What is your fav. way to clear your palate for next type of beer?

How do you change from one style of beer to the next w/out having the first style mess up the next style's taste? Do you clear/clean/cleanse the pallet with food? If so, what is the best food? I have a really hard time enjoying very diverse styles of beer in one sitting unless I have brot's or at least pretzels but they hardly cut it.

Oyster crackers and water.

A small piece of bread and water typically does it for me.

Hmm... clearing my pallet... I should try that some time...

Or you could move from more mild styles to more powerful styles. There's not much you can do to help your palate after and IIPA if you're trying to pull out the subtle complexities of a much more balanced beer.

Just like wine tasting: cracker, bread or pretzel + water

I actually find that a very small amount of scotch (Johnnie Walker Black Label) takes care of that pretty well. Its like hitting the reset button

Gargle water. That seems to get the lingering tastes completely out of my mouth. Either that, or drink two. The first one to clear the pallete, and the second to taste fully.

Pickled ginger

Irrenarzt said:

Pickled ginger

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that only works for sushi-flavored beer.

Yumm spicy tuna beer

start malty and go hoppy

Vomit, then brush teeth, then gargle water, then drink 1 glass of water, then I'm ready for beer number 2.

Grody to the max

Forklift or pallet Jack

I like soda water and bread. The carbonation in soda water seems like it "scrubs" my pallete.

Why bother? Just drink it the new beer until you get the full flavor. Even with a "clean palate" it takes a few sips to really experience the full flavor anyway.

Thought you guys would like to hear the schpiel from a wine salesman by trade. The oyster crackers and soda water are textbook palate cleansers, although one of my customers uses Matzo because it's even more tasteless.

When I have wine trade portfolio tastings where we have 1000 wines in our mouth in one day, I make about 8 trips to the Champagne table.

Might also be interested in knowing that just about every winery in Australia, where high alcohol wines with ridiculous extraction (think blue teeth) are the norm, has a beer tap for patrons to cleans their palate with.

boredatwork said:

Why bother? Just drink it the new beer until you get the full flavor. Even with a "clean palate" it takes a few sips to really experience the full flavor anyway.

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Thats fine for casual drinking, but were talking more about evaluating and or judging beers where you don't have a whole 12 oz to reset your palate to the next beer.

Yes Edcculus, this was more for evaluation than pure drinking... otherwise boredatwork would be correct.

Thanks for the 'official' wine benchmark Sanke and everyone else's ideas.

Netflyer said:

How do you change from one style of beer to the next w/out having the first style mess up the next style's taste? Do you clear/clean/cleanse the pallet with food? If so, what is the best food? I have a really hard time enjoying very diverse styles of beer in one sitting unless I have brot's or at least pretzels but they hardly cut it.

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Whole Milk or better still Cream.

It contains a protein called Casein (...hence Queso). This protein when it comes into contact with the tastebuds will neutralize any other flavours that have come into contact with it.

That is what we (Winos) would consider 'greasing the palate' though. You often see cheese plates at the tastings, but I don't go near them. Maybe you may be neutralizing the taste buds, but you are definitely changing your perception of what follows. It is widely known that cheese hides the flaws in a wine. I imagine beer too. No one I know who buys wine for their store or restaurant (I sell high-end mostly) uses cheese for palate cleansing.

SankePankey said:

That is what we (Winos) would consider 'greasing the palate' though. You often see cheese plates at the tastings, but I don't go near them. Maybe you may be neutralizing the taste buds, but you are definitely changing your perception of what follows. It is widely known that cheese hides the flaws in a wine. I imagine beer too. No one I know who buys wine for their store or restaurant (I sell high-end mostly) uses cheese for palate cleansing.

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True that. Cheese does influence the pallet very much. This is why I mentioned milk proteins and not cheese.

But considering I do my best to be a good little Italian boy per la mia madre, we don't taste wine we drink it. Generally speaking expensive wines are not worth it --- no way! no how! This nothing wrong with good varietals in gallon jugs. Just don't go too cheap or else it's only good for stuffing fresh sausages and adding to sauce.

I suppose I can't emphasize enough that drinking wine is really a cultural thing. My father is an Irishman and he claims up and down that when he was a kid growing up in the depression the only people seen drinking wine were Catholics, Jews, and Greeks! I suppose I can see his argument -- if the devil does exist and wine is meant to be a noble thing then the devil would want to pervert it by making it too expensive for the regular people to have or too terrible to drink. I've been drinking it since... well... since I was maybe 10 years old or maybe younger; even younger I suppose if you consider the religious purposes, but strictly speaking it is no longer wine at that point. Similiar arguments can applied to beer. Now, beer is a meal in itself and as such it's primary goal is nourishment. But, this nourishment shouldn't come at the excessive cost of health and wallet. Although we are frequently faced with the reality that what we eat is like oatmeal, man has a right due his dignity in Creation to enjoy the fruits of the earth in a manifest way without undue excess. I'll shutup now with a saying that if it's drinking something just to taste something then drink brandy or xerez. Good liquors aren't meant to be mixed and when treated with respect are quite the delight otherwise it falls into the meal category.

almost.

