Ruined by Proxy

While in the Air Force - had to top off an underground tank using a handle held nozzle through the top hatch. Air bubble in the pipe made it gush up into my face, which due to bad timing was looking straight down into said pipe / hatch. Soaked me from head to toe, and literally burped the smell of jet fuel for a day or so after it happened. Thank goodness I was wearing glasses and not contact lenses at the time, otherwise it would have been worse.

 

Sometimes, when I use the term "wet cardboard" to describe the smell and taste of oxidation people get snarky and are like "You've tasted/smelled wet cardboard?" It's like "Yeah, you never put random things in your mouth when you were a kid?" And I think the horse blanket descriptor is mainly used to describe the aroma, I would never say something tasted like horse blanket. But yeah, I've been in a barn before, so I know what it smells like.

Edit: And, given the details of your post directly above this one, there are obviously many situations one can find themselves in where they have inadvertently familiarized themselves with things that should not be tasted.

 

I had a bottle share a couple months ago and we cracked open a '14 BA Siberian Night. I got this baby diaper aroma off the nose and mentioned it to all in the group. Everyone hadn't detected it at first but, after I said something, they all couldn't stop smelling it. That's the only time the situation has happened around me in a negative context that I can recall. I remember many positive contexts but I'll save those for the "Improved by Proxy" thread.

 

Isn't "improved by proxy" the pre-cursor to hype?

 

Lol - sure - and we also develop a group definition for certain characteristics once enough of the community has experienced it - we start sharing common frames of reference - brettanomyces' "funk" for example - whether we call it "barnyard" or "wet horse blanket" or "funk," once you've had a beer with brettanomyces in it, you know what everyone means...

 

Right, and if you've ridden horses your whole life, or at least been around them a lot, then you have an even better understanding of Brett funk. Some of the funkier/stronger strains I even go as far as using the descriptor "pig-penny". I know of at least one BA who has described a Brett beer as having, I quote, "a touch of fecal" in the aroma.

 

I guess there are perks to drinking alone.

 

Not a proxy but when I took the sensory training with the Siebel Specialty Sensory Kit, all beers were ruined for me for a week. That was awful.

 

Wild Sour Series: Here Gose Nothin' - DESTIHL Brewery, had it the other night and it literally smelled like dog shit. It tasted fine, and the smell dissipated after a while but the smell was definitely there. Didn't taste bad at, just had a bad smell to it. I don't really have an issue with this, when drinking wine some of the smell identifiers are cat piss, diesel....The consensus at the bar was that the beer was starting to go bad, but it still had a good taste

 

True. Same goes for the wine world though. Every time I participate in a wine tasting and the instructor brings up the note of pencil shavings, a lot of people in the room go "Whaa-?" My girlfriend gave a Beer 101 class to a group of ladies a couple weeks ago and, when they saw "Rancid" as well as "Cat Pee" on the beer flavor/aroma wheel, they were more than befuddled. Of course, few people would pick out these flavors without the power of suggestion but, as said in an earlier post, I've had it work in a positive context multiple times. The first time I ever had Weihenstephaner Heffe-weiss, a friend asked me to share it with him. I immediately liked the sweetness of it and it was certainly a new flavor in beer I'd never encountered before. Then my friend says "It tastes like bananas." I took another sip and had a eureka moment when I realized, yes, it tasted a lot like bananas and I loved it. Probably wouldn't have figured it out until later had he not said something. Just because you are influenced by someone else's suggestion doesn't mean that it's just an illusion. Some people just are more sensitive to certain flavors/aromas and can pick them out easily.

 

Agreed. Perceptions of aroma and taste are both functions of physiological factors, of which some will be held in common and some will vary based on individual differences, as well as social mirroring - nature and nurture, as such - both of which can demonstrate variations across a broad spectrum.

 

Schlafly American IPA - sewer gas. Can't even drink it now.

 

anything with brett at first i was worried about. Horse blanket, barnyard, and funk arent exactly flavors that make you think "wow that sounds delicious"

wasnt until i had saison brett did i realize how much i loved beers with brett or other wild yeasts.