my palate sucks

No worries your rating deviations + or - have nothing to do with your enjoyment of brew it all matters whether you like it and enjoy it... also looks like you review and write down your thoughts thats great

 

Sounds like a blessing to me. A lot of people seem to overanalyze themselves right out of enjoying their beer for what is, instead focusing on what is missing. For you, maybe, there's nothing getting in the way of what drinking beer is all about: enjoying your beer.

 

If you enjoy the brew, you enjoy it. Don't let anyone else choose beers you should like or dislike. Be yourself and carry on!

 

I feel you brother, I have a hard time picking out some of the flavors or smells others seem to be able to pick up. Im also the same as in I enjoy most everything I try, obviously some more than others but still. Sometimes I wish i could be more articulate with my reviews and what im getting out of my beer but as gator said as long as we enjoy the beer who cares!

 

First of all, your thread title is still making me chuckle, even as I type my response. Second, I think I'm right there with you. I'm terrible with my ability to describe the flavors/aromas. HOWEVER, this does not stop me from enjoying the hell out of what I drink. I digs it, I just can't describes it!

 

A few questions to ask yourself...
1. Am I drinking my beer too cold?
2. Am I drinking my beer too fast?
3. Am I focusing on the beer, or am I drinking it while focusing on something else?
4. Do I have appropriate glassware?

 

Amen, I have a hard time identifying anything but the obvious; grapefruit, pine, coffee, chocolate, etc. I often have to rely on my wife to identify flavors and/or aromas. I may be able to say, "it smells like something, but I can't identify it." She will turn around and say, "I smell peach" and when I smell it again, sure enough I can smell the peach. The problem is she doesn't like most of the beers I like and won't even taste them.

 

I would simply say to pay more attention to what you eat/smell throughout the day. Really pick apart what is happening in your meals. Smell fruits and veggies at the supermarket. Take more time to just experience and analyze the aromas and flavors during everyday life and you will have a greater ability to come up with more unique/interesting/strange/accurate discriptions for what is going on in your brew.

Cheers!

 

I agree a lot of beers within a style have the same "overall" flavor, but there can be subtleties. If you want to attempt it (and haven't already), try reading a few reviews right before and/or while drinking a beer (sorting by likes might help). Chances are the first few aren't all alike in the first place, but see what they say, and then try to discern some of the flavors mentioned yourself. Especially if you do this with a few of the same style, maybe you will start to notice differences in flavors to you. For instance, is it burnt coffee? or just dark, black coffee? or a weak light coffee? is there maybe some nuttiness to it, even?

First, each of your own descriptions should mean something to you; if they happen to be useful to others, that's even better.

As for ratings, they are what they are, and if you really enjoy all beer then they could all be high. My first 100 reviews or so were mostly below average ratings. The thing I think about the ratings is they are useful to me for comparison purposes. I like to use them to have a numeric measurement to remind me which I might like more if given a choice.

 

Do you have a good sense of smell? That might make a difference. I quit smoking a few months ago, and as my sense of smell and taste improved, I could appreciate more nuances in scents and flavors (not just beer).

 

^This

^^And This. The more you pay attention to smell/taste profiles in your normal consumption, the more you will notice common themes and/or sensations in other things as well, and not just beer.

 

Give it time, you only have a handful of reviews. At the beginning, I rated everything massively higher than the average. Over the years it dropped. Nowadays I'm pretty close to averaging out +/-, if anything I lean towards lower deviations now (~1600 reviews in). Once I experienced a large amount of beers of all styles, things sorta came into perspective. Average beers that I rated so highly now are just average beers. Crap, for example, at one point in time Blue Moon was my favorite witbier. Exposure to dozens of other witbiers has opened my eyes to just how good (or bad) witbiers can be and my ratings have shifted as a result.

Dope

 

If a lower cost beer will be as enjoyable to you as a more expensive one of the type, I would count it as a blessing.

 

no, i do not. but two things:

1. what Dope said ... in time, your palate will adjust on its own. mine did. 5 years ago, I had to be "in the mood" to handle Guinness. 200-plus beers and many, many American barrel-aged stouts and porters later, Guinness tastes like chocolate milk. i'm ALWAYS in the mood.

2. stop bitching. every IPA tasting like grapefruit and every stout tasting like coffee sounds like heaven, not a problem

 

The best piece of advice I can give is to taste similar styles side by side. This way you might have a better chance of recognizing the little differences that set each beer apart. It worked me.

All hops don't taste like citrus, pine trees, or herbs, trust me there is hope.

 

As a former chef I was quite the wine drinker and started with a very limited palette. But through tasting many different varieties of grapes and working with food was able to develop over the years. I'm no expert but have read and tried many ways to continue to develop this. IMO and from what I've read and practiced this can be developed. I believe a lot has to do with memory ....you have to teach yourself to "remember" what something tastes like. This can be done like anything else with practice. Don't turn yourself into an alcoholic obviously but sit down taste and try to let yourself remember that this beer has a peach,pineapple etc taste. Start with simple and work your way through and be patient. And use the reviews as Guide.

 

Hey, things could be a lot worse--rather than every beer tasting good enough to you, every beer could taste awful!

(Which has been my experience with trying to drink beer while I have a cold. Well, maybe "awful" is a stretch, but "not anywhere near as good as it normally tastes" definitely. I actually passed up the chance of getting a beer today--even though the restaurant had a few that I already know I like and someone else was buying!--just because I knew that even a good beer would taste "eh" at best the way my nose/tongue are right now.)

 

How long have you been drinking craft? Also, remember that a rating of 4.0 is "outstanding" and keep that in mind. And be happy you enjoy all these beers thats a great thing . Keep trying new things, truly tasting the beers, and rating.