Summary: I’ve never enjoyed the actual process of drinking alcohol in the way that I e.g. enjoy ice cream. (The effects on my mind are a different story, of course.)
So for a long time I thought that, hey, I just have weird taste buds. Other people really like beer/wine/etc., I don’t. No biggie.
But then as time went by I saw all the data about how wine-tasting “experts” can’t even agree on which is the best, the moment you start using scientific controls. And then I started asking people about the particulars of why they like alcohol. It turns out that when it comes any implications of “I like alcohol”, I have the exact same characterstics as those who claim to like alcohol.
For example, there are people who insist that, yes, I must like alcohol, because, well, what about Drink X which has low alcohol content and is heavily loaded with flavoring I’d like anyway? And wine experts would tell me that, on taste alone, ice cream wins. And defenses of drinking one’s favorite beverage always morph into “well, it helps to relax...”
So, I came to the conclusion that people have the very same taste for alcohol that I do, it’s just that they need to cook up a rationlizations for getting high. Still trying to find counterevidence...
Your turn: convince me that you really, really like the taste of [alcoholic beverage that happens to also signal your social status].
I will agree with you that a lot of alcohol is like that, in particular beer. But you can’t say that acquiring a taste means forcing yourself to like something; we have to acquire almost all tastes. A kid who isn’t fed a variety of foods will never like a variety of foods. There are people out there who don’t like FRUIT, I mean, really. Not just like there’s a fruit they don’t particularly enjoy, they don’t like any fruit.
But there are some alcoholic drinks that ARE delicious. I don’t mean anything regular. My favourite drink has no substitute: mead. Honey wine. It’s a beverage made from honey, and delectable (well, unless it’s a dry wine). I don’t like any dry wines, just sweet ones. Fuki plum wine is another favourite of mine, and again, there is no similar substitute. I would be careful of saying you don’t like alcohol at all, because it’s possible you’ve just had bad stuff (and each kind of alcohol is different, too). I’ve never liked eggplant, bleach—until someone actually cooked it properly for me, using the right gender pod. (For the record of anecdotal proof, my sister hates alcohol, but even she likes Fuki.)
And the “other” effects of alcohol have no bearing on me. I wish those drinks weren’t alcoholic actually, because I’m pretty much straight edge. If I drink something, I make sure it’s with food, and only a glass, and drunk slowly, so that I’m not mentally affected at all, not even a “buzz”. Trust me, if I could get nonalcoholic versions, I would, but it isn’t just the lack of a market that stops that. For example, St Germaine is a fantastic liquor created from elderflowers hand harvested from mountains in Europe. And it damned well tastes like FLOWERS, or like how flowers smell anyways. I’ve eaten flowers, they don’t taste like flowersmell. And there are syrups available made from elderflowers, but none of them are any good. Alcohol can catch and preserve flavours that are lost in any other processing.
(Somewhat unfortunately, I also really enjoy the tastes of harder alcohols, like spiced rum and aged whiskey, but you can’t really drink much of that before effects start happening, so I don’t.)
But if you don’t like alcohol, you may never acknowledge that there are some good things out there, amidst the muck. I have a nearly perfect analogy: I don’t like mushrooms. To me, all those fancy dishes that toss in truffle oil or other mushroom-derived products are ruining good food, and just being pretentious. Sure, a part of my brain knows that people who like mushrooms enjoy the extra savoury flavour, but to me it’s gross, and inexplicable why so many gourmet dishes have mushrooms in them—much like your confusion as to why someone would pay more for wine than a milkshake, I have no idea why someone would pay hundreds of dollars for a truffle. If it isn’t savoury enough, add beefstock, or something. But that’s just my irrational, self-centered brain. The rest of me knows people out there really do like mushrooms, and that to them, it makes the food better, just like I believe bananas make every baked good better, but my friend who hates bananas would disagree.
I find the idea that people don’t like being intoxicated suspicious. Experiencing euphoria from intoxication has a lot do with with brain chemistry, and it would be very odd if some humans recieved this effect and others did not.
Now, I can understand the intellectual response of “I don’t like being intoxicated” as “I don’t like the (loss of control/mental sluggishness/depressive effects) that accompanies intoxication.” After all, those could easily go against your personal values.
But in terms of enjoying something, I don’t think that those concerns are paramount. I enjoy the taste of foods that I consciously know are bad for me: eating them goes against my personal values (live a long life, have energy for the next task, etc.) but I still experience pleasure upon eating them. And it strikes me that it is quite possible to consciously find something distasteful while non-consciously finding it enjoyable. In other words, your conscious brain might say “I don’t enjoy the other effects of alcohol, only the taste” while your tongue tells your subconscious “Hey! This is the stuff that gives us the happy feeling!”
The only real test, I suppose, would be to find two drinks that were, taste-wise, indistinguishable with one producing the “other” effects of alcohol while the other doesn’t. Then, see if there was a stronger “liking” associated with the prior substance over time, particularly with people who self-report not enjoying those effects in alcohol while otherwise enjoying its flavor. I have a strong suspicion that the test would show that even if little enough of it was served that neither group felt outward signs of intoxication that the group that got the alcoholic batch would show stronger liking over time. (In fact, the less the “I don’t enjoy intoxication” batch consciously know that they are being given alcohol, the better for their self-reporting.)
Drug effects can be heavily culturally mediated; Hanson has posted some material on alcohol in particular.
(Another n=1: I was surprised and dismayed the first time I had enough alcohol to qualify as even partially drunk, and realized that I felt incredibly depressed. This happened twice more, and I eventually gave up alcohol as a bad job. This is annoying because it limits my mead consumption, even though it also means I never need to worry about alcoholism.)
I know a number of people who frequently become extremely sad while drunk. Back when I drank, that wasn’t an uncommon condition for me as well. Also, there were a number of enjoyable activities I found myself less able to successfully engage in while drunk… sex, in particular, was significantly less satisfying that way. In general I found several other intoxicants far superior if what I wanted was to be intoxicated.
Well, that makes some amount of sense. Alcohol is a seratonin inhibitor, so it would block some of the natural rush you would expect to get from sexual activity. That, and it inhibits testosterone, which is critical for sexual activity in men.
I find the idea that people don’t like being intoxicated suspicious. Experiencing euphoria from intoxication has a lot do with with brain chemistry, and it would be very odd if some humans recieved [sic] this effect and others did not.
By what mechanism does alcohol—a central nervous system depressant—cause euphoria? And how intense is this euphoria?
I ask because I’ve been to board game nights with my friends both with and without drinking involved, and I can recall no significant difference in pleasure between the two.
Admittedly, reporting on the euphoria from alcohol largely comes from anecdotal experiences from myself and my friends and family, however, the wikipedia entry on intoxication is a good starting point for answering this question. However, asking the question did prompt me to investigate.
The short answer is that alcohol intoxication often produces euphoria at about 20-99 mg/dL and that this state may continue at higher concentrations. The mechanism appears to be due to the fact that, in addition to being a central nervous system depressant, alcohol is also a seratonin inhibitor and that it interferes with seratonin binding and seratonin transporters in a manner which causes excessive stimulation in serotonergic neurons.
That said, the specifics are unclear. It seems that we don’t have direct ways of checking seratonin in human or animal brains yet. That said, indirect tests, self-report, and observed euphoric effects of alcohol intoxication all contribute to the current theory on the effects of alcohol on the seratonin receptors.
Gotcha! I had asked because the absence of a known pharmacological mechanism would have suggested that the primary factor was an association effect—people drink at parties with their friends, and therefore associate intoxication with their enjoyment of the party.
I find the idea that people don’t like being intoxicated suspicious. Experiencing euphoria from intoxication has a lot do with with brain chemistry, and it would be very odd if some humans recieved this effect and others did not.
Another n=1: I like the way intoxication feels when I’m intoxicated, but over last couple of months I’ve gone from wanting to enter that state often to avoiding all alcohol on purpose. What changed was realizing on an emotional level that I have tons of interesting (or necessary) things to do and alcohol limits that by taking away evening (to drink) and the next day (I feel cognitively worse ’till next afternoon, even if I didn’t have a hangover). At some point the prospect of drinking became anxiety-inducing for me.
I think the wealth-signaling effects of some product are mostly due to awkwardness in mass production. Once ice cream became easier to create in bulk, rich people stopped eating it. Same with chocolate. It doesn’t seem to correlate with taste.
I completely agree with your assertion. As an avid drinker, I find that I don’t like drinks that taste nice nearly as much as ones that don’t. The taste seems to me to be a signal of alcoholic effect; alcopops (sweet and alcoholic) get it wrong one way, and <1% alcohol beer gets it wrong the other way.
That said, I do like some beers better than others. Hoppy rather than fruity is good, for instance.
I recall reading somewhere on LessWrong that a highly effective way to stop eating chocolate is to get a pound of M&Ms and put them in your mouth and chew them up and taste them, then spit them out, and after a while chocolate will taste awful. This would suggest there’s a lot more to liking foods than just what your taste buds (and sense of smell) say.
Edit: And how could I forget coffee. Tastes terrible in itself—decaf is utterly missing the point—but taste+buzz is something one can have strong and even discussable personal preferences on, and I just had my morning cup of something awful and went “mmmm, coffee.”
I wouldn’t ever wanna stop eating chocolate, at least delicious 80+ percent cocoa chocolate. It has little sugar but plenty of quality fats and cardioprotective and anti-inflammatory polyphenols. It’s still a bit addictive for some reason (flavor? phenylethylamine? theobromine? ) but if you eat quality chocolate daily, well, if you don’t go really overboard I imagine it’d do you no harm.
It’s a YMMV, sure. But I can see people who need to give the stuff up—though my internal model of other humans tells me they’d be horrified at the idea of doing something that would actually work to cut them off from chocolate.
Well, I’ve been systematically (if desultorily) reading all of LW from the beginning. So I got to your comment and, given the local norm that it’s just fine to respond to a comment or post from years ago, responded to it. I presume bcoburn saw my comment in “Recent Comments”, went to your original and felt like responding too.
Yep! Things to read while waiting for Tomcat to finish restarting … if I’m going to use the Internet as a television, I want at least to be watching something good.
I got through the Sequences, and it occurred to me that I didn’t really understand the history of the culture of LessWrong, let alone the history of the history. So I thought reading the lot would be a nice way to approximate that. And I’m finding some fantastic posts I would never have seen without doing this.
So, I came to the conclusion that people have the very same taste for alcohol that I do, it’s just that they need to cook up a rationlizations for getting high. Still trying to find counterevidence...
In my observation the ‘lie’ operates to a significant extent on the other side of that ‘taste’ line. Sure rationalizations play a part too but to some extent ‘acquired taste’ is literally accurate. The ‘taste—status reward’ pairing actually does change what tastes good.
There really is a variety of experience in alcoholic beverages that one cannot get anywhere else. The argument that one would prefer a milkshake over wine is a weak one; even if that is universally the case, that doesn’t entail that people really don’t like wine.
Go ahead, try it with any two things. “Would you rather have an X or a Y? Oh, you’d rather have an X? Then why do you ever have Y? You must do it just for signaling, not because you really enjoy it”. Say, “Watching Heroes” versus “Watching Battlestar Galctica”. Or “Eating a cheeseburger” versus “Eating potato skins”. Or “vacationing at Hakone” versus “vacationing in Gaeta”.
Developing a taste for wine opens one up to a variety of experience not unlike developing an entirely new sense. Similarly for enjoying good beer. I admit that I first developed a taste for beer simply because no philosopher worth his salt doesn’t enjoy beer, but it’s now very enjoyable being able to distinguish between various craft styles.
The argument that one would prefer a milkshake over wine is a weak one; even if that is universally the case, that doesn’t entail that people really don’t like wine. … Go ahead, try it with any two things. “Would you rather have an X or a Y? Oh, you’d rather have an X? Then why do you ever have Y? …
I guess I forgot to mention the other premise the argument uses: Y is a lot more expensive (per unit mass or volume). Given that alcoholic drinks cost a lot more, you would think that people would only pay the premium if they thought there were something better about it.
I claim that it cannot be the taste, because the taste is clearly dominated by cheaper alternatives
There really is a variety of experience in alcoholic beverages that one cannot get anywhere else. … Developing a taste for wine opens one up to a variety of experience not unlike developing an entirely new sense.
Except that my other issue with alcohol is that, within a given drink class, I can’t distinguish the taste very much. All beers, for example, taste to me like sourness and bitterness that stings as it goes down. To the extent that I do discern a difference, it’s that some aren’t as painful or gross to drink. And what really perplexes me is that the least bad, most tolerable beer I’ve found is … Guiness.
