Can anybody else "picture" flavor?

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?

Yup you're crazy

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.

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?

You could use those pictures as labels

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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)

Maybe you have Synesthesia.

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

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.

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.

Grinder12000 said:

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

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

I experienced this with music (again, could be all the MDA and other interesting things I ingested during Pink Floyd concerts . . . and lived to talk about) but never food or drink until I started paying attention to beer!

I've tasted some brew and say to myself - "how can I get THAT color combination" Rogue Hazelnut just whacks me out with it's final flavor event. I can't get it in my brews.

I mentioned Ale Asylums Madtown Nutbrown and I can close my eyes and picture what it tastes like (in a vague way). I wish I was a better artist!

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

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True - but some hops are bright yellow streaks - MAN - I'm sounding weird!! The nice men in whites suits are looking for me again

Yeah I did a lot of acid in the 1970's

I know what your talking about though, I see mine in shapes.

It would be intersting to see if you can pull the ingredients of a recipe together by crayola colors alone...BUT I don't think the elusive Rogue Hazelnut issue (which we've talked about before) is a single ingredient issue but a playoff of certain factors or combination of things that you may never be able to nail....It may even be something like umami (which some people claim is a myth, but I believe I can taste it, even right now in my mind.)

UMAMI Information Center - Home

It would be interesting to see if you could take a certain beer from wort , through green, all the way through several months in the bottle...and see how much your perceptions/colors change...

That might help you get a handle of it...like a way to Codify it somehow...

LOL - Revvy - I was thinking about that a few posts ago. I know my Rogue Hazelnut Clone has color shifted in the last few week.

I might have to put my coloring on my recipe/brew blog.

I wonder what an infection "looks like" LOL

Otis - shapes?? cool! (OK - how many home brewers now thing we are REAL crazy).

Oh I just got another idea if you got the time and patience to work through it...


Get yourself a french press coffee maker;



And build up a note card library of each grain....Take maybe a couple ounces of each grain, and steep it in a couple cups of hot water, drink it and then "color" it.

DO this over time, like whenever you pick up grain for a recipe, get a couple ounces more for this experiment. And start to build up a notecard taste/color library for each grain...Do both Base and Specialty Grains

Draw on the card and then note what the grain was, including lovibond and stuff.

Once you get through the base and specialtys grain, maybe then do the same thing with a fixed amount of two row and a fixed amount of hops....you may have to actually ferment these micro batches though. BUT it might work if you just were to steep the hop with the grain tea as well..

I guess you have to include adjuncts as well.

Then you could start doing combinations of grains....

After doing this, would have built up you mental and pictoral repetroir of ingredients.

You SHOULD with practice be able to construct a beer based on your cards, and also perhaps be able to deconstruct beers as well...

Oh also, anytime you taste a commercial beer, don't forget to do a card on it, and label what the beer is, that might help you to be able to deconstruct those later.

WOW, this is weired but it kinda reminds me of what I talk about in my E-Book on what I called "practical mysticism", and the 6 weeks course I used to teach based on it...there's a series of exercises I took the participants through to change the patterns of how they perceive the world...I dunno if reading it would help...at least the exercises I mention in it, they may be helpful.

Internet Archive: Details: Knowing God, Knowing Ourselves; a primer for 21st century mystics

ma2brew said:

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You read my mind.

On a side note - you mentioned a french press and just the other day I came to the realization that when I make coffee in my percolator (remember those) it is like mashing coffee.

Back OT - I think MY perception to "taste color" changes so I'm not sure if your idea would work.

For example. I bottled a Milk Stout which looked very dark with whitish shadows near the beginning. Would I see ANY white if I did not know it was a Milk Stout?? So perhaps my mind plays tricks on my perception.

I tend to see all non tangible experiences as colours and moving lines. Ever since I was a kid I saw music this way too......And then Windows media player came along with those theme thingies and did pretty much what my mind does for me anyway. They kinda took the fun out of it if I sit and watch that stuff.

Grinder12000 said:

On a side note - you mentioned a french press and just the other day I came to the realization that when I make coffee in my percolator (remember those) it is like mashing coffee.

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Your talking one of those old style like this?



You know, I should go get one...If remember they make the best coffee...

I was talking to an allgrain brewer in England, and they often use
a certain brand of 5 gallon or larger electric or gas powered coffee urn as their mash tuns, (I forgot their brand namename) but they are like this



And that's just a large percolator, they have a top basket on them as well..

Do you put psychedelic mushrooms in the secondary?

Brother. I thinks your measuring out the wrong green herbs for bittering.

That or you are using moldy grain. "Ergot" a problem there.

Do you put psychedelic mushrooms in the secondary?

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Didn't some guy get busted for that around Halloween?

I thinks your measuring out the wrong green herbs for bittering.

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That would be a waste of green herbs - those were for the brownies.

In order for those Green Herbs to do any good, you need to use 5 - 7 ounces, otherwise your wasting your time and herbage.
Been there, done that.
Currently I don't partake in such because my current job pays too damned good.

Hendrix - Manic Depression

Otis The Drunk said:

In order for those Green Herbs to do any good, you need to use 5 - 7 ounces, otherwise your wasting your time and herbage.
Been there, done that.
Currently I don't partake in such because my current job pays too damned good.

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Well theres that and they tend to record everything that goes into the "Evidence Vault"

GilaMinumBeer said:

Well theres that and they tend to record everything that goes into the "Evidence Vault"

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Nope, I just clean Frac Tanks in Sweetwater OK.....