Recently, while tasting beer with a brew master in Brussels – take that alliteration – the son tried to explain to us what made a Lambic style of beer special. We may have looked genuinely impressed (which we were) for he went into the back room and after a bit of rummaging, produced a bottle containing some very intense yellow liquid. We were told it was three years old. We were also told that it was beer. What we were not told, however, was that it was absolutely flat. No gas whatsoever. But upon tasting it, the beer was found to be superbly sour, so sour that it felt prickly, almost tingling the tongue, and nobody once noticed the missing effervescence.
It was fantastic! Trouble was it was a near-dying breed of beers. Takers of such sour beers were few and only dwindling. Only recently had Americans caught on to this taste and were growing it, touting it as the next big item on the scene since the hipster beard. But, even though it survives, it remains mostly niche with boutique appeal and it may be a long time, an era even, before sour beers become mainstream.
While we were sadly ruminating over this, the father brewer walked by and in one simple statement made us feel appalled, amazed, and apologetic: “Today people like sweet too much; it ruins the palate. Tastes are getting simpler, people are getting lazier.” A few decades of wisdom, distilled down to a few phrases, just like that! The thought lingered and I came back and researched the topic some more.
The decline of not just sour beer but every other form of drink – tannic wines, bitter coffee and dry teas – that is today deemed crude and blamed on incorrect processing methodology is in fact more linked with human evolution both physical and socio-cultural than it is with factors merely tactile.
This process of simplification (also known as dumbing down) probably began with the discovery of fire. Man found a very crucial tool in making food more sapid. As he progressed and mastered this energy source, he honed his skills, and each generation produced food that was more flavourfully pleasing than before. But it also led to an evolution of our palates, not as much an improvement as much a habitual instinct to prefer this current food over the earlier versions.
You see, the thing is, man, by intrinsic nature, is a lazy animal. He will do anything as long as it cuts effort and maximises comfort. Cooking food that is easy to decipher for flavour and making drinks that don’t perturb the palate much is just another extension of this inherent ennui.
Today, we stand on a precipice and should we tip over, the fall is not a lot way down but it is certainly down. “Tastes are changing,” is really just another way of saying people are preferring comestibles that need less thought and adjusting to. Time runs fast and a person would rather go with the easy than invest time in accommodating for new tastes.
Not that I should be the one to point this out, hypocrite that I have been so far: I rejected my dad’s creation ‘bottle gourd juice’ (yes you read that right) for the longest time till I recently tried it and realised that I don’t mind it half as much as the idea of it. Since then, there have been others: Raki, dark beers, even Fernet Branca! Vodka, I admit, I still don’t get.
For you cher reader, the lesson of the fortnight is this: shake it up, step out of your comfort zone. Try something new, something that you would never bother with otherwise. Make it or order it, but sip it, try and inculcate a new taste. White wine lovers try red, red lovers, white. And wine haters, raise a toast with Champagne! Open up your senses, they have long been living under a stone, let them wake up and resurrect flavour to as it once used to be.