Over the years, I have not noticed these wonderful subtleties. There are differences, sure, but the overwhelming bitterness and sting dominates them.
(ETA: The sting of carbonated beverages also dominated my experience when I first tried them out, which is why I didn’t regularly want them until I was about 10 and found one with enough of the right sweetness to outweigh the pain. Today, I still experience that sting.)
By the way, if want to give yourself a sixth sense, I would recommend echolocation or magnetism, which humans have been able to pick up, and which seem to have a lot more practical use.
I admit that I first developed a taste for beer simply because no philosopher worth his salt doesn’t enjoy beer, but it’s now very enjoyable being able to distinguish between various craft styles.
And you prove my point. I think what happened is that you recongized a social benefit to voicing appreciation for beer, and learned all the right code words to use, and now can pattern-match beers to the right description well enough for social purposes.
The ‘deli’ down the hall from where I work sells single-serving pizzas. Crappy pizzas—nowhere near as tasty as the burritos from the co-op two blocks away, and more than twice the price. And yet, sometimes I buy them, even when the walk is not a concern.
Variety would explain different drinks. It would not explain significantly-more-expensive, bad-tasting drinks.
But yes, there are many factors that go into a decision. My claim is just that the one typically given—that people like the taste of alcoholic drinks—cannot be correct.
Variety would explain different drinks. It would not explain significantly-more-expensive, bad-tasting drinks.
Except that they don’t taste bad. All the milkshake question shows is that they don’t taste as good as milkshakes. Your insistence on this is puzzling.
But yes, there are many factors that go into a decision. My claim is just that the one typically given—that people like the taste of alcoholic drinks—cannot be correct.
It seems like the simplest hypothesis here is that people who claim to like the taste of alcoholic drinks are for the most part doing so because they like the taste of alcoholic drinks.
I like pepsi more than beer, and drink more pepsi than beer. I also like chicken mcnuggets more than snackwraps, and buy mcnuggets more often than snackwraps. But I still get snackwraps sometimes, even though they’re more expensive. Does it make more sense to chalk that up to signaling, or liking variety?
It seems like the simplest hypothesis here is that people who claim to like the taste of alcoholic drinks are for the most part doing so because they like the taste of alcoholic drinks.
But my point was, this can’t account for how I describe my liking of alcohol the same way as other people, except that I conclude I don’t like the taste of alcohol, while others conclude it means they like the taste. In other words, other people AND I meet the following characteristics:
-Think milkshakes are better tasting than the best alcoholic drink.
-Enjoy the taste of alcoholic drinks when it is drowned out with some other flavor.
-Believe it changes our mental states in a good way.
-Could not comfortably chug down a alcoholic drink the way we might a milkshake.
I classify all of that as “not liking the taste of alcohol, but liking to consume it anyway”. Other people classify all of that as “liking alcohol, including its taste”. Hence the dilemma.
All that your variety examples show is that if you have too much of one thing, you’ll “tire” of it temporarily and want something else. But that’s not what people claim makes them want alcohol. They really claim it’s the taste. They really claim they spend lots of money to get that taste (think about how expensive some wines/liquors are). And they claim it can’t match the taste of milkshakes, which, contrary to your example, people don’t regularly have and aren’t tired of.
People could have all the variety they wanted, and still alcohol wouldn’t be in the top 30 drinks by taste, and people still claim they like the taste. This doesn’t make sense.
Think milkshakes are better tasting than the best alcoholic drink.
I do not share this characteristic.
Enjoy the taste of alcoholic drinks when it is drowned out with some other flavor.
I’ve learned to tolerate ethanol in order to appreciate unique flavors in the alcohol itself.
Believe it changes our mental states in a good way.
I dislike all the mental effects of alcohol and would drink it more often if it lacked these effects.
Could not comfortably chug down a alcoholic drink the way we might a milkshake.
Agreed, only insofar as this is a point against milkshakes. If I am drinking something for the flavor, I wish to savor it slowly; otherwise, I am drinking it for sustenance in which case if I’m drinking alcohol or milkshakes something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.
People could have all the variety they wanted, and still alcohol wouldn’t be in the top 30 drinks by taste, and people still claim they like the taste. This doesn’t make sense.
I’m pretty sure some alcoholic drinks would make it into my top 30, actually.
And yes, even if alcohol doesn’t make it into the top 30, it still makes sense. It’s entirely possible to like more than 30 things. Something not making it into my ‘top 30’ (or ‘top X’ for whatever X) doesn’t mean I don’t like it.
Also, I don’t see your list above logically implying not liking alcoholic drinks (though I couldn’t ‘chug’ a milkshake, so that might be relevant). If you add ‘I like the taste of alcoholic drinks’ I don’t see any contradiction, or even a tension, with the things you list.
Given the variety of counterarguments you have been exposed to, I would think that re-examining the claim with stricter scientific controls would be appropriate.
Really? The quality of the counterarguments doesn’t matter, just their variety?
I’m going to refer back to Science isn’t Strict Enough. The observations I’ve made simply shouldn’t happen if the predominant theory, (“People accurately describe how much they like the taste of alcohol”) were true. The fact that I didn’t set up scientific controls doesn’t change this.
If wine were really so great tasting, worth analyzing all the subtle nuances, worth paying obscene amounts for the best wines, there simply shouldn’t be a wine expert who prefers the taste of milkshakes to the taste of the best wine. That observation forces an huge update in beliefs, even before an official experiement.
If anything, the ones who should be updating are those who are suprised to see people coming out of the woodwork and admitting they actually don’t like the taste of alcohol.
Really? The quality of the counterarguments doesn’t matter, just their variety?
*sighs*
Something which is true is true whichever way you approach it. The variety of counterarguments—all of which are good arguments, I would not cite them otherwise—shows that many angles of approach to your claim show contrary evidence. So far as I have been informed, your personal evidence is not so overwhelming as to require our contrary evidence to be explained by other means. While it is interesting that your peers predominantly prefer the flavor of milkshakes to their favorite alcoholic beverages, more than that is needed to show that millions of people are deluding themselves.
If wine were really so great tasting, worth analyzing all the subtle nuances, worth paying obscene amounts for the best wines, there simply shouldn’t be a wine expert who prefers the taste of milkshakes to the taste of the best wine. That observation forces an huge update in beliefs, even before an official experiement.
I can’t believe you’re still making this case. While I don’t personally much value the opinions of ‘wine experts’, I see no contradiction in:
Wine is great-tasting and worth spending lots of money on.
Some wine experts like the taste of milkshakes better than the taste of wine.
In fact, I would be surprised if there were no wine experts who preferred the taste of milkshakes, even if it were the case that most people prefer the taste of wine. People like many things, all at the same time, to different degrees.
If anything, the ones who should be updating are those who are suprised to see people coming out of the woodwork and admitting they actually don’t like the taste of alcohol.
I so far haven’t observed anyone acting surprised that there are people who don’t like the taste of alcohol. Straw man?
I so far haven’t observed anyone acting surprised that there are people who don’t like the taste of alcohol.
I guess you haven’t met anyone I’ve talked to in person about this...
I would be surprised if there were no wine experts who preferred the taste of milkshakes, even if it were the case that most people prefer the taste of wine. People like many things, all at the same time, to different degrees.
Well, this is where we disagree. I can’t imagine there being something with such exquisite taste that I’d be willing to pay $100 just to experience that taste, when it’s not even better than a milkshake. (I have paid more than $100 for food/drinks before, I’m sure, but obviously the scenario gave me more than the taste of something delicious.)
I have paid more than $100 for food/drinks before, I’m sure, but obviously the scenario gave me more than the taste of something delicious.
Well clearly alcohol also gives you something more than the taste of something delicious. But your claim is that practically no one likes the taste of alcohol, and I don’t think you really have enough evidence to support that.
And yes, that is clearly where we differ. I’ve in the past paid hundreds or thousands of dollars mostly just for particular sensory experiences, and could see much wealthier people being willing to pay a lot more.
ETA: Also, I’m skeptical of a monocausal explanation of anything. It seems much more likely to me that people like both the taste and intoxicating effects of alcohol, than that they just like the effects and erroneously report liking the taste.
I prefer the taste of wine to the taste of milkshakes.
I would much rather drink wine than (sickly sweet) milkshakes if given the choice between them.
If only one were on offer, though, I would drink whichever was on offer.
But if I had the option to choose to pay for one or the other—I would choose to pay for wine… even if it were more expensive. I’d do this even if there were no alcohol. Even if there were no other people around to show off my status to.
because it tastes better (to me) ie—it ranks higher in my preference ordering purely on taste.
It doesn’t matter how many people you find that have a different preference ordering to mine… the fact that even just one person has their preference ordering this way around says that your theory is incorrect.
I claim that it cannot be the taste, because the taste is clearly dominated by cheaper alternatives
I drink mostly water and sometimes fruit juice. On occasion, I buy atypically expensive alcoholic beverages, indistinguishable from other beverages of the type except in flavor and price, because I like their taste. How do you explain that?
Except that my other issue with alcohol is that, within a given drink class, I can’t distinguish the taste very much. All beers, for example, taste to me like sourness and bitterness that stings as it goes down. To the extent that I do discern a difference, it’s that some aren’t as painful or gross to drink. And what really perplexes me is that the least bad, most tolerable beer I’ve found is … Guiness.
(ETA: The sting of carbonated beverages also dominated my experience when I first tried them out, which is why I didn’t regularly want them until I was about 10 and found one with enough of the right sweetness to outweigh the pain. Today, I still experience that sting.)
Ethanol is not pleasant to drink. It doesn’t even have a flavor, per se, just a sharpness and the burning or stinging sensation. To appreciate the flavor of an alcoholic beverage, you must first acclimate yourself to being able to ignore the ethanol itself. Your experiences suggest that you are unable, or able only with difficulty, to become acclimated to this, and thus will likely never be able to perceive what other people are talking about.
The reason why it is worthwhile is twofold: the process of fermentation produces many complex flavors, and many flavors are far more soluble in alcohol than in water. The former provides, for instance, the complex malt flavor of dark beers, while the latter allows things like the woody flavors of a barrel-aged whiskey.
In both cases these flavors could be recreated chemically, but at great difficulty and expense, and the intersection of “people who enjoy experiencing complex, interesting flavors” and “people who actively prefer non-alcoholic beverages” is too small of a market to attract much attention.
As an aside, the vast majority of the market does drink alcohol primarily for intoxication or status, and cares little for flavor, so (at least in the USA) mass-market mainstream alcohols will always be designed to be boring and inoffensive, in order to maximize the market, thus tasting of little other than the ethanol that bothers you so.
If you want to give the whole thing another chance, I suggest finding a liquor store that caters to the beer nerd / microbrew enthusiast market and look for one of the following varieties: Belgian-style fruit lambic, Russian imperial stout, or American-style triple IPA. You probably still won’t like them, but all three tend to be so strongly flavored (and in the latter case, extremely bitter) that it actually dominates the ethanol.
I hate almost all beer. I can discern the differences between them, and there are some beers that, on some days are drinkable—and some I even get to the point of liking—but I would never pay money for beer when other alternatives are available.
Beer is low in my preference ordering.
I like wine. i can distinguish between many different kinds and i can distinguish a preference ordering that I would consider to be correlated with the “quality” of wine.
There is no other way to get the flavours of wine apart from… actually drinking wine.
you can’t buy an equivalent pleasure because there isn’t one.
I am willing to pay for that particular pleasure.
wine is reasonably high in my preference ordering>
so is cider and mead.
but sometimes I prefer cider over wine, sometimes I prefer mead over cider, and a lot of times I prefer coffee over all of them.
preferences for taste change on a daily and even hourly basis.
Just like with food.
Sometimes you want to go for something sweet, sometimes salty, sometimes umami…
thus it goes with drinks.
I rarely go for sweet—I usually prefer tangy flavours or complex interesting flavours such as that of fruit juices or red wine.
There is no way you can say that I gain no pleasure from alcoholic drinks apart from the taste.
and sometimes—I gain more (temporary) pleasure from a higher-priced glass of wine than all the non-alcoholic drinks in the world… because I like the taste, and it’s exactly what I want right then at that time.
When I was a little kid, too young to know about or process the idea that alcohol gets you high, my mom and dad drank beer. Cheap beer no less. I asked for a taste and they gave me one, thinking I wouldn’t like it. I liked it.
