If you’re open to non-alcoholic “beers”, I tasted one a few days ago that I actually liked, and it was better than 95% of can-craze-arty-clever-craft that keeps breaking on our shores like a 100-year storm.
It was a hazy IPA from Athletic Brewing, aptly named “Free Wave”. I’m going to drink more out of a 5Q Le Creuset.
Don’t forget your biodegradable straw.
On a more serious note, a local grocery chain used to carry a non-alcoholic beer called, I think, St Michael’s. The label had a picture of Mont St Michel on it. The beer was quite good. I’ve looked for it in vain; I last saw it 30+ years ago.
I’d drink a Breckenridge Vanilla Stout for a LC or Staub 5Q. I’d need one or the other to yak into when I’m done.
I generally don’t do NA beers, Kaleokahu, but I’d take your word over the experts I read responding to these superbrews that suck.
In today’s world with many apps (or webpages) where you can easily find reviews on most things including beer, wine , chips, you name it, it’s not that hard to avoid beer, wine, chips etc. which don’t meet your preferred flavor profile. Not liking different craft beers is not unusual but practically saying that there are no good ones out there is just ignorance or laziness to find those who fit your flavor profile
Thanks. Wahine ordered this NA beer, and frankly, if she hadn’t told me, I’dve been fooled it was NA. Not so with any other NAs I’ve tried.
Note Athletic’s graphics and names in moderation…
There are definitely some good ones, even some great ones, but there are a bunch of stinkers. Craft beer is the one beverage where I really do not find reviews very useful, mainly because people who are really into craft beer tend to downplay aspects many find objectionable when offered in great quantity or intensity. Beer is easy to make and can be quick to finish, unlike wine or whiskey that can take FFE. So a lot of people make and sell craft beer who should have just remained home brewers.
… or tried homebrewing and sensibly decided to foray into gardening or crosswords.
The same thing happens with pizza and barbecue–many are called, few are chosen. Need I go back to eggplant pizza?
I don’t think craft beer reviews are worse or better than wine, whiskey or other food related reviews (and the success rate is comparable - in all
these food categories you have significant number of disappointments (in my experience for example wines tend to have more “stinkers” but people tend to forgive much easier and wax poetically even about disappointing wines as it is an “art” to make them)
The beer reviews themselves aren’t necessarily worse, although what is being reviewed is generally so. The beer reviews are like reviewing espresso stands. Of course the frenetic “Everyone can do this” mindset has now infected distillery, too.
If you can’t do, review!
I suspect the answer could probably be teased out in AEDA (aroma extraction dilution analysis) similar to the techniques used in this article:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0308814618308380
I’m sure you already have an Elsevier/ScienceDirect login so you can read the full article. If you don’t, let me know and I’ll log in and print it to PDF for you.
Thankfully my nose and tastebuds tell me all I need to know – don’t use too big a pot.
Make the same dish in a big pot and one in a smaller pot, getting as close to the same measurements as you can. See if you and some friends taste a difference. Somebody in the group likely will be able to. Cuisine at its highest levels is lost on the rest of the group who can’t. No sense in wasting your money in a great restaurant or attempting difficult dishes with expensive ingredients. You can’t taste the difference even when the science tells you it does, in fact, taste different. It’s not your fault any more than being right handed or left handed is your fault. It just is.
If you can’t taste it, you just can’t. Like I’ve said before – it’s like describing the color blue to somebody blind from birth.
Sorry, Charlie, I just don’t believe you can taste “cheap pressure cooker” in dishes with less-than-optimal headspace.
It must be such a curse to be able to taste so many defects in food–that no one else can.
I agree that there are a few people who have very sensitive taste buds. My dad was one. (I have a little of his palate, but no conceit as to superiority.)
But for each rare person who has “supertaste”, there are a gaggle of others who imagine they have it.
I ran an “experiment” recently on family members who insisted X (nyc) bagels were far superior to the Y (nyc) bagels, the latter of which I had carried 3000 miles across the country for them. I do not trust their taste buds in any capacity. So a month later, I carried the “far superior” X bagels 14,000 miles over to our next family gathering (and failed to mention which bagels I had brought).
Active bagel discussion ensued with full confirmation bias (“SEE, these just AREN’T’ NEARLY AS GOOD as X bagels”). After three days of this, I announced to the group that, as I suspected, they had no idea what they were talking about, because they had been running down their self-proclaimed “far superior, best of the best” bagels. All discussion ceased. (Good thing we’re family and foot-in-mouth doesn’t kill these relationships – well, at least the ones that matter 
.)
All this to say, there are real differences and taste buds that can detect them, and imagined taste bud superiority.
And yet, restaurants cater to and can only survive by serving everybody that you say high cuisine is “lost on,” so what does it matter.
I received one many years ago (Lodge) and I used the hell out of it. Destroyed it by baking bread in it. My ex then replaced it with a 7 quart Le Creuset Dutch Oven. LOVE LOVE LOVE but I won’t do bread in it. I bought a plain cast iron 5 quart Dutch oven for making bread.
Of course you don’t believe it, but from a guy who thinks Hawaii is a culinary destination that’s about what I’d expect.
I have said on this forum, and one other, that it’s more a curse than a blessing. I used to pick up a little extra scratch in the old days working for a perfumer in NYC, and I had a handy knack of telling my wife when she was ovulating. Came in handy when we decided to start our family all those years ago. But otherwise – not all that great.
But the overarching point is that science can now test all of this with various laboratory techniques some of which are in the article I linked. No conceit involved at a point when science can weigh-in definitively. All of this could be tested in a lab, and I have a very, very high degree of confidence that measurable differences would be found.
I’ll stand on that distinction between us, Charlie. Hawai’i is better off that way.
I’m not certain you’re making this up. Although it fits a remarkable pattern of claiming innate, nee, supernatural taste perception that only one person seems to have. This is then used to show the inferiority of others’ taste perception.
Here’s Dave Arnold’s take on pressure-cooked stocks. https://www.cookingissues.com/index.html%3Fp=2561.html I wonder why there’s no mention of “cheap pressure cooker taste”, headspace or ullage. Hmmm.
Now cue the “You wouldn’t know unless you’ve worked in starred restaurants” line.
Certainly. So-called ‘supertasters’ don’t–despite Charlie’s implications–perceive tastes any better than anyone else. They perceive certain things more intensely, and certain things less so. For instance, supertasters generally need more salt in their food than nons do to experience the maximum flavor. Here’s a piece that shows Supertasters aren’t all that: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/2016/05/31/super-tasters-non-tasters-is-it-better-to-be-average/
I mean, this farce could easily be put to rest through a poll of M-starred chefs. Or wine judges and critics. How many of these actually have the genes that typify Supertasters? How many have the telltale taste bud kind and density? My prediction is that there aren’t any more Supertasters among them than in the general population, and that any special powers of discernment are learned (and unlearned), not innate. In this regard, see: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200911-how-to-supercharge-your-sense-of-smell
How did the bread destroy it?
I bought my CI enameled Lodge ( I really can’t remember the size, duh!) a few years ago after suffering through the assortment of regular CI’s that I had aquired or inherited from the ancients. I prefer to use those for camping and my MIL warned me of using the plain ol’ iron ones with acidic ingredients like the beef tomato soups I make. I use the enameled one frequently and I have made bread in it. I wish I had aquired it earlier. I just love it and appreciate its weight. The lucky DIL received one for Christmas this year. I’m sure she’ll make good use of it.
It was probably gluten intolerant. It seems all of a sudden is if everyone is.
