Miracle Fruit and Beer

After reading the Mad Fermentationist’s blog titled “Miracle Fruit Sour Beer Tasting”, I bought some Miracle Fruit Tablets and decided to try them out at the Portland International Beerfest 2010.

I didn’t consume a miracle fruit pill when I first got there, as there were some things I wanted to taste as is without altered tastebuds. It was when I got a Franziskaner Dunkel-Weisse beer that I finally tried out one of the pills. I didn’t really make that many notes regarding this beer ahead of time, simply stating, “Eh, it is beer.” So even after five 4 oz samples of cider, mead, and fruit beers, I wasn’t really caring to drink beer. Then I took the miracle fruit pill, and then tried the Franziskaner Dunkel-Weisse. It tasted better to me, and I was starting to pick up more creamy and caramel notes, which were probably already there but hidden. Since sourness was being toned down and replaced with sweetness, these characteristics were coming though stronger to me.

Since there were a lot of sour beers there, I tried New Belgium La Folie. I turned to my husband and said, “Wow, this beer must be really sour, because this is syrupy sweet to me right now!” In fact, it was almost too much so, but it was good. When we came back the next day, my husband got a sample of the La Folie again, and it was really sour, but I could still detect the syrup taste on the edges. Again, it was probably always there, but the sourness just put it into balance, and once it was stripped away and converted to sweetness, the syrup taste became dominate.

With my altered taste buds, my husband got 21^st Amendment Double Trouble Imperial IPA, which is a very hoppy beer, too hoppy for my husband. When I tried it with my altered taste buds, I pushed it away. My husband was shocked, “You can still taste that?” “Yes.” He was a little disappointed, as he hoped that with my altered taste buds that I would like it and drink it for him! Also, if I liked it, I might start drinking more beer with him. Now, everyone has different tastes, and everyone reacts differently to the miracle fruit, but this experience is why I believe the CSI: New York got it wrong when they said it makes bitter foods sweet, as the IPA was still very bitter to me.

In hind sight, I should have gone and gotten a porter, which are typically less hoppy and more creamy with chocolate or coffee notes, but I did not think of it at the time. I’ll have to have a miracle fruit tasting sometime in the future, so I’ll try an remember then. I’m excited!

My Results of Supertaster Tests

My husband asked me what was so good about being a supertaster. Well, more things can be too sweet to them, or more things can be too bitter. Vegetables, in fact, taste bitter to a supertaster, so they avoid them, and thus are more susceptible to cancers, and it is proven that they have more cancerous colon polyps than non-tasters.

However, besides bragging rights, supertasters can be skinnier, especially women in their 40s, because they are more sensitive to sugar and dairy fats, which leads them to not crave junky foods. They also eat less, so there could be less heart disease.

But the real thing to remember about all this is that different people have different tastes, and that really matters in the wine, beer, and cider world. A supertaster and all of their ability to taste might really dislike a drink that a regular and non-taster love. Remember John Cleese’s Wine for the Confused? He had blind taste tests between six wines asking people which one was worth $5 and which one was worth $200, and the group had no consensus. So one person’s $5 bottle is another person’s $200 bottle, and vice versa. While Mike Steinberger was learning if he was a supertaster or not, he said , “I also had a conversation with Tim Hanni, a Napa-based master of wine who has done extensive research into the science of taste—research that has convinced him that wine criticism is pretty much worthless, given how much individual palates vary.”

So remember:

• Everyone had different tastes.
• Find out what you like.
• Don’t let people push you around on what to consume.
• Do use other people’s experience on what they tasted guide you.
• Don’t expect your tasting experience to be same as someone else’s because you are two different people.

As for me, well, I tried the dye experiment, but found it too difficult to count as the paper was either too far away to see though the hole, or it was getting wet from my tongue. So I went to http://supertastertest.com/ and purchased a test kit. It was a little piece of paper that you put on your tongue. According to the directions, a supertaster will find it to taste very bitter, a taster will find it to taste mildly bitter, and a non-taster will find it tastes like paper.

My husband said it tasted like paper, and therefore, he said he was “bitter tolerant.” I found the paper to taste bitter, but not in such a way that I was spitting it out, so I am just a “taster.”

Are You a Supertaster? Take a Supertaster Test

There are three main ways to test if one is a super taster – count taste buds or consume two products.