I remember it tasted interesting, and dazzling, like soda.
I very much like some wines, many beers, and a few harder liquors (rum, bailey’s, mainly).
I used to think I disliked all beers, but then I tried some again (out of politeness) and discovered the problem wasn’t that I didn’t like beer, it was that I didn’t like bad beer.
I would drink one beer with pizza whether alone or with others (though I would refrain in the presence of some people if I thought it would offend them). I hate bars.
Perhaps I’m subconsciously signaling “I am snobby,” but I think that is inconsistent with the rest of my behavior (just ask my wife what she thinks of how I dress).
Just a general clarification: when I refer to the mind-altering effects of alcohol, I don’t just mean intoxication, but also the relaxation effect, which usually kicks in even after just one drink.
Your situation definitely sounds more convincing, but then, you’re not in the set of people who needs to find a fake reason to drink alcohol, since you don’t seem like you’d miss much if you weren’t allowed to drink.
Are you sure your insistence on drinking one beer with pizza isn’t just force of habit though?
Your situation definitely sounds more convincing, but then, you’re not in the set of people who needs to find a fake reason to drink alcohol, since you don’t seem like you’d miss much if you weren’t allowed to drink.
If all sources of alcohol spontaneously vanished, I would miss a good dark beer in much the same way I would miss any other food I enjoy. That said I would probably deal with such a hypothetical situation with less dismay than most people who like alcohol.
Are you sure your insistence on drinking one beer with pizza isn’t just force of habit though?
Just to be clear, if no beer is available (e.g., I haven’t bought any recently (at the moment there is none in my fridge and I’ve been out of it for like a month)), and I make pizza, I won’t be TOO distraught. :) It’s also something I’ve picked up fairly recently; I read somewhere that beer went well with pizza, tried it, and found that beer goes very well with pizza. :)
To elaborate a little more, my parents rarely drank (rarely = maybe twice in my lifetime), I didn’t try any alcohol until in my 20′s, and did not like the first alcohol I tried. I definitely agree that wine and beer are acquired tastes, much like coffee. I would rather drink beer than a milkshake most of the time, but that might say more about what I think of milkshakes than what I think of beer.
EDIT: I forgot to add:
Just a general clarification: when I refer to the mind-altering effects of alcohol, I don’t just mean intoxication, but also the relaxation effect, which usually kicks in even after just one drink.
I do not personally drink alcohol for the relaxation effect. Perhaps if I were in a stressful social situation I would, but I can’t say I’ve done so to date. I find the feeling of a buzz weird and interesting and do not particularly enjoy it. My skills in nearly everything I like to do are adversely affected by mental impairment, so I do not like to drink enough to cause one. Exception: if I’m with a group of friends I will drink more than I would on my own, as I know I won’t be doing anything mentally demanding.
A relatively simple way to test whether you actually like the taste of alcohol specifically: take a reasonable quantity of your favorite alcoholic beverage, beer/wine/mixed drink/whatever, and split it into two containers. Close one, and heat the other slightly to evaporate off most of the actual ethanol. Then just do a blind taste test. This does still require not lying to yourself about which you prefer, but it removes most of the other things that make knowing whether you like the taste hard.
I personally don’t care enough to try this, but just the habit of thinking “how could I test this?” is good.
I don’t know for sure either way, and can’t think of an experimental way to check off hand. I don’t think that heating is likely to do anything to the other components of most drinks, and you might be able to make a better guess with domain knowledge I don’t have.
I think ethanol will generally evaporate more quickly than water, so you might also be able to get a similar test by simply closing one portion into a container with only a little air, and leaving another open for a long enough time, overnight maybe. will still lose some water, which is I guess a more real problem with heating as well.
shrug, the details weren’t really the point, just wanted to emphasize the idea of thinking of ways to test whatever you’re interested in physically instead of just reasoning about it.
AFAIK, it will utterly destroy many of the volatile components of wine that make it taste so complex and interesting.
That’s why alcohol-free wine tends to be so bland and uninteresting.
I’d be willing to do a taste-test on alcohol-free wine vs wine that I already know that I like… If you hide the non-alcoholic one in sufficient number of normal ones I probably wouldn’t guess which one it was (I’m not good enough at telling which wine is which that I’d spot a particular wine by taste, just whether I like them or not).
I enjoy a wide range of alcoholic beverages, especially beer, wine, rye whisky and spiced rum. When it comes to wine, my preference is red, particularly Cabernet Sauvignon and Malbec from Chile and Argentina. I like to drink red wine when I’m eating steak. They are perfect complements; I would not want to drink a milkshake with a steak, or a coffee, or a can of Coke. Often, when I have steak, I only drink a glass or two of wine, not enough to produce a significant alcoholic effect. Why drink, then? Well, as I said, wine is a perfect complement to the meal. It isn’t sweet, and it can be bitter, but then steak isn’t a donut, either. They both have complex flavours that light up my pleasure centres in different ways. The smell, taste, and texture all contribute to what I call “enjoyment”. I can even take pleasure in the flavours that some people consider unpleasant. I like my steak bloody, while others won’t touch meat that isn’t charred.
The thing is, lots of people like things that other people consider negative. BDSM springs to mind; some people can’t get pleasure unless they’re being whipped, while others would actually consider it torture. Those others might say, “You don’t actually enjoy being whipped, you just enjoy the endorphin release and elevated serotonin it causes.” Well… isn’t that the same thing? I get more pleasure than simply the effect of alcohol from drinking wine, even if there are aspects to wine which may be considered unpleasant. Do I enjoy wine or just the effects of wine? I don’t see that as any different from asking whether I enjoy candy or the effects of candy, or ice cream or the effects of ice cream.
Sales of near-beer are not immense compared to regular beer, so it doesn’t pose much trouble for my theory. And certainly the theory allows for cases of people partaking in the form of alcohol consumption without the substance, once society (or their own past history) has given them a positive affect toward beer. For example, if someone likes hanging out in bars but wants to quit drinking, bars oblige such people with drinks that resemble alcoholic drinks as much as possible without them being alcoholic.
Likewise, if you’ve associated the gross taste of beer with previous good experiences, but didn’t want to get drunk, you might still want to drink alcohol, even despite the taste. The point is that it’s not the taste, but something else, that is making people drink alcohol.
You claim that “experts” have been proven not to know the difference between expensive wine and non… but I sure can tell the difference between “wine I like” and “wine I would rather pour down the sink”, and that distinction is all that matters when it comes to me choosing wine to drink (or not).
I also second InfinitelyThirsting—if it could come without the buzz (or even just at minimal buzz) I’d prefer it. The buzz (and I would not characterise it as euphoria for me) isn’t the part that’s fun for me.
First of all, I like to get drugged by alcohol, and feel no need to deny this fact.
That said, hard hot chocolate is tasty. Raspberry juice with creme de cacao is excellent. Champagne’s an acquired taste, but I’m fond of it—I rather suspect this could just be my brain coming to associate the pleasurable effects of the drug with the taste of champagne though.
Pleasure is pleasure, whether it comes from a taste you naturally enjoy or from your brain associating alcohol intoxication with Champagne drinking. I think much of my taste for wine (preferably red and “dry”) also comes from the knowledge that I’m putting some alcohol into my system, but it tastes decent and it’s a pleasant experience for me, so what of it?
I think you are not aware of research in acquired taste. It turns out that the effect of particular foods and drinks on psychological states create some deep subconscious associations. Take this as a clear and striking example:
“A study that investigated the effect of adding caffeine and theobromine (active compounds in chocolate) vs. a placebo to identically-flavored drinks that participants tasted several times, yielded the development of a strong preference for the drink with the compounds.[3]”
I think that’s why I do enjoy beer now, even though I thought exactly as you did several years ago. I thought it was a huge collective rationalization. Which I still think is a big part of it, specially among teenagers and young adults who like to boast about being strong drinkers and how oh-dear they love alcohol so very much. But grown up people do drink, say, one beer alone and seem to enjoy it quite a bit. But without the pleasant relaxation that usually follows, though, the taste would not be agreeable. So we see a deep neurological change in the way we process taste.
As a young man raised on gourmet foods and interesting tastes, as well as reasonably sound in my general understanding of human evo-biology let’s make two things clear:
Pleasant Taste is within reasonable limits an exact science.
Everything else is mood and “acquired taste,” I.E. pleasure center training.
Barring that, I like whisky. It has an interesting taste composition and the immediate kick and feel of the alcohol content is likewise momentarily envograting. That I afterwards get pleasantly intoxicated is merely a nice bonus.
Everything else is mood and “acquired taste,” I.E. pleasure center training.
But everyone has had some kind of pleasure centre training, so how do you tell the two things apart? Two friends of mine who were raised as vegetarians once decided to try meat (when they were in their teens), and didn’t like it.
But everyone has had some kind of pleasure centre training, so how do you tell the two things apart?
This feels like a wrong question.
Is there even such a thing as “natural good taste?” or are there only the pleasure center configuration that newborns start out with?
I can attest to knowing several people who don’t like sweet candy or sweet things in general, even though that should be one of the “natural” preferences, and I don’t think one would have to look that much for someone who wouldn’t eat pure blubber, even though that is also one of these evolutinary encoded thingies.
That statement comes from my experience in cooking. The interesting thing in gastronomy is that the spices don’t really matter as long as you don’t use too many of them.
In my own vocabulary I like to distinguish the concepts “taste” and “aroma” as pertaining to “tastebuds” and “olfactory bulb” respectively. Indeed when people say “this tastes like garlic” they mean “this smells like garlic.” This is also why unpleasant tasting things taste less unpleasant when you block your nasal passages by some means.
There are five different types of taste buds:
One kind reacts to alcohol groups on small organic molecules, i.e. fructose, glucose, aspartame, sorbitol ans so on, “sweet taste.”
One kind reacts to hydronium ions (or rather contains a direct protone channel,) “sour taste.”
One kind reacts to sodium Ions, “salt taste.”
One kind reacts to many amino acids, “savory taste.”
One kind reacts to a variety of manily toxic and some non-toxic compounds, “bitter taste.”
The interesting thing is this: If two or more of the above are balanced, the overall sensory stimulous is percieved as “pleasant.” This is why soda has acid as well as sugar content, this is why kitchen salt is almost universally used (especially many kinds of meat which usually only needs salt), this is why coffee goes well with sugar and milk (milk neutralizes some of the otherwise high acid content).
Once your dish has the five basic tastes in balance you can literally add any aromas to it and it will still taste “pleasant.”
The working of taste buds varies from person to person, too: IIRC there’s a substance which tastes extremely sweet to some people but nearly flavourless to others.
There are other sensations in the mouth than the five basic tastes, e.g. the hotness of ethanol and capsaicin and the coldness of mint.
What “balanced” means depends on what you’re used to, to some extent: if I get used to put lots of salt on everything, when I don’t anything tastes insipid, and conversely if I get used to use very little salt, the reverse happens. (Hell, even if I get used to drinking high-mineral bottled water then low-mineral tap water will taste bitter to me, and conversely now that I usually drink tap water, some bottled water tastes salty to me.)
The working of taste buds varies from person to person, too: IIRC there’s a substance which tastes extremely sweet to some people but nearly flavourless to others.
In as far as I have ever heard that is only the case with bitter taste which is a far more compound tastebud. I would like to see any studies on a supertaster in terms of sweetness.
There are other sensations in the mouth than the five basic tastes, e.g. the hotness of ethanol and capsaicin and the coldness of mint.
These are triggerings of of the cold, heat and pain receptors which are completely different from taste receptors. If you want to argue that you have to argue consistency and texture of the foodstufss as well. I am presenting a simplified view, akin to if you just sprayed flavoured liquid onto the tongue and measured neural activity in the olfactory bulb and taste buds.
If you aren’t used to eating capsaicin the heat and pain sensations completely overpower the tastes and aromas, if you are used to it, we are again reduced to balancing the five basic taste sensation.
What “balanced” means depends on what you’re used to, to some extent: if I get used to put lots of salt on everything, when I don’t anything tastes insipid, and conversely if I get used to use very little salt, the reverse happens. (Hell, even if I get used to drinking high-mineral bottled water then low-mineral tap water will taste bitter to me, and conversely now that I usually drink tap water, some bottled water tastes salty to me.)
Yes, but that is returning to neural artifacts of individuals, is it not?
I’m sure that culture/status/history of (especially) wine (but also whisk(e)ys and, increasingly beers) do play a significant role in the enjoyment thereof. This is plainly true if you look at wine bottle closures: even though a screwcap provides superior taste in many cases, a lot of people say they just prefer the ritual of uncorking.
