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.
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.