick up certain compounds at concentrations way, way lower than any machine could manage.

Anyway... to be totally honest I don’t really have anywhere further to go with this. I just wanted to talk about smell for a bit, because it’s cool, and recommend those two books. So. Let’s move on.

What’s good

As an inveterate beer-sniffer, this next one is a piece that hits close to my heart. Writing in The New Yorker, Rachel Syme asks whether language can ever capture the mysterious world of smells.

Talking about smells can feel a little like talking about dreams—often tedious, rarely satisfying. The olfactory world is more private than we may think: even when we share space, such as a particularly ripe subway car, one commuter may describe eau d’armpit as sweet Gorgonzola cheese, another will detect rotting pumpkin, and a third a barnyardy, cayenne tang. What surprised me is that using phrases like “barnyardy, cayenne tang” is a perfectly valid, even preferred, way to write about nasal experiences. 

There’s more smelly writing over on Good Beer Hunting, where Scott Simpson looks at the development of sensory science and its application to the beer industry.

Breweries were some of the first industrial food producers to jump on the nascent sensory bandwagon. After all, the industry had a longstanding problem: Brewers aimed for a consistent product, but shifts in ingredients and fermentation made changes inevitable. Also, beer ages. There is no original beer somewhere under glass that a brewer can taste side-by-side with today’s batch to compare. Without tools to control it, flavor will drift.

There’s also some good stuff in there about what fermentation does to flavour.

There is still no better way to make the things we enjoy drinking than by letting microbes do their work. Industrial fermentation is simply the selective use of these organisms to make the flavors we already want: a microbial party with a guest list.

If that’s piqued your interest in the fifth sense, check out Katie Puckrik’s selection of smell facts on Twitter, which she bills as ‘news for your nose’.

Moving on from odours now… The country’s pubs have been shafted. We all know that. But it’s not coronavirus wot’s done it. Rather, it’s the hamfisted way our government has responded to it. Writing in Deserter Blog, Dirty South lays it all out.

Thousands were spent on distancing and converting outside spaces to dining areas in line with regulations, only for the investment to be spaffed up the wall by pubs being forced to close just two weeks later.

‘The changes screwed us over,’ says Geoff Keen, owner of the Pelton Arms and Shortlands Tavern. ‘Everytime the goalposts move, it costs us money’.

It’s almost as if – and I know this is hard to believe – the Government has no plan and no idea what the consequences of its policies are. At least pubs were able to sell takeaway drinks to a public that wanted to support their local as much as it wanted booze. And then…

Pete Brown has also written on pubs in The Guardian, saying pubs are part of Britain’s fabric, and asking why they are not being properly helped.

George Orwell cited the pub as an example of “all the culture that is most truly native”, the informal, unofficial liberty “to choose your own amusements instead of having them chosen for you from above”. Sure, pubs employ 350,000 people, contribute billions to the economy, and are a hugely popular tourist attraction, among many other things. But more importantly, they are the glue that binds our communities together and the expression of our informal cultural identity. There are hundreds of pubs called the Red Lion in the UK, but they’re not a chain. Most are independently owned, each one an expression of the publican’s personality. This is their charm. Perhaps – to people more comfortable with large corporations – it’s also their problem.

Ruvani de Silva wrote her first piece for Good Beer Hunting recently, a fascinating look at what it’s like to be a South Asian woman in the beer world.

Being a South Asian woman does not offer a guarantee of shared or recognized experience—of course, we are no more homogenous than any other ethnic group. Attitudes to alcohol vary significantly across the Subcontinent and beyond, and are often rooted in religion. Nonetheless, many feel that there is a shared stigma, pervasive among but not limited to older generations, around women drinking beer, drinking in public, and sometimes drinking at all.

Heard of raw ale? No, me neither. But over on VinePair Mandy Naglich explains what it is and how to brew it yourself.

As tends to happen in contemporary craft brewing, raw ale is seeing somewhat of a 21st-century renaissance. The technique is being applied to popular styles like New England IPA and stout, and brewers are releasing packaged brands that utilize the ancient way.

Over on Vinepair, Rich Manning examines the differences between bitters, tinctures and shrubs.