Until we develop a drug that blocks the psychoactive effects of ethanol, I think it will be nigh impossible to convince you that wine is superior to milkshakes on taste alone in some cases. (Incidentally, teetotaler Penn Jillette agrees with you 100%: his quote is “wine will never taste as good as a Coke”.)
That said, I could give you* a white wine and goat cheese pairing that I laugh at the ability of any milkshake to rival in sheer sensual pleasure.
*I don’t mention it here only because it would take a bit of digging for me to find out what it was; upon request I will, though.
Incidentally, teetotaler Penn Jillette agrees with you 100%: his quote is “wine will never taste as good as a Coke”
Isn’t a lot of the appeal of Coke due to the caffeine? The fact that it’s mostly drunk cold or with ice could suggest that the inherent flavor isn’t ideal.
To me beer tastes and smells Terrible. I’d rather have hard lemonade, or vodka mixed with almost anything but beer.
But up until a couple of years ago I also didn’t like coffee. So I think that both beer and coffee are an acquired taste. (um, yeah and coffee isn’t a drug at all...)
The taste of certain wines reminds me pleasantly of my catholic childhood.
But yeah, people like the taste of other things they use to mask and dilute the alcohol, otherwise they’d just take shots of high-proof vodka.
Possible counterpoint to that: Any flavoring would be nasty when concentrated. Perhaps water with a small amount of alcohol would have a noticeable pleasant flavor. (but be useless for intoxication)
Perhaps water with a small amount of alcohol would have a noticeable pleasant flavor. (but be useless for intoxication)
Indeed. There’s a drink called a “White Rain” some friends of mine invented in college:
Start with a half standard Conn Hall measure of either vodka or pure grain alcohol (this measure is approximately 1.5 shots) - fill the rest of the cup (about 12 ounces) with water. Sprinkle in a half teaspoon of sugar, and watch the interplay between the alcohol, dissolving sugar, and water. Enjoy before the liquid calms down.
It’s pretty good, and tastes mostly like really refreshing water. Note: the measurements above are best guesses, as the original recipe is based on the cups at Conn Hall at SCSU. If it tastes like cough syurp, you did something wrong.
I, too, do not like the taste of alcohol and feel no real desire to seek it out as a tasty food. I’ll admit, though, that I also don’t like to consume things that reduce cognitive function, so it’s possible I don’t like the taste as a side effect, but I rather doubt it.
Now, I do like champagne, but usually only the stuff that costs $150 a bottle. I say this having found out the prices only after I tried the champagne and liked it: since I like it, I want to know what it is. There are probably also expensive champagnes that don’t taste as good, I’ve just never looked for them, but high price does seem to be a necessary condition for good champagne. To be fair to the post’s original request, though, I have to admit that I like these champagnes because they are “smooth”: they have no alcohol burn and don’t smell or taste like they have alcohol in them, so I might as well have sparkling cider.
Finally, note that until the 20th century people drank much larger quantities of alcohol than today because it was needed to make water safer to drink. If you could afford it, adding a little wine or grain alcohol to the water would go a long way towards reducing the chance of infection from water-borne illnesses. So in those times people probably enjoyed the taste because they became accustomed to it early in life, much the way Americans love tomato ketchup and coke although adults from other parts of the world, when introduced to these flavors, often do not.*
*I can’t find a source for this, but I know I’ve heard it several places. Maybe it’s just a modern myth?
A lot of the beer they drank throughout the day was ’small beer”—made from a second run of water through the mash… it was about as alcoholic as modern-day ginger beer. So—yeah, they did spend a lot of their time more intoxicated than us… but not totally smashed all the time.
Small beer goes down quite nicely (even for somebody that doesn’t like beer like me). It’s kind of like cordial—but without being sickly sweet.
I also made “small currant wine”once- which was also nice, but not as good as straight currant wine… but does let you drink a whole lot more of it during a hot day.
I also don’t have sources to hand, but I’m informed by my brewing+chemist friends that the amount of alcohol in beer is not sufficient to sterilise the liquid.
however the people of ancient times weren’t wrong… beer is sterilised (and thus safe to drink) - it’s because to make beer, you have to boil the mash. The boiling sterilises it quite effectively.
To me, alcohol has neither taste or smell, but does have a definite tactile experience in the mouth; I like beer; the first glass of wine is ok but after the second it all tastes to me like bad wine; vanilla is *V*A*N*I*L*L*A*, not plain at all; I don’t seek out ferociously hot curries.
Now cheese, that’s gross.
Conclusion: people vary.
And of course people use alcohol to get high. What they put up with is not the taste, but the hangover the next day. And, er, this.
I like sour and bitter drinks, so I would drink Strongbow (hard apple cider) even if it contained no alcohol. In fact, I’d rather it contained no alcohol (ETA: but tasted the same) -- I would drink more of it at one sitting. (I also like tonic water straight up, beer, and de-alcoholized beer.)
1) Why do you think the taste of Strongbow is so hard to mimic in a non-alcoholic version? Is it a hard problem for chemistry, or something no one wants to try?
2) Would you be able to distinguish alcoholic vs. non-alcoholic versions in a blind test?
1) I don’t know if the taste is hard to mimic in a non-alcoholic version. I think the most likely reason no non-alcoholic version is available is because it wouldn’t make enough money.
2) It’s hard to say, but I’d put my chances at better than 50%. I base this on my strong confidence that I can tell beer and de-alcoholized beer apart.
1) Bingo. People don’t see the alcohol as a downside the way they see fat/sugar/carbs as a downside, so there’s no multibillion dollar industry trying to find the perfect mimic, because that fundamentally misunderstands people’s motivations in drinking alcohol.
2) As per 1), your experience has only been with meager attempts to create the perfect mimic. I’d be interested in hearing the results of you doing a blind test.
But just to clarify: as in all cases dealing with large populations, certainly a non-trivial fraction of people really does enjoy the taste, in and of itself, and you could be one of them. It’s just that people who genuinely enjoy the taste per se cannot be common enough to generate the observed data.
Your turn: convince me that you really, really like the taste of [alcoholic beverage that happens to also signal your social status].
There’s a major confounder here: the hardest, least flavorful drinks are also often the lowest-status (ie: cheap vodka and gin are viewed as poison for inveterate alcoholics).
But I’ll answer anyway: I enjoy the almost honey-like taste of a really smooth, high-quality Scotch on the rocks. Yes, you have to put the ice cubes in, otherwise you won’t water it down enough to release the flavor and you’ll just taste alcohol and alcohol fumes. And it has to be good Scotch.
Other alcoholic drinks I enjoy: full-bodied, unacidic wines; fruity wines (Gerwurtzterminer and Riesling are favorites… yes I know white wine is low-status for men, shut up jerk); porters, especially coffee-flavored porters, red ales, and even the occasional blond ale. Hot wine, especially hot mulled wine, is really excellent once you learn how to avoid breathing in the fumes and instead taste the flavor released by the heating. Lager is drinkable but mostly just “carbohydrate-flavored” to me, and I consider vodka, arak, and brandy godawful. Oh, and hard ciders are excellent, not only because the well-made ones pack plenty of flavor from the fruit and spices, but because they’re sufficiently nonalcoholic that they offend the taste-buds and dull the mind even less than beer.
For reference, I also enjoy massively spicy food, to the point that my flatmates often urge me to open the kitchen window after cooking a curry. I figure, if someone likes spicy food, and also likes drinks that burn while getting you a bit intoxicated, that’s not actually too incongruous.
I do think your thesis holds mostly true for heavy drinking of cheap, flavorless beverages with the purpose of getting drunk, as I myself am completely baffled why some cultures or subcultures have social norms in favor of reaching for drunkenness levels I’ve never seen anyone actually enjoy. It mostly seems to be an excuse for bad behavior they’re too inhibited to engage in without alcohol as an excuse, an effect that shows up when you give them placebo alcohol as part of a control group.
Personally, I also kinda hate being severely drunk, as it makes me sleepy and sentimental, and nowadays the sentiment comes out as melancholy for being in a long-distance relationship.
Anyway, that’s my overly long social confession for the evening. Gym time!
Your turn: convince me that you really, really like the taste of [alcoholic beverage that happens to also signal your social status].
Convincing people over internet in matters of taste is a lost cause X-D but I think I can unpack some of my alcohol preferences.
I’ll leave all the psychoactive effects outside of this little exposition.
I drink a variety of alcohol—mostly wine and beer, sometimes hard liquor, rarely cocktails—and I rather doubt I do it for status signalling reasons since the majority of my drinking happens inside my home. I drink it for the taste.
Mostly I drink with food and that’s a large part the taste synergy. Let me give specific examples. I prefer high-tannin high-acidity red wines with grilled meat. I find that this pairing works very well (note that my red wine varies but usually costs around $10/bottle, so it’s not anything hoity-toity). In the summer I like green vine (vinho verde) from Portugal which is light and very acidic. It is precisely this high acidity that I want from it and it delivers.
My taste in beers changes over time. Some time ago I really liked double bocks and Belgian dubbels. Then they started to taste too sickly sweet to me, so I changed to IPAs for a bit. But then they became too hoppy and I went to English and Scottish ales. At the moment I am kinda in-between stages and mostly drink porters.
Do note that as far as I can see, all this is driven by taste—I drink mostly at home and I have no idea what beer might or might not be in fashion at the moment (so no status signaling) and I don’t care about alcohol content of the beer.
All in all, averaging over different situations, I probably drink 70% for the taste, 25% for the psychoactive effects, and 5% for status (I will decline all offers of Bud Light and such and may roll my eyes at the offer X-D)
Your turn: convince me that you really, really like the taste of [alcoholic beverage that happens to also signal your social status].
How should I do that? Will you fMRI my brain while I’m drinking it?
(Also the “that happens to also signal your social status” part doesn’t apply to me. I don’t like most spirits, I don’t think I would be able to tell vodka from a mixture of pure water and ethanol in a blind test, but there are quite a few relatively cheap wines and beers I do like, as well as some expensive wines I hate.)
This is all just pure speculation on my part, but it seems likely to me that drinking alcoholic beverages conditions us to like the taste after we’ve learned to associate the taste with the relaxation/intoxication effect. After a long enough learning period, we do come to like the taste, but the underlying reason would be the taste-effect link.
In fact, there’s a much better example of a similar process, namely smoking cigarettes. I think it’s pretty much undeniable that objectively the taste of cigarette smoke is bad. Almost every smoker remembers that the taste of cigarette was awful at the beginning. And certainly all non-smokers who have tasted cigarette can attest to this. Also, those that have quit smoking and started it again, almost always report that smoking tastes bad for a while.
But smokers eventually learn to like the taste of cigarette and it’s very likely that this is only because our brains learn to associate the taste with the quick and effective rush that the nicotine gives.
I would suggest that similar learning process is going on with drinking alcohol. The learning isn’t quite as effective as it is with smoking, because the effect isn’t so fast, but it’s effectively the same mechanism.
There’s also the hypothesis that something similar is going on with learning to like flavors in food. An idea that is put forward at least by Seth Roberts. We learn to like flavors because of their association with calories they give. (With sugar being the odd exception that tastes good to us without any learning process.)
If all this is true—that you learn to like the taste of alcohol because of this type of (unconscious!) associative learning—I don’t know what it implies about SilasBarta’s claim. Because in a way, the taste will become good given that you’ve trained your brains to like it. But for anyone tasting a certain flavor of alcohol for first time, the taste will certainly be dominantly bad. (Unless it’s some sort of candy drink, that mostly hides the taste of alcohol itself.)
I would drink white russians if they were non-alcoholic. I almost never have more than one because I don’t actually want to feel any of the effects of alcohol, I just want a white russian. I also drink them alone.
I rather enjoy the taste of a Brown Cow, which is Creme de Cacoa in Milk. Then again, I’m sure I’d prefer a proper milkshake. Generally, if I drink an alcoholic beverage its for the side effects.
I tried for a long time to find an alcoholic drink I like in the assumption that I was missing out on something everyone else was privy too. While I did find some drinks I liked, I decided that it was the high sugar or fat content (rum & coke or a white russian) that I liked, and not the alcohol. Since that is the only part I like, it is much cheaper and healthier to achieve the same taste with non-alcoholic drinks and artificial sweeteners.
