This week author Randy Mosher joins me to discuss how your senses and brain work together to create the overall flavor and impression from beer and other beverages.
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Topics in This Week’s Episode (52:51)
- This week I welcome back Randy Mosher. Randy is the author of the books Mastering Homebrew, Radical Brewing, and Tasting Beer. (Full disclosure: Amazon affiliate links to books) He’s also partner in two breweries near Chicago Five Rabbit and Forbidden Root.
- We start with a short discussion of Randy’s new website which is at RandyMosher.com. We also briefly talk about his previous book on Tasting Beer and upcoming book “Your Tasting Brain”.
- We begin this week’s topic with a discussion of “multimodality” and how that describes the operation of our brain and senses.
- Randy describes our main senses used in detecting flavor which are taste, smell and touch. We explore how the raw inputs from the senses are rapidly combined and distilled automatically by the brain.
- He explains how smell, taste, and mouthfeel are all combined together to create the perception we call flavor and how a lot of information is distilled down along the way.
- We talk about the brain’s overall architecture and how that architecture significantly affects the way we perceive the world.
- Randy tells us about how the brain uses shortcuts and mental models to distill down a complex world and also to deal with an overload of information coming into our somewhat limited brains.
- We discuss how these factors along with memories and mental models play into our overall perception of flavor.
- Randy discusses judging beer and how it takes serious concentration as well as experience to be able to break down complex flavors into individual tastes and smells. In some sense a judge is trying to break down the simplification made by the brain.
- We discuss how the cognitive and even unseen mental models play a significant role in flavor perception. Small things like words, background music, sounds, mood, lighting, and sight all can change our perceived flavor.
- Randy discusses “the wierd stuff” and how sometimes simple inputs create complex perceptions in the brain or create outcomes we do not expect.
- He shares where to find more about his upcoming book – mainly through the website RandyMosher.com
- Randy shares his closing thoughts.
Sponsors
- Thank you to our sponsor Craft Beer and Brewing Magazine for sponsoring this episode. I encourage you to subscribe to their great magazine!
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