Not good enough.

Tonight I’m making an example out of myself. I’ve been saving a bottle of New Belgium Mighty Arrow Pale Ale from the latest New Belgium mix pack to review. I like the brewery a lot, and there aren’t many reviews of the beer yet on the beer websites, so I thought I’d put one up. I only have one bottle left, and I’m not stumping up for another mix pack anytime soon, having coughed up for three new sixtels in the past two months, so this was my shot.

The review process started just fine. Got my typical objective and not too flowery description of the appearance of the beer, and then took a big whiff and got . . . next to nothing. A bit of malt, no real hop at all. Hmmm. The beer is quite fresh, so that’s not the issue. Fortunately, I’ve already consumed the other two bottles from the mix pack and know that it’s a rather lovely APA, with some characteristic New Belgium toasty malt notes. It’s not the beer that’s subpar – it’s me!

Why? Who knows. I’m not congested at all. I don’t feel like I’m coming down with anything. Maybe it’s the olive oil from the pasta salad I had for dinner, or some residual funk from the strawberries and yogurt I had for dessert (even though those were hours ago). Maybe it’s a subtle allergic reaction from being out in nature for two hours tonight during my son’s (first!) T-ball game. Regardless of what it is, my nose and palate are simply not good enough tonight to draft a review of this beer. So, I won’t.

But here is a peek into the myth of the tasting note. If I’d never had this beer before, could I tell that it was my palate and not the beer that was not good enough? I don’t pretend that I could.

How many beer, wine and whisky reviews out there arise from much less than perfect circumstances like I experienced tonight? I’d venture to say almost every one of them. Whether it’s the sample of the beverage is not representative in some way (corked, oxidized, heat damaged, old, too warm or cold, etc.), the setting is flawed (too many small samples too quickly considered, palate fatigue, etc.), or some other extraneous factor (utter falsification, reputation/rarity bias, etc.) skews the results, reviews are not and can not be considered definitive. They are a snapshot of a sample tasted at a moment by a person under the particular combination of circumstances (flaws and all) then existing.

When one adds in the myriad personal human quirks of each and every taster, whether biases or ailments, or simply what they had for lunch or dinner, reliance on tasting notes for anything more than the most general of guidance for things one might like to taste (and taste repeatedly before passing judgment, I’d add) is absurd. And I’ll gladly present myself and any note I’ve ever written as Exhibit A.