I have a theory about alcohol consumption; I call people who like (or don’t mind) the taste “tongue blind.” My theory is that these people have such poor taste receptors that they need an overly strong stimulus to register anything other than bland. Under this theory, I would expect people that like alcohol to also like very spicy food, to put extra salt most things they eat, and to think that vanilla is a synonym for plain.
Vanilla is a synonym for “plain” when it’s artificial (i.e. the vanillin molecule and nothing else). Actual vanilla is obviously a whole different beast.
If people who liked wine had such dead tastes buds or (more realistically) noses, why would they bother to make up such elaborate flavors? (In particular, if it were only about status-signaling, the move from old-style wine description (“insouciant but never trite”) to the new style (“cassis, clove and cinnamon with a whiff of tobacco and old leather”) seems very strange.)
My personal experience in general doesn’t jive with your theory, except for one point: people who like alcohol tend to have a high tolerance for bitter things, and therefore also like very dark chocolate (I personally am an exception to this, however).
ETA: the software converted my 0-indexed list to a 1-indexing. How sad.
You seem to have stumbled onto the existence of supertasters. As a supertaster myself, I find tonic water extremely bitter, must overly sweeten my coffee and can’t stand grapefruit juice or spinach. I delight in the sharp sting of a good beer, though. Conversely, there are “nontasters” who have a greater tolerance for strong tastes.
I’m afraid that doesn’t mesh well with my experiences. I would actually suspect the opposite; it seems like people who “don’t like wine” are missing the nuances between different wine flavors and so I would have guessed they have a worse sense of taste.
For reference, I like some alcohol, do not like lots of salt, and sometimes take violent offense to calling vanilla ‘plain’.
Okay, now for my attempt to actually answer the prompt:
Your supposed “taste” for alcoholic beverages is a lie.
Summary: I’ve never enjoyed the actual process of drinking alcohol in the way that I e.g. enjoy ice cream. (The effects on my mind are a different story, of course.)
So for a long time I thought that, hey, I just have weird taste buds. Other people really like beer/wine/etc., I don’t. No biggie.
But then as time went by I saw all the data about how wine-tasting “experts” can’t even agree on which is the best, the moment you start using scientific controls. And then I started asking people about the particulars of why they like alcohol. It turns out that when it comes any implications of “I like alcohol”, I have the exact same characterstics as those who claim to like alcohol.
For example, there are people who insist that, yes, I must like alcohol, because, well, what about Drink X which has low alcohol content and is heavily loaded with flavoring I’d like anyway? And wine experts would tell me that, on taste alone, ice cream wins. And defenses of drinking one’s favorite beverage always morph into “well, it helps to relax...”
So, I came to the conclusion that people have the very same taste for alcohol that I do, it’s just that they need to cook up a rationlizations for getting high. Still trying to find counterevidence...
Your turn: convince me that you really, really like the taste of [alcoholic beverage that happens to also signal your social status].
I will agree with you that a lot of alcohol is like that, in particular beer. But you can’t say that acquiring a taste means forcing yourself to like something; we have to acquire almost all tastes. A kid who isn’t fed a variety of foods will never like a variety of foods. There are people out there who don’t like FRUIT, I mean, really. Not just like there’s a fruit they don’t particularly enjoy, they don’t like any fruit.
But there are some alcoholic drinks that ARE delicious. I don’t mean anything regular. My favourite drink has no substitute: mead. Honey wine. It’s a beverage made from honey, and delectable (well, unless it’s a dry wine). I don’t like any dry wines, just sweet ones. Fuki plum wine is another favourite of mine, and again, there is no similar substitute. I would be careful of saying you don’t like alcohol at all, because it’s possible you’ve just had bad stuff (and each kind of alcohol is different, too). I’ve never liked eggplant, bleach—until someone actually cooked it properly for me, using the right gender pod. (For the record of anecdotal proof, my sister hates alcohol, but even she likes Fuki.)
And the “other” effects of alcohol have no bearing on me. I wish those drinks weren’t alcoholic actually, because I’m pretty much straight edge. If I drink something, I make sure it’s with food, and only a glass, and drunk slowly, so that I’m not mentally affected at all, not even a “buzz”. Trust me, if I could get nonalcoholic versions, I would, but it isn’t just the lack of a market that stops that. For example, St Germaine is a fantastic liquor created from elderflowers hand harvested from mountains in Europe. And it damned well tastes like FLOWERS, or like how flowers smell anyways. I’ve eaten flowers, they don’t taste like flowersmell. And there are syrups available made from elderflowers, but none of them are any good. Alcohol can catch and preserve flavours that are lost in any other processing.
(Somewhat unfortunately, I also really enjoy the tastes of harder alcohols, like spiced rum and aged whiskey, but you can’t really drink much of that before effects start happening, so I don’t.)
But if you don’t like alcohol, you may never acknowledge that there are some good things out there, amidst the muck. I have a nearly perfect analogy: I don’t like mushrooms. To me, all those fancy dishes that toss in truffle oil or other mushroom-derived products are ruining good food, and just being pretentious. Sure, a part of my brain knows that people who like mushrooms enjoy the extra savoury flavour, but to me it’s gross, and inexplicable why so many gourmet dishes have mushrooms in them—much like your confusion as to why someone would pay more for wine than a milkshake, I have no idea why someone would pay hundreds of dollars for a truffle. If it isn’t savoury enough, add beefstock, or something. But that’s just my irrational, self-centered brain. The rest of me knows people out there really do like mushrooms, and that to them, it makes the food better, just like I believe bananas make every baked good better, but my friend who hates bananas would disagree.
I find the idea that people don’t like being intoxicated suspicious. Experiencing euphoria from intoxication has a lot do with with brain chemistry, and it would be very odd if some humans recieved this effect and others did not.
Now, I can understand the intellectual response of “I don’t like being intoxicated” as “I don’t like the (loss of control/mental sluggishness/depressive effects) that accompanies intoxication.” After all, those could easily go against your personal values.
But in terms of enjoying something, I don’t think that those concerns are paramount. I enjoy the taste of foods that I consciously know are bad for me: eating them goes against my personal values (live a long life, have energy for the next task, etc.) but I still experience pleasure upon eating them. And it strikes me that it is quite possible to consciously find something distasteful while non-consciously finding it enjoyable. In other words, your conscious brain might say “I don’t enjoy the other effects of alcohol, only the taste” while your tongue tells your subconscious “Hey! This is the stuff that gives us the happy feeling!”
The only real test, I suppose, would be to find two drinks that were, taste-wise, indistinguishable with one producing the “other” effects of alcohol while the other doesn’t. Then, see if there was a stronger “liking” associated with the prior substance over time, particularly with people who self-report not enjoying those effects in alcohol while otherwise enjoying its flavor. I have a strong suspicion that the test would show that even if little enough of it was served that neither group felt outward signs of intoxication that the group that got the alcoholic batch would show stronger liking over time. (In fact, the less the “I don’t enjoy intoxication” batch consciously know that they are being given alcohol, the better for their self-reporting.)
Drug effects can be heavily culturally mediated; Hanson has posted some material on alcohol in particular.
(Another n=1: I was surprised and dismayed the first time I had enough alcohol to qualify as even partially drunk, and realized that I felt incredibly depressed. This happened twice more, and I eventually gave up alcohol as a bad job. This is annoying because it limits my mead consumption, even though it also means I never need to worry about alcoholism.)
I know a number of people who frequently become extremely sad while drunk. Back when I drank, that wasn’t an uncommon condition for me as well. Also, there were a number of enjoyable activities I found myself less able to successfully engage in while drunk… sex, in particular, was significantly less satisfying that way. In general I found several other intoxicants far superior if what I wanted was to be intoxicated.
Well, that makes some amount of sense. Alcohol is a seratonin inhibitor, so it would block some of the natural rush you would expect to get from sexual activity. That, and it inhibits testosterone, which is critical for sexual activity in men.
By what mechanism does alcohol—a central nervous system depressant—cause euphoria? And how intense is this euphoria?
I ask because I’ve been to board game nights with my friends both with and without drinking involved, and I can recall no significant difference in pleasure between the two.
Admittedly, reporting on the euphoria from alcohol largely comes from anecdotal experiences from myself and my friends and family, however, the wikipedia entry on intoxication is a good starting point for answering this question. However, asking the question did prompt me to investigate.
The short answer is that alcohol intoxication often produces euphoria at about 20-99 mg/dL and that this state may continue at higher concentrations. The mechanism appears to be due to the fact that, in addition to being a central nervous system depressant, alcohol is also a seratonin inhibitor and that it interferes with seratonin binding and seratonin transporters in a manner which causes excessive stimulation in serotonergic neurons.
That said, the specifics are unclear. It seems that we don’t have direct ways of checking seratonin in human or animal brains yet. That said, indirect tests, self-report, and observed euphoric effects of alcohol intoxication all contribute to the current theory on the effects of alcohol on the seratonin receptors.
Gotcha! I had asked because the absence of a known pharmacological mechanism would have suggested that the primary factor was an association effect—people drink at parties with their friends, and therefore associate intoxication with their enjoyment of the party.
I drink to make parties with friends tolerable because after an hour there is usually an infinite amount of things I’d rather be doing...
Another n=1: I like the way intoxication feels when I’m intoxicated, but over last couple of months I’ve gone from wanting to enter that state often to avoiding all alcohol on purpose. What changed was realizing on an emotional level that I have tons of interesting (or necessary) things to do and alcohol limits that by taking away evening (to drink) and the next day (I feel cognitively worse ’till next afternoon, even if I didn’t have a hangover). At some point the prospect of drinking became anxiety-inducing for me.
I think the wealth-signaling effects of some product are mostly due to awkwardness in mass production. Once ice cream became easier to create in bulk, rich people stopped eating it. Same with chocolate. It doesn’t seem to correlate with taste.
Rich people stopped eating ice cream and chocolate? Hmm...
I completely agree with your assertion. As an avid drinker, I find that I don’t like drinks that taste nice nearly as much as ones that don’t. The taste seems to me to be a signal of alcoholic effect; alcopops (sweet and alcoholic) get it wrong one way, and <1% alcohol beer gets it wrong the other way.
That said, I do like some beers better than others. Hoppy rather than fruity is good, for instance.
I recall reading somewhere on LessWrong that a highly effective way to stop eating chocolate is to get a pound of M&Ms and put them in your mouth and chew them up and taste them, then spit them out, and after a while chocolate will taste awful. This would suggest there’s a lot more to liking foods than just what your taste buds (and sense of smell) say.
Edit: And how could I forget coffee. Tastes terrible in itself—decaf is utterly missing the point—but taste+buzz is something one can have strong and even discussable personal preferences on, and I just had my morning cup of something awful and went “mmmm, coffee.”
I wouldn’t ever wanna stop eating chocolate, at least delicious 80+ percent cocoa chocolate. It has little sugar but plenty of quality fats and cardioprotective and anti-inflammatory polyphenols. It’s still a bit addictive for some reason (flavor? phenylethylamine? theobromine? ) but if you eat quality chocolate daily, well, if you don’t go really overboard I imagine it’d do you no harm.
It’s a YMMV, sure. But I can see people who need to give the stuff up—though my internal model of other humans tells me they’d be horrified at the idea of doing something that would actually work to cut them off from chocolate.
Interesting. Btw, why did my old comment suddenly get two replies?
Well, I’ve been systematically (if desultorily) reading all of LW from the beginning. So I got to your comment and, given the local norm that it’s just fine to respond to a comment or post from years ago, responded to it. I presume bcoburn saw my comment in “Recent Comments”, went to your original and felt like responding too.
Is that part of what you have referred to as “internet as television”, David?
Yep! Things to read while waiting for Tomcat to finish restarting … if I’m going to use the Internet as a television, I want at least to be watching something good.
I got through the Sequences, and it occurred to me that I didn’t really understand the history of the culture of LessWrong, let alone the history of the history. So I thought reading the lot would be a nice way to approximate that. And I’m finding some fantastic posts I would never have seen without doing this.
This is, indeed, exactly what happened.
I’m eagerly awaiting years-later responses to my own early comments :-D
waves
:-)
I am doing the same right now, BTW.
In my observation the ‘lie’ operates to a significant extent on the other side of that ‘taste’ line. Sure rationalizations play a part too but to some extent ‘acquired taste’ is literally accurate. The ‘taste—status reward’ pairing actually does change what tastes good.
There really is a variety of experience in alcoholic beverages that one cannot get anywhere else. The argument that one would prefer a milkshake over wine is a weak one; even if that is universally the case, that doesn’t entail that people really don’t like wine.
