I see people doing this and analyzing it for significant amounts of time, 10 seconds, 20 seconds plus. They’re often making statements about it or trying to exactly describe the facets of its colour.
It seems bizarre and pretentious to me. Inhaling deeply and spending time trying to analyze aroma is not pretentious as it takes time and has stages. When I look at a beer I see its colour, gauge its carbonation, clarity etc in a matter of seconds. If anything I can do that with it sitting on the table, not holding it up with 3 fingers to a light or something.
I wouldn’t hold it up to the light for 20 seconds but I do hold it up to see the clarity. To be honest, many times that I pull a pint in my basement bar I hold it up to see how clear it is. I don’t necessarily inhale deeply, etc. but I do like to have clear beer. If a beer is set down on a bar or table you may not see how clear it really is. All that said, I am not a fancy-schmancy, ritzy-titzy beer guy trying to describe the subtle flavors or aromas or trying to perfectly match a beer to food… but I am interested in how the beer looks. After all, we have made this product. We spent time designing the recipe, brewing the beer and we’re interested to see how well we did it.
i meant these times without exaggeration. 5 seconds is a fair time to see the colour, clarity and carbonation. i see a lot of beer review clowns and wine people holding it up for significant amounts of time. Sad. Very Sad!
We “taste” with our eyes first - so I love to admire a clear beer and give thought to a less than clear beer, many of which taste perfectly fine and get additional views and thought as I consume them. I am not pretentious about that, but we have a very popular thread about posting pics of beers for this very reason.
People do that to see how clear it is. When they swirl it a round it’s to see the legs and open up the wine/ whiskey. Aroma is also a part of the tasting. Most people who do that either are pro taster/judges or do reviews on YouTube. I personal only smell or taste like that is before bottling to make sure the beer is done fermenting.
I have friends who are strictly Bud Light drinkers. No judgement here, whatever makes them happy is fine with me. But I’ve definitely heard jokes about people smelling their beer. I don’t think any aspect of getting information about a beer, wine, etc. is inherently pretentious. There are definitely characteristics that some people find important that others don’t.
Yeah, I was going to mention that… people who always drink the same beer (regardless of what it is) don’t have to inhale deeply because they already know what the beer tastes and smells like. Homebrewers are often using different/new hops and we might put together a recipe with late additions, or WP/DH additions and when we take that first pint we want to know if that new hop variety has a nice aroma. We may continue doing that as the keg disappears just to see how the hops are holding up. If a beer geek (ahem… beer enthusiast) was in a bar or brewpub they might take a good sniff just to see if they could gauge how fresh the beer was. With new beer styles, craft beers, etc. come new ways of checking their look and flavor. Back when it was just Strohs in a can… it wasn’t necessary.
Likely not for a full 20 seconds but for several seconds definitely. Sometimes I’m evaluating a beer (competition setting, to give feedback to a fellow brewer, or analyzing my own product) and the visual gives me useful information as part of the whole. If it’s a beer I made sometimes I’m not so much evaluating it as saying to myself “Job well done old boy - that’s a thing of beauty!” But also I just enjoy looking at a beer. May sound weird to some but I think beer is beautiful - I appreciate the colors contributed by various grains, think about the recipe that went into the glass of beer I’m holding, think about the art and skill of the brewer, a yes just enjoy the hue of the beer be it a garnet, deep brown, orange amber hue, crystal clear golden, or cloudy yellow. Holding a beer up to allow a light source to shine through it allows me to see it’s true color, unmuted. I’m surrounded by beauty and I pause to appreciate it from time to time. In my case this is not done to impress anyone - I generally try to be self aware and not be a pretentious bore but also don’t hide the fact that I know a bit about beers and like to take time to appreciate them. I drink first with my eyes.
Sometimes it can just reflect formal training - some wine training puts a lot of emphasis on colour, and you can learn quite a bit about a wine from colour - it varies a lot with age for instance. Also you can get an idea of the viscosity of wine when you swirl it, and even the ABV from the ‘legs/tears’ of wine. So it can be a bit of a reflex if you’ve learnt to do that in a formal setting - and you also get more of an appreciation of the “pretty” ones as has been mentioned.
All of this. Beer is beautiful. Especially a beer that you made yourself but not always… I have been to Vienna and Prague and Munich and I’m sure I stared at beers that I felt lucky to be in front of. You don’t just drink beer or make beer… you LIVE beer. :D That should probably be on a t-shirt.
really good replies. i wasnt sure if i should make this thread or not, but am glad of the answers above (mostly).
i think its just the fact that my life has been too go go go (stop for 30 minutes and have beer) go go for a while to spend as much time as i used to analyzing a beer in a glass in front of me.
i rarely assign much value to colour when designing a beer other than very general categories of light beer/medium/dark beer
There are things that can happen during the brewday that can impact color (for better or worse) and so if I’m off a little bit on color, I’m usually not concerned. But what I envision in my head is what I want to see in the glass. Tomorrow I’m making [what I call] a hoppy blonde ale. SRM of 5 or so. Late Santiam hops. What I envision is a clear, gold beer with a nice thick, foamy head on it. Beers with no head or beers that are cloudy (when they shouldn’t be) make me stabby. :D It should look something like this…
The very first thing I do after pouring a glass of beer is to examine it under light, judging the clarity.
I guess that is just another reason Cloudy Pale Ales (or any cloudy beer) is not my cup of tea. Valid or invalid, clarity in many light beer styles is a sign to many beer drinkers of QC.
I would not be caught dead in public or the frigging internet holding my beer up to the light for twenty seconds but I do at home. Occasionally mesmerized by a beauty but more likely trying to figure out what isn’t quite right.
