http://www.brewershilllifestyle.com/beer-snifter-glass/
How To Smell Beer Like A Professional
Before you taste you need to smell it! Eighty to ninety percent of what we taste is what we smell! You need to smell your beer and I mean really take it in before you even put it to your lips.
This is beyond importance!
One of the reasons you must pour your beer into a glass versus drink it out of a bottle or a can is to truly take in the aroma. It’s amazing how many beers don’t taste like they smell or taste exactly how they smell. With Belgium beer you’ll find sweet Belgium candy sugar embedded in those malty beers while IPA’s (indian pale ales) will have very large bitter and floral aromas.
If you didn’t pour it in a glass, if you didn’t take the time to smell the beer, then you would have never known that. So do you simply take a sniff then drink?
Hardly!
Let’s take a moment and really discover how to use that sense we call smell. You’re beer is now in your glass, head is perfect, color is great, let’s take a sniff. Wrong! You have to get some air into that glass. Give it a great swirl just like you would wine. Hold the glass by the base and with your wrist; give it a slow easy swirl. This will allow the air to flow into the beer and allow the aromas to flow. Now that you’ve gotten some air in that brew let’s take a sniff.
That’s right, a sniff. When smelling beer, same as wine, you’ll want to take three quick sniffs not one long drawn out sniff. Reason being is saturation. With three quick sniffs you’ll allow for the presence of the beer to come forward without saturating your nose. If you find that you can only get one flavor off the beer then chances are your nose is saturated. To fix that, take a long whiff of your shirt sleeve, that’ll fix the problem, then, sniff again! If your beer is in a tulip, goblet, or snifter the brim of the glass (where your lips touch) will be wide and allow for full exposure to the beer. That’s the point of these glasses; they are meant to allow for maximum aromatic presence.
When smelling beer in glasses you’ll notice a difference in the smell from the bottom of the glass or closest to the beer, when held at a 45 degree angle, to the top of the glass, away from the beer. Different flavors in the nose will become apparent where you smell in the glass so don’t be shy get your nose in there and move it around. Remember to swirl the beer a bit each time before you smell it. Allowing the air to move through the beer as you smell is important to the experience of smelling your brew!
There might flavors in the nose that you are familiar with and there might be some that aren’t. If the beer comes across as smelling like lilacs and cooking spice then call it out! There is no right or wrong answers to the way a beer smells, only what you perceive. There might be flavors you don’t know and that’s okay. With the more beer you smell the more you will come across similar characteristics and soon you’ll know what that flavor was you couldn’t pick out a year ago.
About the Author
I am a certifed beer server at a major beer hall in Denver, Colorado.
I am recognized as an expert author on Craft Beer. If you wish to learn more
about Craft Beer and the movement then go to my website and sign up!
http://www.notyourdadsbeer.com
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pourn: Dogfish Head Palo Santo Marron
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