Go ahead, try it with any two things. “Would you rather have an X or a Y? Oh, you’d rather have an X? Then why do you ever have Y? You must do it just for signaling, not because you really enjoy it”. Say, “Watching Heroes” versus “Watching Battlestar Galctica”. Or “Eating a cheeseburger” versus “Eating potato skins”. Or “vacationing at Hakone” versus “vacationing in Gaeta”.
Developing a taste for wine opens one up to a variety of experience not unlike developing an entirely new sense. Similarly for enjoying good beer. I admit that I first developed a taste for beer simply because no philosopher worth his salt doesn’t enjoy beer, but it’s now very enjoyable being able to distinguish between various craft styles.
I guess I forgot to mention the other premise the argument uses: Y is a lot more expensive (per unit mass or volume). Given that alcoholic drinks cost a lot more, you would think that people would only pay the premium if they thought there were something better about it.
I claim that it cannot be the taste, because the taste is clearly dominated by cheaper alternatives
Except that my other issue with alcohol is that, within a given drink class, I can’t distinguish the taste very much. All beers, for example, taste to me like sourness and bitterness that stings as it goes down. To the extent that I do discern a difference, it’s that some aren’t as painful or gross to drink. And what really perplexes me is that the least bad, most tolerable beer I’ve found is … Guiness.
Over the years, I have not noticed these wonderful subtleties. There are differences, sure, but the overwhelming bitterness and sting dominates them.
(ETA: The sting of carbonated beverages also dominated my experience when I first tried them out, which is why I didn’t regularly want them until I was about 10 and found one with enough of the right sweetness to outweigh the pain. Today, I still experience that sting.)
By the way, if want to give yourself a sixth sense, I would recommend echolocation or magnetism, which humans have been able to pick up, and which seem to have a lot more practical use.
And you prove my point. I think what happened is that you recongized a social benefit to voicing appreciation for beer, and learned all the right code words to use, and now can pattern-match beers to the right description well enough for social purposes.
The ‘deli’ down the hall from where I work sells single-serving pizzas. Crappy pizzas—nowhere near as tasty as the burritos from the co-op two blocks away, and more than twice the price. And yet, sometimes I buy them, even when the walk is not a concern.
I think you underestimate the desire for variety.
Variety would explain different drinks. It would not explain significantly-more-expensive, bad-tasting drinks.
But yes, there are many factors that go into a decision. My claim is just that the one typically given—that people like the taste of alcoholic drinks—cannot be correct.
Except that they don’t taste bad. All the milkshake question shows is that they don’t taste as good as milkshakes. Your insistence on this is puzzling.
It seems like the simplest hypothesis here is that people who claim to like the taste of alcoholic drinks are for the most part doing so because they like the taste of alcoholic drinks.
I like pepsi more than beer, and drink more pepsi than beer. I also like chicken mcnuggets more than snackwraps, and buy mcnuggets more often than snackwraps. But I still get snackwraps sometimes, even though they’re more expensive. Does it make more sense to chalk that up to signaling, or liking variety?
But my point was, this can’t account for how I describe my liking of alcohol the same way as other people, except that I conclude I don’t like the taste of alcohol, while others conclude it means they like the taste. In other words, other people AND I meet the following characteristics:
-Think milkshakes are better tasting than the best alcoholic drink.
-Enjoy the taste of alcoholic drinks when it is drowned out with some other flavor.
-Believe it changes our mental states in a good way.
-Could not comfortably chug down a alcoholic drink the way we might a milkshake.
I classify all of that as “not liking the taste of alcohol, but liking to consume it anyway”. Other people classify all of that as “liking alcohol, including its taste”. Hence the dilemma.
All that your variety examples show is that if you have too much of one thing, you’ll “tire” of it temporarily and want something else. But that’s not what people claim makes them want alcohol. They really claim it’s the taste. They really claim they spend lots of money to get that taste (think about how expensive some wines/liquors are). And they claim it can’t match the taste of milkshakes, which, contrary to your example, people don’t regularly have and aren’t tired of.
People could have all the variety they wanted, and still alcohol wouldn’t be in the top 30 drinks by taste, and people still claim they like the taste. This doesn’t make sense.
Just to add another counterexample:
I do not share this characteristic.
I’ve learned to tolerate ethanol in order to appreciate unique flavors in the alcohol itself.
I dislike all the mental effects of alcohol and would drink it more often if it lacked these effects.
Agreed, only insofar as this is a point against milkshakes. If I am drinking something for the flavor, I wish to savor it slowly; otherwise, I am drinking it for sustenance in which case if I’m drinking alcohol or milkshakes something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.
I’m pretty sure some alcoholic drinks would make it into my top 30, actually.
And yes, even if alcohol doesn’t make it into the top 30, it still makes sense. It’s entirely possible to like more than 30 things. Something not making it into my ‘top 30’ (or ‘top X’ for whatever X) doesn’t mean I don’t like it.
Also, I don’t see your list above logically implying not liking alcoholic drinks (though I couldn’t ‘chug’ a milkshake, so that might be relevant). If you add ‘I like the taste of alcoholic drinks’ I don’t see any contradiction, or even a tension, with the things you list.
Given the variety of counterarguments you have been exposed to, I would think that re-examining the claim with stricter scientific controls would be appropriate.
Really? The quality of the counterarguments doesn’t matter, just their variety?
I’m going to refer back to Science isn’t Strict Enough. The observations I’ve made simply shouldn’t happen if the predominant theory, (“People accurately describe how much they like the taste of alcohol”) were true. The fact that I didn’t set up scientific controls doesn’t change this.
If wine were really so great tasting, worth analyzing all the subtle nuances, worth paying obscene amounts for the best wines, there simply shouldn’t be a wine expert who prefers the taste of milkshakes to the taste of the best wine. That observation forces an huge update in beliefs, even before an official experiement.
If anything, the ones who should be updating are those who are suprised to see people coming out of the woodwork and admitting they actually don’t like the taste of alcohol.
*sighs*
Something which is true is true whichever way you approach it. The variety of counterarguments—all of which are good arguments, I would not cite them otherwise—shows that many angles of approach to your claim show contrary evidence. So far as I have been informed, your personal evidence is not so overwhelming as to require our contrary evidence to be explained by other means. While it is interesting that your peers predominantly prefer the flavor of milkshakes to their favorite alcoholic beverages, more than that is needed to show that millions of people are deluding themselves.
I can’t believe you’re still making this case. While I don’t personally much value the opinions of ‘wine experts’, I see no contradiction in:
Wine is great-tasting and worth spending lots of money on.
Some wine experts like the taste of milkshakes better than the taste of wine.
In fact, I would be surprised if there were no wine experts who preferred the taste of milkshakes, even if it were the case that most people prefer the taste of wine. People like many things, all at the same time, to different degrees.
I so far haven’t observed anyone acting surprised that there are people who don’t like the taste of alcohol. Straw man?
I guess you haven’t met anyone I’ve talked to in person about this...
Well, this is where we disagree. I can’t imagine there being something with such exquisite taste that I’d be willing to pay $100 just to experience that taste, when it’s not even better than a milkshake. (I have paid more than $100 for food/drinks before, I’m sure, but obviously the scenario gave me more than the taste of something delicious.)
Well clearly alcohol also gives you something more than the taste of something delicious. But your claim is that practically no one likes the taste of alcohol, and I don’t think you really have enough evidence to support that.
And yes, that is clearly where we differ. I’ve in the past paid hundreds or thousands of dollars mostly just for particular sensory experiences, and could see much wealthier people being willing to pay a lot more.
ETA: Also, I’m skeptical of a monocausal explanation of anything. It seems much more likely to me that people like both the taste and intoxicating effects of alcohol, than that they just like the effects and erroneously report liking the taste.
I prefer the taste of wine to the taste of milkshakes. I would much rather drink wine than (sickly sweet) milkshakes if given the choice between them.
If only one were on offer, though, I would drink whichever was on offer. But if I had the option to choose to pay for one or the other—I would choose to pay for wine… even if it were more expensive. I’d do this even if there were no alcohol. Even if there were no other people around to show off my status to. because it tastes better (to me) ie—it ranks higher in my preference ordering purely on taste.
It doesn’t matter how many people you find that have a different preference ordering to mine… the fact that even just one person has their preference ordering this way around says that your theory is incorrect.
I drink mostly water and sometimes fruit juice. On occasion, I buy atypically expensive alcoholic beverages, indistinguishable from other beverages of the type except in flavor and price, because I like their taste. How do you explain that?
Ethanol is not pleasant to drink. It doesn’t even have a flavor, per se, just a sharpness and the burning or stinging sensation. To appreciate the flavor of an alcoholic beverage, you must first acclimate yourself to being able to ignore the ethanol itself. Your experiences suggest that you are unable, or able only with difficulty, to become acclimated to this, and thus will likely never be able to perceive what other people are talking about.
The reason why it is worthwhile is twofold: the process of fermentation produces many complex flavors, and many flavors are far more soluble in alcohol than in water. The former provides, for instance, the complex malt flavor of dark beers, while the latter allows things like the woody flavors of a barrel-aged whiskey.
In both cases these flavors could be recreated chemically, but at great difficulty and expense, and the intersection of “people who enjoy experiencing complex, interesting flavors” and “people who actively prefer non-alcoholic beverages” is too small of a market to attract much attention.
As an aside, the vast majority of the market does drink alcohol primarily for intoxication or status, and cares little for flavor, so (at least in the USA) mass-market mainstream alcohols will always be designed to be boring and inoffensive, in order to maximize the market, thus tasting of little other than the ethanol that bothers you so.
If you want to give the whole thing another chance, I suggest finding a liquor store that caters to the beer nerd / microbrew enthusiast market and look for one of the following varieties: Belgian-style fruit lambic, Russian imperial stout, or American-style triple IPA. You probably still won’t like them, but all three tend to be so strongly flavored (and in the latter case, extremely bitter) that it actually dominates the ethanol.
I hate almost all beer. I can discern the differences between them, and there are some beers that, on some days are drinkable—and some I even get to the point of liking—but I would never pay money for beer when other alternatives are available.
Beer is low in my preference ordering.
I like wine. i can distinguish between many different kinds and i can distinguish a preference ordering that I would consider to be correlated with the “quality” of wine. There is no other way to get the flavours of wine apart from… actually drinking wine. you can’t buy an equivalent pleasure because there isn’t one. I am willing to pay for that particular pleasure.
wine is reasonably high in my preference ordering> so is cider and mead.
but sometimes I prefer cider over wine, sometimes I prefer mead over cider, and a lot of times I prefer coffee over all of them.
preferences for taste change on a daily and even hourly basis. Just like with food. Sometimes you want to go for something sweet, sometimes salty, sometimes umami… thus it goes with drinks. I rarely go for sweet—I usually prefer tangy flavours or complex interesting flavours such as that of fruit juices or red wine.
There is no way you can say that I gain no pleasure from alcoholic drinks apart from the taste. and sometimes—I gain more (temporary) pleasure from a higher-priced glass of wine than all the non-alcoholic drinks in the world… because I like the taste, and it’s exactly what I want right then at that time.
How about this:
When I was a little kid, too young to know about or process the idea that alcohol gets you high, my mom and dad drank beer. Cheap beer no less. I asked for a taste and they gave me one, thinking I wouldn’t like it. I liked it.
I remember it tasted interesting, and dazzling, like soda.
Rationalizing is still a big possibility—you wanted to drink what your parents drink.
I do not like the feeling of being intoxicated.
I very much like some wines, many beers, and a few harder liquors (rum, bailey’s, mainly).
I used to think I disliked all beers, but then I tried some again (out of politeness) and discovered the problem wasn’t that I didn’t like beer, it was that I didn’t like bad beer.
I would drink one beer with pizza whether alone or with others (though I would refrain in the presence of some people if I thought it would offend them). I hate bars.
Perhaps I’m subconsciously signaling “I am snobby,” but I think that is inconsistent with the rest of my behavior (just ask my wife what she thinks of how I dress).
Do you find this convincing?
Just a general clarification: when I refer to the mind-altering effects of alcohol, I don’t just mean intoxication, but also the relaxation effect, which usually kicks in even after just one drink.
Your situation definitely sounds more convincing, but then, you’re not in the set of people who needs to find a fake reason to drink alcohol, since you don’t seem like you’d miss much if you weren’t allowed to drink.
Are you sure your insistence on drinking one beer with pizza isn’t just force of habit though?
