Can a beer taste different depending on our mood?

from my experience, yes ... a great many beers that I love sometimes taste just OK, and there's no rhyme or reason for it. freshness sometimes might be the culprit, but other times I don't think there's any great reason for it other than that's just the way it is.

i've never thought of it as a mood thing but more of a palate thing. some days the way things taste seem a bit different -- not just beer but everything.

 

Absolutely.
Context is everything.

 

Obviously. Taste is highly subjective. Anyone who tells you they can taste objectively is a liar or deluded. Why else are serious tastings conducted blind?

 

Check out this thread for lots more stuff on things affecting how something tasted:

http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/is-beer-tasting-purely-subjective.258194/#post-3295403

 

I agree.

 

Sometimes Mood, sometimes beer temperature, somtimes freshness, sometimes food before beer. All these could effect the way you enjoy a beer.

 

Two things. Yes to the taste being different depending on a plethora of ephemeral details.
Also, beer is a living vessel, and something like Nugget Nectar, or quite a good many beers (actually) that get put to market within days of packaging might actually improve with a few weeks time furthur away from its born on date.

 

Absolutely so. I bought a four pack of Founder's Harvest Ale expecting this super juicy beer and was kinda disappointed. So I drank another a few days later, no glass and not to asses it but rather as a shower beer, straight from the bottle and was like damn..this is really good! I now actively look for the stuff when its out!

 

I tend now to not trust myself so much on single tastings or samplings. I like to go through a six pack or four pack on various days to get a true glimpse of what the product is. It makes for looking at review scores even that much harder. I can't trust myself or others.

I consider factors such as "is my nose clogged up? Am I sick, was I sick, or getting sick during the tastings? What did I eat before hand, or drink? Is my tongue "clean" from residue? How far apart from my last brushing of the teeth? Drinking just one IPA before trying to taste others may have affected my taste too. Should I have had it on an empty stomach is another question I ask myself.

i guess it amounts to a law of averages. If after 4 of the 6 beers have been had in various settings on various days, it still tastes "mediocre", maybe just maybe, it is.

Now the one time beer shares and samplings are the hard ones to decipher. Most times we get one crack at a beer through a 2-4 ounce sample.. Do we really love these rare beers?

I had a beer session the other night (maybe I was just drunk) where I felt I was picking up such subtle hints of flavors out of a beer (not just the same beer). Each one was better than the next. Now I didn't throw in a turd beer to see if it was the booze talking, but that night has not been replicated since.

 

Ditto.

 

Yes.

 

sure no question, you have to be in the right frame of mind sometimes.

Funny thing is, I can have really bad days doing my 9 to 5:30... whatever... and man I may be a bear, but I come home and I look forward to that new beer... even though I may be stewing all day..

Cause that right there... that's the highlight of my day.... sometimes.

 

That's exactly why I have a small stock of special beers. To make the bad days better.

 

Oh, yeah, frame of mind has a lot to do with it. if you are in a comfortable setting, surrounded by good people, then (to me, anyway), the beer flavor is going to reflect that mood. When I am in a bad mood, beer just doesn't have the same impact.

 

It's always nice to know that when you come home and crack open a beer, it never says no.. or I don't want to play...

Still sometimes how it plays is another story

 

I don't think it can. Your level of enjoyment from a beer can certainly change, but any actual differences are just inconsistencies between bottles.

 

So think about it for a minute. Why would there be greater inconsistence between two bottles filled from the same batch at the same time and packaged in the same six pack you buy show greater differences than the foods you have eaten and mood changes you have had from one day to the next day?

 

Somedays I am just in the mood for a stout. Others I am in the mood for an IPA. When I am in a stout mood and "force" myself to drink that IPA that needs to be drank first, it just doesn't taste as good. Drink what your gut tells you. No pun intended!

 

Is being baked a mood? If so, then beer flavors are highly mood-dependent.