The shared source of their sorcery is their intensity, which is why they’re typically doled out in teensy amounts. “All three are designed to be highly concentrated ingredients,” explains Gareth Moore, beverage director of Home & Away in San Diego. “Because of this, they can drastically change a drink’s flavor profile with just a few drops. Once you know how to use them, you can build a drink to a specific flavor profile efficiently.”

Terroir is something of a gravy-train for drinks writers. It’s always relevant, and its meaning is never definitively settled, which means there’s always scope for another article on the subject. Andrew Jefford, writing for Club Oenologique, has done a great job of looking at whether terroir can exist in Scotch whisky?

Let’s briskly explore the specificities of whisky and wine in turn. All that promotional footage of tumbling, peat-stained loch water is irresistible and makes a strong emotional appeal on the viewer, but no whisky scientist thinks that water counts for more than one or two per cent of the final sensorial profile of a dram. Why should we doubt them? Distilling, after all, is a process of water exclusion.

Where would whisky be without its barrels? In Wine Enthusiast. Anna Archibald looks at a trade the underpins many of the drinks we love best as examines how to quit your desk job and become a cooper.

“Barrel making is not easy work,” she says. “But it’s not difficult, if you work smart. Anybody can do it. You have to go into it understanding that, number one, almost all barrels these days, whether they’re whiskey barrels or wine barrels, are made from white oak. And white oak is extremely heavy. You’re going to be lifting barrels that are anywhere from 40 pounds to over a hundred pounds.”

And now, cider time. Adam Wells has written about apple trees, and the role in making cider with soul.

If cider does indeed have a soul, it is locked in the apples, in the trees, in the land and in the slow cycle of seasons that brings all three into the confluence of a unique expression. It is in the unrepeatable patterns of weather; the vicissitudes of fate that make every harvest different from the next, however subtly.

My stuff

I take a look at hard seltzer in the lates issue of Ferment and consider whether it poses a threat to small UK brewers.

Hard Seltzer has a very different image [than alcopops]. Its cans are sleeker and its designs more sophisticated. Instead of ‘gets you pissed quick’, it plays on lightness, refreshment, wellness, and natural flavours. They are low in calories and many brands are also quick to point that they are vegan and gluten-free. The majority are totally clear and colourless, finish clean and dry on the palate, and... don’t taste of much, to be honest.

This next one snuck out back in November without me noticing. In Brewer and Distiller International I look at a project using artificial intelligence to build flavour lexicons from published reviews. At the same time, it automatically creates interactive visualisations so people can explore how the flavours relate to one another. Fascinating stuff.

How would you describe whisky to someone who had never tasted it before? Not a particular whisky, just whisky in general. Difficult, isn’t it? But a project in the USA is using machine learning to create descriptors that will revolutionise our ability to talk about aromas, tastes and flavours.

It’s not online but you can download a PDF of the article from my website.

I also had a short piece published in Good Beer Hunting about how my relationship with beer has changed under lockdown.

I’m not alone in this. Anecdotally, many other beer drinkers I know are moving away from one-off purchases and hype-chasing to repeat orders of old favorites. Meanwhile, the U.S.-based alcohol delivery app Drizly attributed part of its surge in popularity during the early days of the pandemic to familiar and older brands. Right now, it seems like fridge beers are where it’s at.

What’s that, loyal readers? Sounds like an idea I’ve mentioned in The Glass already? Why yes! Yes it is…

Cocktail time

I couldn’t find an image of the cocktail that I liked, so here’s this instead…

January may be over — dry or otherwise — but if you’re anything like me then you’re still not drinking on all cylinders. I’m going with a long drink this month to ease us back into things, and it’s a classic: the French 75. I think it’ll be well suited to some low key lockdown indulgence, and also Call My Agent is back on Netflix, alors…

You will need:

• 15ml lemon juice (freshly squeezed)
• 1.5 tsp sugar (Difford’s calls for this to be powdered. You could also replace it with 15ml 2:1 sugar syrup.)
• 45ml gin
• 75ml champagne, or similar bubblesPowder your sugar in a pestle and mortar, then mix it with the lemon juice in the bottom of your shaker. Or just add syrup and lemon juice to your shaker. Add the gin, shake with ice, and fine strain into a chilled flute glass. Top up with the bubbles and garnish with lemon zest.

Just remember to give it a good sniff before you chuck it down the hatch and ask for another.