If all sources of alcohol spontaneously vanished, I would miss a good dark beer in much the same way I would miss any other food I enjoy. That said I would probably deal with such a hypothetical situation with less dismay than most people who like alcohol.
Just to be clear, if no beer is available (e.g., I haven’t bought any recently (at the moment there is none in my fridge and I’ve been out of it for like a month)), and I make pizza, I won’t be TOO distraught. :) It’s also something I’ve picked up fairly recently; I read somewhere that beer went well with pizza, tried it, and found that beer goes very well with pizza. :)
To elaborate a little more, my parents rarely drank (rarely = maybe twice in my lifetime), I didn’t try any alcohol until in my 20′s, and did not like the first alcohol I tried. I definitely agree that wine and beer are acquired tastes, much like coffee. I would rather drink beer than a milkshake most of the time, but that might say more about what I think of milkshakes than what I think of beer.
EDIT: I forgot to add:
I do not personally drink alcohol for the relaxation effect. Perhaps if I were in a stressful social situation I would, but I can’t say I’ve done so to date. I find the feeling of a buzz weird and interesting and do not particularly enjoy it. My skills in nearly everything I like to do are adversely affected by mental impairment, so I do not like to drink enough to cause one. Exception: if I’m with a group of friends I will drink more than I would on my own, as I know I won’t be doing anything mentally demanding.
A relatively simple way to test whether you actually like the taste of alcohol specifically: take a reasonable quantity of your favorite alcoholic beverage, beer/wine/mixed drink/whatever, and split it into two containers. Close one, and heat the other slightly to evaporate off most of the actual ethanol. Then just do a blind taste test. This does still require not lying to yourself about which you prefer, but it removes most of the other things that make knowing whether you like the taste hard.
I personally don’t care enough to try this, but just the habit of thinking “how could I test this?” is good.
How do I know that the heating doesn’t evaporate or otherwise affect stuff other than ethanol?
I don’t know for sure either way, and can’t think of an experimental way to check off hand. I don’t think that heating is likely to do anything to the other components of most drinks, and you might be able to make a better guess with domain knowledge I don’t have.
I think ethanol will generally evaporate more quickly than water, so you might also be able to get a similar test by simply closing one portion into a container with only a little air, and leaving another open for a long enough time, overnight maybe. will still lose some water, which is I guess a more real problem with heating as well.
shrug, the details weren’t really the point, just wanted to emphasize the idea of thinking of ways to test whatever you’re interested in physically instead of just reasoning about it.
AFAIK, it will utterly destroy many of the volatile components of wine that make it taste so complex and interesting. That’s why alcohol-free wine tends to be so bland and uninteresting.
I’d be willing to do a taste-test on alcohol-free wine vs wine that I already know that I like… If you hide the non-alcoholic one in sufficient number of normal ones I probably wouldn’t guess which one it was (I’m not good enough at telling which wine is which that I’d spot a particular wine by taste, just whether I like them or not).
Maybe you could try adding a little more ethanol to one of the two glasses.
I enjoy a wide range of alcoholic beverages, especially beer, wine, rye whisky and spiced rum. When it comes to wine, my preference is red, particularly Cabernet Sauvignon and Malbec from Chile and Argentina. I like to drink red wine when I’m eating steak. They are perfect complements; I would not want to drink a milkshake with a steak, or a coffee, or a can of Coke. Often, when I have steak, I only drink a glass or two of wine, not enough to produce a significant alcoholic effect. Why drink, then? Well, as I said, wine is a perfect complement to the meal. It isn’t sweet, and it can be bitter, but then steak isn’t a donut, either. They both have complex flavours that light up my pleasure centres in different ways. The smell, taste, and texture all contribute to what I call “enjoyment”. I can even take pleasure in the flavours that some people consider unpleasant. I like my steak bloody, while others won’t touch meat that isn’t charred.
The thing is, lots of people like things that other people consider negative. BDSM springs to mind; some people can’t get pleasure unless they’re being whipped, while others would actually consider it torture. Those others might say, “You don’t actually enjoy being whipped, you just enjoy the endorphin release and elevated serotonin it causes.” Well… isn’t that the same thing? I get more pleasure than simply the effect of alcohol from drinking wine, even if there are aspects to wine which may be considered unpleasant. Do I enjoy wine or just the effects of wine? I don’t see that as any different from asking whether I enjoy candy or the effects of candy, or ice cream or the effects of ice cream.
“Near-beer” is a immensely successful product. Under your theory, it would not be.
Sales of near-beer are not immense compared to regular beer, so it doesn’t pose much trouble for my theory. And certainly the theory allows for cases of people partaking in the form of alcohol consumption without the substance, once society (or their own past history) has given them a positive affect toward beer. For example, if someone likes hanging out in bars but wants to quit drinking, bars oblige such people with drinks that resemble alcoholic drinks as much as possible without them being alcoholic.
Likewise, if you’ve associated the gross taste of beer with previous good experiences, but didn’t want to get drunk, you might still want to drink alcohol, even despite the taste. The point is that it’s not the taste, but something else, that is making people drink alcohol.
Noted.
You claim that “experts” have been proven not to know the difference between expensive wine and non… but I sure can tell the difference between “wine I like” and “wine I would rather pour down the sink”, and that distinction is all that matters when it comes to me choosing wine to drink (or not).
I also second InfinitelyThirsting—if it could come without the buzz (or even just at minimal buzz) I’d prefer it. The buzz (and I would not characterise it as euphoria for me) isn’t the part that’s fun for me.
Also—yay mead (I make mead) :)
http://amazingmead.wordpress.com—the loved one’s mead blog, which I wrote the last two posts on.
Looks cool.
My main post for mead is this one: http://www.squidoo.com/mead-three-weekends which covers only basic mead-making… but fairly in-depth. I’ve been expanding the FAQs
First of all, I like to get drugged by alcohol, and feel no need to deny this fact.
That said, hard hot chocolate is tasty. Raspberry juice with creme de cacao is excellent. Champagne’s an acquired taste, but I’m fond of it—I rather suspect this could just be my brain coming to associate the pleasurable effects of the drug with the taste of champagne though.
Pleasure is pleasure, whether it comes from a taste you naturally enjoy or from your brain associating alcohol intoxication with Champagne drinking. I think much of my taste for wine (preferably red and “dry”) also comes from the knowledge that I’m putting some alcohol into my system, but it tastes decent and it’s a pleasant experience for me, so what of it?
I think you are not aware of research in acquired taste. It turns out that the effect of particular foods and drinks on psychological states create some deep subconscious associations. Take this as a clear and striking example:
“A study that investigated the effect of adding caffeine and theobromine (active compounds in chocolate) vs. a placebo to identically-flavored drinks that participants tasted several times, yielded the development of a strong preference for the drink with the compounds.[3]”
I think that’s why I do enjoy beer now, even though I thought exactly as you did several years ago. I thought it was a huge collective rationalization. Which I still think is a big part of it, specially among teenagers and young adults who like to boast about being strong drinkers and how oh-dear they love alcohol so very much. But grown up people do drink, say, one beer alone and seem to enjoy it quite a bit. But without the pleasant relaxation that usually follows, though, the taste would not be agreeable. So we see a deep neurological change in the way we process taste.
As a young man raised on gourmet foods and interesting tastes, as well as reasonably sound in my general understanding of human evo-biology let’s make two things clear:
Pleasant Taste is within reasonable limits an exact science.
Everything else is mood and “acquired taste,” I.E. pleasure center training.
Barring that, I like whisky. It has an interesting taste composition and the immediate kick and feel of the alcohol content is likewise momentarily envograting. That I afterwards get pleasantly intoxicated is merely a nice bonus.
But everyone has had some kind of pleasure centre training, so how do you tell the two things apart? Two friends of mine who were raised as vegetarians once decided to try meat (when they were in their teens), and didn’t like it.
This feels like a wrong question.
Is there even such a thing as “natural good taste?” or are there only the pleasure center configuration that newborns start out with?
I can attest to knowing several people who don’t like sweet candy or sweet things in general, even though that should be one of the “natural” preferences, and I don’t think one would have to look that much for someone who wouldn’t eat pure blubber, even though that is also one of these evolutinary encoded thingies.
So what did you mean by “Pleasant Taste is within reasonable limits an exact science”?
That statement comes from my experience in cooking. The interesting thing in gastronomy is that the spices don’t really matter as long as you don’t use too many of them.
In my own vocabulary I like to distinguish the concepts “taste” and “aroma” as pertaining to “tastebuds” and “olfactory bulb” respectively. Indeed when people say “this tastes like garlic” they mean “this smells like garlic.” This is also why unpleasant tasting things taste less unpleasant when you block your nasal passages by some means.
There are five different types of taste buds:
One kind reacts to alcohol groups on small organic molecules, i.e. fructose, glucose, aspartame, sorbitol ans so on, “sweet taste.”
One kind reacts to hydronium ions (or rather contains a direct protone channel,) “sour taste.”
One kind reacts to sodium Ions, “salt taste.”
One kind reacts to many amino acids, “savory taste.”
One kind reacts to a variety of manily toxic and some non-toxic compounds, “bitter taste.”
The interesting thing is this: If two or more of the above are balanced, the overall sensory stimulous is percieved as “pleasant.” This is why soda has acid as well as sugar content, this is why kitchen salt is almost universally used (especially many kinds of meat which usually only needs salt), this is why coffee goes well with sugar and milk (milk neutralizes some of the otherwise high acid content).
Once your dish has the five basic tastes in balance you can literally add any aromas to it and it will still taste “pleasant.”
A few things:
The working of taste buds varies from person to person, too: IIRC there’s a substance which tastes extremely sweet to some people but nearly flavourless to others.
There are other sensations in the mouth than the five basic tastes, e.g. the hotness of ethanol and capsaicin and the coldness of mint.
What “balanced” means depends on what you’re used to, to some extent: if I get used to put lots of salt on everything, when I don’t anything tastes insipid, and conversely if I get used to use very little salt, the reverse happens. (Hell, even if I get used to drinking high-mineral bottled water then low-mineral tap water will taste bitter to me, and conversely now that I usually drink tap water, some bottled water tastes salty to me.)
In as far as I have ever heard that is only the case with bitter taste which is a far more compound tastebud. I would like to see any studies on a supertaster in terms of sweetness.
These are triggerings of of the cold, heat and pain receptors which are completely different from taste receptors. If you want to argue that you have to argue consistency and texture of the foodstufss as well. I am presenting a simplified view, akin to if you just sprayed flavoured liquid onto the tongue and measured neural activity in the olfactory bulb and taste buds. If you aren’t used to eating capsaicin the heat and pain sensations completely overpower the tastes and aromas, if you are used to it, we are again reduced to balancing the five basic taste sensation.
Yes, but that is returning to neural artifacts of individuals, is it not?
Sure, so long as you acknowledge that neural artifacts of the same individual can change with time.
You apparently replied to one of my retracted posts.
I no longer agree with the opinion stated by my past self; though good point.
I’m sure that culture/status/history of (especially) wine (but also whisk(e)ys and, increasingly beers) do play a significant role in the enjoyment thereof. This is plainly true if you look at wine bottle closures: even though a screwcap provides superior taste in many cases, a lot of people say they just prefer the ritual of uncorking.
Until we develop a drug that blocks the psychoactive effects of ethanol, I think it will be nigh impossible to convince you that wine is superior to milkshakes on taste alone in some cases. (Incidentally, teetotaler Penn Jillette agrees with you 100%: his quote is “wine will never taste as good as a Coke”.)
That said, I could give you* a white wine and goat cheese pairing that I laugh at the ability of any milkshake to rival in sheer sensual pleasure.
*I don’t mention it here only because it would take a bit of digging for me to find out what it was; upon request I will, though.
I can’t believe no one has asked for this yet. Please?
Isn’t a lot of the appeal of Coke due to the caffeine? The fact that it’s mostly drunk cold or with ice could suggest that the inherent flavor isn’t ideal.
This doesn’t explain why people drink beer.
To me beer tastes and smells Terrible. I’d rather have hard lemonade, or vodka mixed with almost anything but beer.
But up until a couple of years ago I also didn’t like coffee. So I think that both beer and coffee are an acquired taste. (um, yeah and coffee isn’t a drug at all...)
The taste of certain wines reminds me pleasantly of my catholic childhood.
But yeah, people like the taste of other things they use to mask and dilute the alcohol, otherwise they’d just take shots of high-proof vodka.
