BellaOnline Forums Food and Wine Beer & Brewing How do you acquire a taste for beer?

Beer is real seductive drink which is on my first preference when it takes light and a fine appetizer giver when their is a roast cuisine.

I was the same way before moving to Colorado. I have been living here for over 10 years and I enjoy drinking beer now. I suggest starting with a microbrewery beer, low in alcohol, and least hoppy. I started with stouts that were carbonated with nitrogen which makes the beer so much smoother and creamier. I have just started liking the hop flavor which is probably why you don't like the taste of beer. Go to your local microbrewery and order a taster set, this way you can taste beers in small amounts instead of buying a pint than wasting it because you don't like the taste. It does take time to find which beers you enjoy drinking. You might never acquire the taste for beer but try mead or wine instead.

I had an interesting experience this past weekend. I was presenting "Beer Camp for Women" at the Atlantic City Beer Festival. It was a mini-seminar that taught 10 little tips about beer. During the show, we paired super-foods with beer. Oranges with witbier or Pale IPA, Brown-Sugar coated Walnuts and Almonds with Black IPA, Oatmeal Cookies (made with beer) with Oatmeal Stout, and Dark Chocolate with Framboise.

Since it was "for women," only women got seats. Some men were on the perimeter, trying to take it all in. At the end of one session, I asked one of the guys if he would like a cookie. "It's made with beer..." I sang. He said he didn't like beer - he was there for his girlfriend.

Then he decided to cautiously try the cookie. After 2 bites, he asked to try it with the "matched" beer - Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout. When he tasted the combo, his eyes got real wide.

"This is delicious! he said. "I didn't know!" he continued, as his girlfriend quipped, "See? I told you."

He then decided to always have beer with food, concluding that not doing so was a mistake.

[quote=Carolyn-Beer & Brewing Editor]How do YOU acquire a taste for beer and its many varied and international styles? Beer is universal. It has existed in different forms and styles - even within some of the most obscure nations of the world - for 10,000 years which says a lot for its seductive side. When I started to discover the different sides of beer, I "thought" I did not like many of them. My tastes, however, have changed. I am not a big fan of beer. I think it takes some time to acquire the taste of beer. Thanks for sharing this information. I have seen debates about whether beer should be lightly tasted, or guzzled in large quantities; whether beer or wine are better with food; whether the purpose of beer drinking is to catch a serious "buzz", or lightly lubricate social interaction; and comments, from some, that beer fills them with gas or imparts a heavy hangover. I came across a great comment about beer from Beer Hunter Michael Jackson's first article in Playboy Magazine - from August 1983 - called "Beer Chic." In it, he says, "There are easy tastes and difficult ones. What comes easily can quickly disappoint. Many of the best things in life are acquired tastes: oysters, steak tartare, marrons glaces. Like sex, good beer is a pleasure that can better be appreciated with experience, in which variety is both endless and mandatory. The pleasure lies, too, in gaining the experience: the encounters with the unexpected, the possibility of triumph or disaster, the pursuit of the elusive, the constant lessons, the bittersweet memories that linger." So I ask again, how do YOU acquire a taste for beer and its many varied and international styles? [/quote]