Parallel "anti sweetness" properties bitter/sour

[NoIguanaForZ]

This is counterintuitive

"Counterintuitive" you say?

I suspect you mean either "obtuse" or "disingenuous." Or both.

[/petpeeve]

 

[GuldTuborg]

OP, I think the issue most have with your suggestion is threefold:

1. Bitterness and sourness are not simple flavors whose only role is to balance sweet flavors. They do so much more. But, for argument's sake, say they don't...why not just call sweet the "antibitter" or "antisour" or whatever?

2. Even if they did only serve to balance each other out, you're completely ignoring the notion of flavor intensity. Here's an easy thought experiment to give weight to this argument. Take a water sample and add sugar to a specified degree, then a sufficient amount of isomerized alpha acids to counterbalance perfectly (sure, maybe we'd have to figure out that ratio, but by your logic there must be some point of balance). At this point, they have perfectly countered each other. Now take another sample of water, add nothing to it. The question is, can the average person tell the difference? I think the obvious answer is yes, and furthermore if there are any cases where someone cannot, then there is bound to be a better explanation than these competing flavors "canceling" each other (e.g., damaged taste buds or olfactory nerves).

3. Even if your theory were in some manner correct on the "canceling" notion, it's uncertain of what value it would be. What would this allow us to understand that we don't now? You talk of quantifying sourness, as though it's something we can't now do, but it's obvious we can ("Here, drink this and rate it 1-10 for sourness, 10 being the most sour beverage you can imagine"). What will it help us explain that we currently don't have the language to explain?

Far from being a simple communication issue, you jump around between taste vocabulary and chemical vocabulary in a search for a ghost, all the while searching to find relationships and scales that cannot exist based on categorical or factual truths no one else doubts.

And really...don't condescend to accuse everyone of not understanding your grand theory just because they all disagree. It's bad form. If you believe in the merit of your ideas, by all means continue to work them and advocate for them. There's no issue with that. But be prepared for counterarguments. They're not personal, it's just part of testing the adequacy of a theory/explanation.

 

[NoIguanaForZ]

Now what you might be able to get somewhere with is the idea of "sour" and "bitter" as anti-cloying properties. This is intensely subjective, though, so not sure how it'd be measured.

 

[Owly055]

I feel as though I understand what you're describing, and think I understand where you're trying to go with this, AND agree that it's probably a worthwhile thread/venture to put the effort in to. I also recognize that your "crazy" ideas are about as well received as Einstein's or Newton's were in their time. Stick with it and don't give up on us just yet

I'll put in some red comments below:

You mentioned saltiness as also countering sweetness...... I totally agree with this and have often used the two in opposition to each other. Interestingly saltiness also cuts or mellows sourness...... try salt on grapefruit for example, Bitterness and sourness really are parallel properties, as they do not offset or mask each other, but saltiness is a completely different dimension of taste. Note that bitterness in beer is related to acids, just as sourness is. The two are definitely cousins. Umami? I've heard the term, but have no idea what it means. Sweetness, sourness, and bitterness all lie on the same two dimensional plain, with sweetness lying on one side of the equator, and the other two properties lying in differing parts of the other half. Sourness and bitterness are not absolute values, the terms represent a range of chemical signals that we perceive as flavor. In the end they represent a multitude of flavors. There comes a point where it is difficult to distinguish between the two.... or the three. Is what you are tasting sweet, sour, or bitter... it may have elements of all three and be difficult to pin one of our simplistic and limited vocabulary of words to describe flavors to it. We've all tasted things and not had words to describe the taste other than to compare it to other food items we have all presumably tasted. Hop descriptions are full of this with terms like stone fruit, pine forest, earthy, spicy nobel, citrus.
Clearly we cannot address the full range of flavor elements here........That would be the work of a lifetime.... or several. I'm proposing addressing only 3 flavor elements and how they interact, and few people are even willing to talk about it in a useful way. Nothing useful is obviously likely to come from this. It would be nice to be able to plant a seed at least, that someday might give brewers one more tool to work with.

H.W.

 

[Owly055]

TA (titratable acidity) is more important than pH in the world of sour beers, but coupled with pH makes for a very good indicator of "how sour" a beer is. pH alone can be very deceiving and unreliable.

I'd like to thank you for putting me wise to the concept of titratable acidity, something I was not even aware of and which took but a little reading this morning to discover the importance of. The explanation I found on a wine making site makes it clear that PH measures only the percentage of acid, while titration reflects the actual sourness you perceive much more closely.

For those who are unfamiliar with titration versus PH, they are two entirely different measurements that do not necessarily correlate with each other. One uses test strips and meters (PH), and is the one that most of us are familiar. The other uses a small amount of the product to be tested, and drops of a solution are added until the liquid changes color. They don't use the same scale and they do not correspond at all in liquids like beer or wine that have a complex array of acids. It appears to be exactly the tool I need to accurately monitor not "acidity" but sourness. Kind of a simplistic statement which no doubt will be attacked ;-) ..............
Below is link to one article on titration that is simple and easy to understand. In other words useful for us lay people. Those who are actually interested in the topic, and probably as ignorant of it as I, might find this interesting reading as a simple starting point.
It's worth noting as I have before that bittering is the result of acids also. We measure bittering in IBUs, but when calculating what the IBUs will be, we look at Alpha Acids.

