Study finds "set and setting" affect drinking experience

In the nude though right? Am I the only one?

 

hah of course cant have clothing distract and btw your reviews are always helpful to me thanks

 

anyone else note that they pumped in smells to mimic certain environments? i'm not sure how strong they were but pumping in the smell of fresh cut grass would surely have an effect on how grassy your drink smells, no?

 

In other news....space is big!

 

Isn't it possible that it isn't as good as last year?

 

Sure...anything is possible...particularly for wild/spontaneously fermented beers.

But people are always claiming taste differences (usually negative) in long-standing seasonals, like SN Celebration, Hopslam, Abyss, etc., when the difference is more than likely in their head. So, I find it funny that everyone jumps in here to knock the OP for posting something so obvious, but few people bring up this point when there is another stupid thread/comment along the lines of, "______ beer isn't as good as last year."

 

I'm starting to think sampling new beers in a loud/distracting environment isn't the best way to go. I went to the Flying Saucer last night and had a flight (also starting to think that not the best way to sample new beers) and you just can't focus on the experience of the beer itself as much....

 

I really didn't need a study to know this. I hope whomever paid for this study didn't pay too much.

 

I'd think a beer improving would be more likely from year to year than it degenerating. I drink a lot of the same from year to year and thought last year's Jubelale from Deschutes was better than the previous (haven't had it this year), and this year's Collette from GD (or, I guess when they started making Collette year-round) was better than the last time I had it seasonally. I also wondered that for some of the beers I've tried for the first time that seem to be better than what the historical ratings suggest. You'd think that if there were room to improve, the brewer would take the opportunity to do that the next time around.

 

It'd be interesting to take some of the historical scores and put them into a line graph and see if they trend up or down from year to year, and try to correlate that to particular batches. But I should really get back to work now...

 

Yeah, no shit.

 

True, but look where it got him. Also, sociology has been called "a painful elaboration of the obvious", but damn, some of that shit is REAL interesting.

 

Sociological principles might be obvious to people who pay attention, but a majority of the sheeple in a culture don't even THINK about day to day stuff...

 

I am a sociology defender for sure.

 

Actually I'm much more impressed by all the comments in this thread that provide compelling examples of the power of the "hindsight bias."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindsight_bias

 

Creeping Determinism sounds like a pathological plant species implant. Social science fiction that becomes true?

 

Wait! They scented the rooms?! Well, no shit you got a different response! Way to taint your experiment!

None of this is news, BTW. I do majority of my tastings in the same place, so this wouldn't affect me much, though.