Possible counterpoint to that: Any flavoring would be nasty when concentrated. Perhaps water with a small amount of alcohol would have a noticeable pleasant flavor. (but be useless for intoxication)
Indeed. There’s a drink called a “White Rain” some friends of mine invented in college:
It’s pretty good, and tastes mostly like really refreshing water. Note: the measurements above are best guesses, as the original recipe is based on the cups at Conn Hall at SCSU. If it tastes like cough syurp, you did something wrong.
Couple of thoughts upon reading this thread.
I, too, do not like the taste of alcohol and feel no real desire to seek it out as a tasty food. I’ll admit, though, that I also don’t like to consume things that reduce cognitive function, so it’s possible I don’t like the taste as a side effect, but I rather doubt it.
Now, I do like champagne, but usually only the stuff that costs $150 a bottle. I say this having found out the prices only after I tried the champagne and liked it: since I like it, I want to know what it is. There are probably also expensive champagnes that don’t taste as good, I’ve just never looked for them, but high price does seem to be a necessary condition for good champagne. To be fair to the post’s original request, though, I have to admit that I like these champagnes because they are “smooth”: they have no alcohol burn and don’t smell or taste like they have alcohol in them, so I might as well have sparkling cider.
Finally, note that until the 20th century people drank much larger quantities of alcohol than today because it was needed to make water safer to drink. If you could afford it, adding a little wine or grain alcohol to the water would go a long way towards reducing the chance of infection from water-borne illnesses. So in those times people probably enjoyed the taste because they became accustomed to it early in life, much the way Americans love tomato ketchup and coke although adults from other parts of the world, when introduced to these flavors, often do not.*
*I can’t find a source for this, but I know I’ve heard it several places. Maybe it’s just a modern myth?
This leads to one inescapable conclusion: for the vast proportion of human history, everyone in the world was completely hammered pretty much all the time. When you think about it in that light, most of history suddenly makes a great deal more sense.
A lot of the beer they drank throughout the day was ’small beer”—made from a second run of water through the mash… it was about as alcoholic as modern-day ginger beer. So—yeah, they did spend a lot of their time more intoxicated than us… but not totally smashed all the time.
I’ve taken lately to the sort of pub that has 2% mild, so I can sop up extravagant quantities of it without getting plastered.
Small beer goes down quite nicely (even for somebody that doesn’t like beer like me). It’s kind of like cordial—but without being sickly sweet.
I also made “small currant wine”once- which was also nice, but not as good as straight currant wine… but does let you drink a whole lot more of it during a hot day.
Relevant.
I also don’t have sources to hand, but I’m informed by my brewing+chemist friends that the amount of alcohol in beer is not sufficient to sterilise the liquid.
however the people of ancient times weren’t wrong… beer is sterilised (and thus safe to drink) - it’s because to make beer, you have to boil the mash. The boiling sterilises it quite effectively.
To me, alcohol has neither taste or smell, but does have a definite tactile experience in the mouth; I like beer; the first glass of wine is ok but after the second it all tastes to me like bad wine; vanilla is *V*A*N*I*L*L*A*, not plain at all; I don’t seek out ferociously hot curries.
Now cheese, that’s gross.
Conclusion: people vary.
And of course people use alcohol to get high. What they put up with is not the taste, but the hangover the next day. And, er, this.
I like sour and bitter drinks, so I would drink Strongbow (hard apple cider) even if it contained no alcohol. In fact, I’d rather it contained no alcohol (ETA: but tasted the same) -- I would drink more of it at one sitting. (I also like tonic water straight up, beer, and de-alcoholized beer.)
Two questions:
1) Why do you think the taste of Strongbow is so hard to mimic in a non-alcoholic version? Is it a hard problem for chemistry, or something no one wants to try?
2) Would you be able to distinguish alcoholic vs. non-alcoholic versions in a blind test?
1) I don’t know if the taste is hard to mimic in a non-alcoholic version. I think the most likely reason no non-alcoholic version is available is because it wouldn’t make enough money.
2) It’s hard to say, but I’d put my chances at better than 50%. I base this on my strong confidence that I can tell beer and de-alcoholized beer apart.
1) Bingo. People don’t see the alcohol as a downside the way they see fat/sugar/carbs as a downside, so there’s no multibillion dollar industry trying to find the perfect mimic, because that fundamentally misunderstands people’s motivations in drinking alcohol.
2) As per 1), your experience has only been with meager attempts to create the perfect mimic. I’d be interested in hearing the results of you doing a blind test.
But just to clarify: as in all cases dealing with large populations, certainly a non-trivial fraction of people really does enjoy the taste, in and of itself, and you could be one of them. It’s just that people who genuinely enjoy the taste per se cannot be common enough to generate the observed data.
There’s a major confounder here: the hardest, least flavorful drinks are also often the lowest-status (ie: cheap vodka and gin are viewed as poison for inveterate alcoholics).
But I’ll answer anyway: I enjoy the almost honey-like taste of a really smooth, high-quality Scotch on the rocks. Yes, you have to put the ice cubes in, otherwise you won’t water it down enough to release the flavor and you’ll just taste alcohol and alcohol fumes. And it has to be good Scotch.
Other alcoholic drinks I enjoy: full-bodied, unacidic wines; fruity wines (Gerwurtzterminer and Riesling are favorites… yes I know white wine is low-status for men, shut up jerk); porters, especially coffee-flavored porters, red ales, and even the occasional blond ale. Hot wine, especially hot mulled wine, is really excellent once you learn how to avoid breathing in the fumes and instead taste the flavor released by the heating. Lager is drinkable but mostly just “carbohydrate-flavored” to me, and I consider vodka, arak, and brandy godawful. Oh, and hard ciders are excellent, not only because the well-made ones pack plenty of flavor from the fruit and spices, but because they’re sufficiently nonalcoholic that they offend the taste-buds and dull the mind even less than beer.
For reference, I also enjoy massively spicy food, to the point that my flatmates often urge me to open the kitchen window after cooking a curry. I figure, if someone likes spicy food, and also likes drinks that burn while getting you a bit intoxicated, that’s not actually too incongruous.
I do think your thesis holds mostly true for heavy drinking of cheap, flavorless beverages with the purpose of getting drunk, as I myself am completely baffled why some cultures or subcultures have social norms in favor of reaching for drunkenness levels I’ve never seen anyone actually enjoy. It mostly seems to be an excuse for bad behavior they’re too inhibited to engage in without alcohol as an excuse, an effect that shows up when you give them placebo alcohol as part of a control group.
Personally, I also kinda hate being severely drunk, as it makes me sleepy and sentimental, and nowadays the sentiment comes out as melancholy for being in a long-distance relationship.
Anyway, that’s my overly long social confession for the evening. Gym time!
Convincing people over internet in matters of taste is a lost cause X-D but I think I can unpack some of my alcohol preferences.
I’ll leave all the psychoactive effects outside of this little exposition.
I drink a variety of alcohol—mostly wine and beer, sometimes hard liquor, rarely cocktails—and I rather doubt I do it for status signalling reasons since the majority of my drinking happens inside my home. I drink it for the taste.
Mostly I drink with food and that’s a large part the taste synergy. Let me give specific examples. I prefer high-tannin high-acidity red wines with grilled meat. I find that this pairing works very well (note that my red wine varies but usually costs around $10/bottle, so it’s not anything hoity-toity). In the summer I like green vine (vinho verde) from Portugal which is light and very acidic. It is precisely this high acidity that I want from it and it delivers.
My taste in beers changes over time. Some time ago I really liked double bocks and Belgian dubbels. Then they started to taste too sickly sweet to me, so I changed to IPAs for a bit. But then they became too hoppy and I went to English and Scottish ales. At the moment I am kinda in-between stages and mostly drink porters.
Do note that as far as I can see, all this is driven by taste—I drink mostly at home and I have no idea what beer might or might not be in fashion at the moment (so no status signaling) and I don’t care about alcohol content of the beer.
All in all, averaging over different situations, I probably drink 70% for the taste, 25% for the psychoactive effects, and 5% for status (I will decline all offers of Bud Light and such and may roll my eyes at the offer X-D)
How should I do that? Will you fMRI my brain while I’m drinking it?
(Also the “that happens to also signal your social status” part doesn’t apply to me. I don’t like most spirits, I don’t think I would be able to tell vodka from a mixture of pure water and ethanol in a blind test, but there are quite a few relatively cheap wines and beers I do like, as well as some expensive wines I hate.)
I’m still disappointed that wine doesn’t taste like sparkling cider, a drink that’s designed to look like wine but taste good.
This is all just pure speculation on my part, but it seems likely to me that drinking alcoholic beverages conditions us to like the taste after we’ve learned to associate the taste with the relaxation/intoxication effect. After a long enough learning period, we do come to like the taste, but the underlying reason would be the taste-effect link.
In fact, there’s a much better example of a similar process, namely smoking cigarettes. I think it’s pretty much undeniable that objectively the taste of cigarette smoke is bad. Almost every smoker remembers that the taste of cigarette was awful at the beginning. And certainly all non-smokers who have tasted cigarette can attest to this. Also, those that have quit smoking and started it again, almost always report that smoking tastes bad for a while.
But smokers eventually learn to like the taste of cigarette and it’s very likely that this is only because our brains learn to associate the taste with the quick and effective rush that the nicotine gives.
I would suggest that similar learning process is going on with drinking alcohol. The learning isn’t quite as effective as it is with smoking, because the effect isn’t so fast, but it’s effectively the same mechanism.
There’s also the hypothesis that something similar is going on with learning to like flavors in food. An idea that is put forward at least by Seth Roberts. We learn to like flavors because of their association with calories they give. (With sugar being the odd exception that tastes good to us without any learning process.)
If all this is true—that you learn to like the taste of alcohol because of this type of (unconscious!) associative learning—I don’t know what it implies about SilasBarta’s claim. Because in a way, the taste will become good given that you’ve trained your brains to like it. But for anyone tasting a certain flavor of alcohol for first time, the taste will certainly be dominantly bad. (Unless it’s some sort of candy drink, that mostly hides the taste of alcohol itself.)
I would drink white russians if they were non-alcoholic. I almost never have more than one because I don’t actually want to feel any of the effects of alcohol, I just want a white russian. I also drink them alone.
I have to agree! For a while, I was also puzzled by the same thing. I thought alcohol tastes gross, so why are so many people into it?
That its other effects could be such a big deal I came to realize much later.
I rather enjoy the taste of a Brown Cow, which is Creme de Cacoa in Milk. Then again, I’m sure I’d prefer a proper milkshake. Generally, if I drink an alcoholic beverage its for the side effects.
I tried for a long time to find an alcoholic drink I like in the assumption that I was missing out on something everyone else was privy too. While I did find some drinks I liked, I decided that it was the high sugar or fat content (rum & coke or a white russian) that I liked, and not the alcohol. Since that is the only part I like, it is much cheaper and healthier to achieve the same taste with non-alcoholic drinks and artificial sweeteners.
I have a theory about alcohol consumption; I call people who like (or don’t mind) the taste “tongue blind.” My theory is that these people have such poor taste receptors that they need an overly strong stimulus to register anything other than bland. Under this theory, I would expect people that like alcohol to also like very spicy food, to put extra salt most things they eat, and to think that vanilla is a synonym for plain.
Vanilla is a synonym for “plain” when it’s artificial (i.e. the vanillin molecule and nothing else). Actual vanilla is obviously a whole different beast.
If people who liked wine had such dead tastes buds or (more realistically) noses, why would they bother to make up such elaborate flavors? (In particular, if it were only about status-signaling, the move from old-style wine description (“insouciant but never trite”) to the new style (“cassis, clove and cinnamon with a whiff of tobacco and old leather”) seems very strange.)
My personal experience in general doesn’t jive with your theory, except for one point: people who like alcohol tend to have a high tolerance for bitter things, and therefore also like very dark chocolate (I personally am an exception to this, however).
ETA: the software converted my 0-indexed list to a 1-indexing. How sad.
You seem to have stumbled onto the existence of supertasters. As a supertaster myself, I find tonic water extremely bitter, must overly sweeten my coffee and can’t stand grapefruit juice or spinach. I delight in the sharp sting of a good beer, though. Conversely, there are “nontasters” who have a greater tolerance for strong tastes.
I’m afraid that doesn’t mesh well with my experiences. I would actually suspect the opposite; it seems like people who “don’t like wine” are missing the nuances between different wine flavors and so I would have guessed they have a worse sense of taste.
For reference, I like some alcohol, do not like lots of salt, and sometimes take violent offense to calling vanilla ‘plain’.