I continue to maintain that bitterness and sourness are cousins. We all agree that lemon is sour, but when given grapefruit, some people say it is sour, and some bitter. Which is it? Is it one, or the other, or both?? That is not surprising as both properties derive from acidity.

http://www.eckraus.com/blog/difference-between-ph-and-titratable-acidity-in-wine

The tools to measure titratable acidity are available at any store that caters to wine makers. Both LHBS in my area have this.



H.W.

 

[hunter_le five]

...and few people are even willing to talk about it in a useful way.

Plenty of folks have shown a willingness to talk about your ideas.

You're just showing your characteristic unwillingness to have a useful discussion with people who disagree with your ideas.

 

[blizzard]

You mentioned saltiness as also countering sweetness...... I totally agree with this and have often used the two in opposition to each other. Interestingly saltiness also cuts or mellows sourness...... try salt on grapefruit for example, Bitterness and sourness really are parallel properties, as they do not offset or mask each other, but saltiness is a completely different dimension of taste. Note that bitterness in beer is related to acids, just as sourness is. The two are definitely cousins. Umami? I've heard the term, but have no idea what it means. Sweetness, sourness, and bitterness all lie on the same two dimensional plain, with sweetness lying on one side of the equator, and the other two properties lying in differing parts of the other half. Sourness and bitterness are not absolute values, the terms represent a range of chemical signals that we perceive as flavor. In the end they represent a multitude of flavors. There comes a point where it is difficult to distinguish between the two.... or the three. Is what you are tasting sweet, sour, or bitter... it may have elements of all three and be difficult to pin one of our simplistic and limited vocabulary of words to describe flavors to it. We've all tasted things and not had words to describe the taste other than to compare it to other food items we have all presumably tasted. Hop descriptions are full of this with terms like stone fruit, pine forest, earthy, spicy nobel, citrus.
Clearly we cannot address the full range of flavor elements here........That would be the work of a lifetime.... or several. I'm proposing addressing only 3 flavor elements and how they interact, and few people are even willing to talk about it in a useful way. Nothing useful is obviously likely to come from this. It would be nice to be able to plant a seed at least, that someday might give brewers one more tool to work with.

H.W.

I think you need to investigate taste perception a bit more before exploring this topic. Bitterness, sweetness, sourness, saltiness, and umami - they aren't cousins and they aren't on a 2D plane. They are the five basic tastes and they are completely separate from one another. You wouldn't say the primary colors are opposite or parallel. They have their own unique characteristics. They can combine to form something different or more complex, but they themselves are unique. The five basic tastes along with other factors like odor, texture, appearance, combine to create a complex sensory experience. Yes, this experience can be hard to describe, but people have been doing it for centuries. Can it be improved? Sure. But first, learn about what people have done, learn the terminology and concepts so that when you talk about it people understand what you're trying to say. Build on the knowledge that has already been attained. There is a lot of information out there on sensory experience that would be good basic info to start this conversation.

 

[m00ps]

Ive decided to name my sour IPA that will be ready in a month or so the garbelizer

From my understanding, it shouldn't taste like anything, right? The perfect "creeper" beer

 

[ncbrewer]

A possible basis for a scale that you are talking about:
BU:GU we all know of
Let AU:GU be similar, but for acid units (based on titratable acidity)

Then we could use BU:GU + C*(AU:GU) for the overall effect where C is a coefficient to be empirically determined.

 

[GuldTuborg]

Ive decided to name my sour IPA that will be ready in a month or so the garbelizer

From my understanding, it shouldn't taste like anything, right? The perfect "creeper" beer

Exactly, just like if you mix opposite colors on a palette. Black and white in equal measures? Red, yellow, and blue in the same proportions? Boom! All color disappears.

 

[Owly055]

A possible basis for a scale that you are talking about:
BU:GU we all know of
Let AU:GU be similar, but for acid units (based on titratable acidity)

Then we could use BU:GU + C*(AU:GU) for the overall effect where C is a coefficient to be empirically determined.

This is exactly what I'm talking about......

H.W.

 

[Owly055]

As a final note to this thread, I have a titration kit for winemakers coming in the mail, ordered it yesterday. My plan at this point is to test the titratable acidity of my accidentally soured no boil cream ale, and attempt to duplicate it using sour mash techniques, and then do further experiments in the are of bittering and souring using some blended sours..... over a period of time in an attempt to determine how to balance the two elements properly, or at least create a framework in which the results can be predicted by using IBUs and titratable acidity. This seems to be an area where there is little serious interest, and a lot of disagreement. This project will be slow, and will probably run into if not through next summer, if not longer, as it will run in parallel with my regular brewing.
If and when I am able to derive some useful results, I'll start another thread..... at a later date..... and report those results.

I'd like to thank those people who have contributed links and some useful insights. At least I have a few ideas how to pursue this now.

H.W.

 

[stpug]

While you're at it, you should get some pH and TA readings from a few other liquids as well:
-Grape juice
-Wine
-Vinegar
-Starsan

to name a few.

 

[brewfun]

I of course didn't say sour and bitter were opposite, I said they were parallel.

In cooking, sourness is used to reduce bitterness in foods, including beer. So even if they are parallel forces with sugar, sourness also has an effect on bitterness.