StAnthonyB said:

Generally speaking expensive wines are not worth it --- no way! no how!

almost.

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Wow, well I couldn't disagree with you more, but I don't know if a wine vs. beer debate on the cleansing palate thread is appropriate. You should have said 'many expensive wines are not worth it', then you would have gotten me cause that is very true.

If anyone wants me to actually elaborate, I will but I think it is way off topic. I could argue you under the table on that one, though.

SankePankey said:

Wow, well I couldn't disagree with you more, but I don't know if a wine vs. beer debate on the cleansing palate thread is appropriate. You should have said 'many expensive wines are not worth it', then you would have gotten me cause that is very true.

If anyone wants me to actually elaborate, I will but I think it is way off topic. I could argue you under the table on that one, though.

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I'll concede to that. Thank you for the correction: 'Many' are not worth it.

I often forget that homebrewers can be an exacting lot.


Now back to that cleansing palate discussion.

coffee is my reset. Smell it if you are smelling beer, drink it if you are tasting.

With regard to their 44IBU IPA, the tour guide at Red Hook put it this way "there are 5 other IPAs between two breweries in Portsmouth, one of them is about 120IBU, and while I do love them, I wouldnt drink one before tasting other beers, because after that your taste buds just cant discern anything less" . . . paraphrased of course.

Also I was told that the fat in cheeses coating the tongue will open up the flavors in wine, not neutralize the pallet.

gtpro said:

With regard to their 44IBU IPA, the tour guide at Red Hook put it this way "there are 5 other IPAs between two breweries in Portsmouth, one of them is about 120IBU, and while I do love them, I wouldnt drink one before tasting other beers, because after that your taste buds just cant discern anything less" . . . paraphrased of course.

Also I was told that the fat in cheeses coating the tongue will open up the flavors in wine, not neutralize the pallet.

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All things will change the flavor. Cheese changes what you taste in a beverage. That is why so many people pair certain things with certain drinks. Fish with light beer or white wine, steak with heavy beer and heavy wine. If you ever get a chance, really mess with people and do white wine with steak.

gtpro said:

=
Also I was told that the fat in cheeses coating the tongue will open up the flavors in wine, not neutralize the pallet.

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Not precisely. We weren't discussing what 'goes good together', because good cheese and good wine (or beer) are heaven on earth. We were talking about how to clean the palate to better judge the attributes of the drink, in which case cheese or any lactic drink/food will definitely "color" your perception. Cheese definitely doesn't 'neutralize' the palate, it greases it- whereby, in discussing enjoyment, the tannins in the wine have a symbiotic role in stripping the grease off of your tongue so that you want another piece of cheese. Same principle for meats and red wine- they 'go together...'. For instance, there are certainly red wines that I would consider "entree" wines (very tannic) which are almost unpalatable without being next to a rack of lamb where they are then quite good and appropriate. But the grease definitely does cover up some things too, like flaws in the wine.

Coffee is good for the nose (if you sniff the beans) in clearing it because it neutralizes your olfactory glands (I don't have the science on that, but you know what I mean), but I don't see how it is a good thing for the tongue. And, I'm as much a coffee snob as I am a wine/beer snob. The best things are tasteless crackery type things to soak up whats on your tongue but not impart any flavor on it, and bubbles wherever you can get them for the same reason- seltzer, beer, champagne... etc. Certainly nothing with sugar in it. We are trying to get to a point where something in your mouth isn't coloring your perception of the drink, including what was in it before hand (toothpaste, coffee, a tuna sandwich, another wine/beer), so anything that actually tastes very pronounced will without a doubt color your perception of the next drink. There is no way to strip it off- only time and .... water, seltzer, crackers, etc.

These are trade practices that everyone follows in the wine industry and are taught all the way up to Master of Wine programs in which there are only a handful in the world. Not that I don't see people go for the cheese plate at the big porfolio tastings, but not any wine judges... no way no how!



P.S. Since we're on the subject of speaking of wine and food pairing, if you want to try out a neat little wine pairing game, get a rather tannic red wine (cabernet, etc.) , a rather acidic white wine (like a sauvignon blanc), and a piece of lemon and some salt.

1) Lick the lemon and try the sauv blanc- pretty good.
2) Lick the lemon and try cab- absolutely awful.
3) Lick the salt and try the sauv blanc- not quite right
4) Lick the salt and try the cab- awesome and furthermore, you'll see that the salt "greatly" tampers the tannic affect on your palate.

That is a game I play when I'm doing staff trainings in my restaurant accounts.... so that the servers know why you recommend certain wines with certain foods. It's easy to get after that.

Anyhoo, I digress

Why are we cleaning pallets 2 mouthfulls of my next brew do it for me.

pairing-schmaring. Guinness goes just fine with Salmon!

Anyhoo, if I'm really caring to have a clean slate for beer "tasting" I just have a good swishing of water, and save the dark or strong ones for last.

My favorite way? Uhm Drink more beer.

I eat something neutral like bread or crackers. I hate the way cheese masks the flavor of anything eaten after it.

It's palate. You buy bulk grain on pallets and use the Photo Shop palette when picking colors for your labels.