Free The Naked Pint by Christina Perozzi

fulfilling this art requirement.

Celestial Bodies: Understanding the Mouthfeel of Beer
    A s the word implies, mouthfeel is the sensation of how a liquid or food feels in your mouth. The term refers to its body, its consistency; how it feels on your tongue, how it hits the sides of your mouth, the back of your throat, your nasal passage (sexy, isn’t it?). It is a textural, tactile descriptor that encompasses the experience of a beverage or a food. It is subjective and varies from person to person. We’ve all used many familiar words to describe the mouthfeel of whatever we are consuming; a cup of coffee is sharp, a soup is heavy, a glass of Champagne is refreshing, a Pinot Noir is dry, a soda is crisp, a Chardonnay is creamy. These descriptions are extremely popular in the beer world, and mouthfeel is a common word found in beer reviews. A beer’s mouthfeel is influenced by all of its contents: carbonation, hops, malt, alcohol, water, yeast, and adjuncts and flavorings. You know about these ingredients by now, so let’s consider how they affect the mouthfeel and experience of the beer. Let’s work it out.
Carbonation
    You’ve all had this experience with a bottle of soda: You open it, it’s prickly (almost unbearably so), and it tastes refreshing, light, crisp, and sweet. Leave that bottle out for a while, and we all know what happens: The loss of carbonation brings out more of the sweetness in the soda, it gets syrupy and loses some of that refreshing feeling, and it becomes weighty, almost a dessert. This is because those little soda bubbles break up that syrupy sweetness; they balance out a heavy feeling, lifting up the flavors and the sugar. Sweetness in beer is affected in a similar way by the carbonation. The bubbles of carbonation in beer often balance out the sweetness of the malt, giving a lift to the alcohol and sugar. In a hoppy beer, the carbonation can keep the beer from tasting too bitter, enhancing the crisp and astringent feeling of the hops in the mouth. And the bold fruity aromatics of many hops are carried to the nose by those little bubbles. Beers with a high ABV can mask the alcohol with a good amount of carbonation. Think of how the soda in a whisky and soda masks some of the heat and high alcohol of the liquor.
    On the flip side, Cask Ale or Real Ale (see page 94) tends to have less carbonation than other beers, and this can be a benefit. In fact, some beer experts will tell you to let the beer open up (yes, just like wine) and lose some of that carbonation to allow more flavor to come through. Think of carbonation as a distraction; sometimes it helps divert your attention away from an unwanted mouthfeel of potentially cloying malt or the heat from high alcohol. Other times, excess carbonation could hinder you from tasting the nuanced, toasty flavor of a subtle British ESB. Whether the distraction is a good or bad thing depends on the beer style and what the brewer thinks brings out its best components.
Hops
    As you know, the brilliant tiny cone-shaped hops flowers do a lot for a glass of beer. As we said in Chapter 1, the hardworking hops can add dryness or bitterness, right? Well, think of how you determine if something is dry or bitter. When you suck a lemon, your whole mouth is involved; you make that crazy pouty face and feel a shock throughout your taste buds, in the back of your throat, and in your nasal passages. This is the total mouthfeel experience of astringency. In beer, usually most of the same puckery astringency comes from the hops and can affect your mouth in a similar, if not so extreme, fashion. If the beer is simply dry because of the hops, it can have a clean, crisp mouthfeel, leaving the taste buds without any residual flavors and cloying sweetness. The dryness can also balance out high alcohol or sweetness in the same way carbonation can. This is often the primary function of hops, offering a balance to sweetness in the same way that tannins in wine offer a balance to the