Can anybody else "picture" flavor?

**Grinder12000** · 12-12-2008, 05:03 PM

Maybe it's just the 70's coming back to haunt me but when I taste a beer I can "see" what it tastes like. I've even gone so far as to buy index cards and crayola crayons and I color what I'm tasting on the card.

Lots of browns for the malts with hop streaks of green and yellow.

Or I'm just going insane.

Anyone else? Perhaps I should go on HERO'S?

Displaced MassHole · 12-12-2008, 05:06 PM

Yup you're crazy

mev · 12-12-2008, 05:08 PM

A lot of people associate colors with music, maybe it's the same phenomenon. You could use those pictures as labels, but then it's probably too late because you're already drinking them. Beer Art? Post a pic so we can see what you beer tastes like.

dasBuhbuh · 12-12-2008, 05:11 PM

ive known some people who have said things like "this tastes like red." some people just have a closer connection in their mind with each of their senses. we all know smell and taste are incredibly similar and overlap so why shouldn't others do the same?

**Grinder12000** · 12-12-2008, 05:18 PM

Quote:

You could use those pictures as labels

I've thought of that but taste changes as the beer ages . . . . plus it would be evidence for the funny farm.

I'll post one this weekend. (at work now)

Beerrific · 12-12-2008, 05:27 PM

Maybe you have Synesthesia.

McKBrew · 12-12-2008, 05:28 PM

Try that with a black IPA. I think it would totally throw you off whack.

**Revvy** · 12-12-2008, 05:45 PM

No, you're not insane (at least not in this case

) that's how I go about cooking, and creating recipes...I end up with a "taste" in my mouth, and "know" pretty much what ingredients I'll need to achieve it, and usually even the amount.

I'm only now beginning to have that bleed over into brewing, I can kinda know what I want a beer to taste like, and am starting to be able to know what ingredients I need to achieve it...I'm WAAAAY NOT great at it yet, I don't think I have the ingredient flavor repertoire in my tastebuds/brain yet...I can get when kinda get some of the crystals and specialty grains, as well as corn, but so far the only hops I have is centennial, cascade and fuggles....

I've been doing that with food over 20 years, maybe longer, probably pretty much since I was a kid learning to cook (I got a wok at 10 years old, because I used to watch "Wok with Yan" on tv from Windsor, and also Julia Child on PBS)

I've likened it to being a form of Synesthesia.

Synesthesia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There's very little info on Taste Based Synesthesia, but interesting you mentioned psychadelics...

Of taste, synesthesia and Ferran Adria | Omnivore Atlanta

I have about a dozen or so recipes in my arsenal that are the result of my mouth "flooding" with flavors and then like I said, "knowing" what ingredients I'll need to put together to get there.

The drawback for me is that I will get intense cravings for certain foods at times, like a specific pizza from one particular joint, or a certain ethnic dish from a certain other place, and sometimes the place will be closed or out of the dish, and even though I might grab a different pizza, or the dish from a different place, it won't stop the craving. And will bug me until I can get it.

Funny, my mom get's the same thing for certain foods. Even no in her 80's and who doesn't eat out much..She say she need's a burger from a certain place, or a sub, and if you replace it, it doesn't work.

And for both of us it's NOT NECESSARILY the same food and the same place all the time, this is different from saying you have a favorite food or only order the same meal from one place...I love pizzas or Indian Food or Ethopian food, or burgers, and eat them from different places all the time, or different dishes from the same place...

There's a couple of IPA's that I will have a craving like that for, Founder's Centennial, Bell's Two Hearted, and Kuhnenn's 7 hop IPA...ANd when I need to have the fix it will be for a certain profile, and the other's won't do, no matter how hard it try. I'll "Know" that I want the Founder's...And I have picked up another one, even Two Hearted, and it'll taste like crap at that moment because it's not what I "need" to fulfill it.

It's just that at certain times specific flavor profiles from equally specific places need to be had to salve the craving in my brain and tastebuds.

Hopefully I can progress more and more in my brewing to be able to combine in my mouth/mind the right ingredients so that when the beer is done, I've hit it dead on.

Grinder, you are the first one that has EVER mentioned the same thing....It's good to know I'm not alone.

Otis The Drunk · 12-12-2008, 05:52 PM

I don't know if I see it in colors, but I do have some sort of picture of what my beers taste like. Even before I brew them I have3 a good picture of that they are going to taste like.

So you guys are not alone.

wildwest450 · 12-12-2008, 05:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grinder12000

Lots of browns for the malts with hop streaks of green and yellow.

Maybe it's because malts are various shades of brown and hops are green.