As I mentioned before, supertasters have more fungiform papillae type taste buds, which makes them a little more sensitive when tasting. These taste buds can be counted by swabbing your tongue with a cotton ball with blue food coloring. The fungiform papillae will not turn blue, but instead remain pink. From there, take a piece of paper with a hole cut out of it and count how many pink spots you see in that hole. Supertasters will have more than 30 papillae in that area. BBC Science and Nature shows a good example of this demonstration.

Another easy test to conduct is a Saccharin Test. Take one packet of saccharin (Sweet’N Low) and combine it with two-thirds of a cup of water, and then taste it. For some, there will be a dominate sweet taste, indicating that they are an undertaster, while others will notice a dominate bitter taste, indicating they are a supertaster. Those who find balance between sweet and bitter are regular tasters.

The last test is to consume PROP, which will be violently bitter to supertasters, bitter to regular tasters, and tasteless to undertasters.

I highly recommend reading wine critic Mike Steinberger’s journey to find out that he was one of the 5% of nontasters (not a supertaster) who could taste PROP. This resulted in more testing.

Sources:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supertaster
  
• http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/PersonalBest/story?id=2740603
  
• http://supertastertest.com/
  
• http://www.slate.com/id/2168768
  
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/body/articles/senses/tongue_experiment.shtml
  
• http://health.howstuffworks.com/taste4.htm
  

Supertaster

Supertasters are people who have a few more fungiform papillae type taste buds, which makes them a little more sensitive when tasting. One quarter of the population seems to be supertasters.

When I first heard of supertasters, it was in conjunction with drinking wine, and I thought, “Nope, I’m not one. I have such a hard time smelling and tasting things in wine that I can’t be.” Then I took a “Le Nez du Vin”: The Nose of Wine class. They said that supertasters avoid coffee because of the bitterness, which I do, so that got me looking into supertasters a little bit more.

Here is a list of foods supertasters avoid with comments about how supertasters taste in () when available, along with my reactions:

• Burssel sprouts, cabbage, and kale –not part of my normal diet so I couldn’t really say
• Coffee (too bitter) – smells nice, but I need a ton of sugar and cream to drink it. And very little coffee.
• Dark chocolate – I don’t like it, and will consume only milk chocolate. I won’t touch chocolate chip cookies due to the semi-sweet chips used. And I will hardly eat baked chocolate, such as a cholocate cake or brownies, but it does help to have some milk to wash it down.
• Hoppy beer (too bitter) – yup, that’s me!
• Grapefruit juice – won’t touch it
• Green tea – it is okay, but I would much rather have black tea
• Spinach – I like it as a 50/50 mix with lettuce, but straight spinach sometimes tastes, well, dirty to me. However, there are certain lettuces I won’t eat, either, because they are too bitter. I won’t eat Iceberg lettuce because, well, I’m picky.
• Soy products – not part of my normal diet so I couldn’t really say
• Carbonation – sometimes soda is overcarbonated and annoys my nose, but carbonated beer and cider doesn’t bother me
• Chili peppers (burn is more intense) – I can handle them in moderate doses
• Tonic water (more bitter) – I love gin, but I won’t drink it with tonic water, but 7-up instead
• Olives (salt is more intense) – I like black olives, but not green
• Sugary foods (sickening sweet vs no such thing as too sweet for regular tasters) – I do have issues with too sweet, but mostly too rich. So this is a toss up. I prefer fruity desserts, or even things like rolls, but not really cakes. However, I do like sweet tea.
• Frosting (yucky) – don’t care for it
• Saccharine (strong after taste) – I don’t remember
• Alcohol (too sharp – less of a chance of being an alcoholic) – well, I don’t like my alcohol dry, but I don’t consume a drink a day.
• Ginger (burn) – I like ginger
• Foods should be tepid – even if I did drink coffee, it is served way too hot for me.
• Different levels of milk fat (can tell) – We normally keep nonfat milk in the house, but I went to see the in-laws who had 2%, and it tasted sweeter and creamier to me. Same thing at restaurants. And I can tell the difference between goat’s milk and cow’s milk and their cheeses, and a lot of people can’t.
• Broccoli (don’t like when raw because it is bitter) – I’ve always avoided raw broccoli, but I love cooked broccoli.
• Fatty foods (undesirable due to texture) – okay, I like fat to a degree, but I probably don’t avoid it like they suggest supertasters do. For instance, I love cheese!
• This could explain why I don’t like 90% of beers – the hops make it too bitter for me.

Supertasters are also suppose to be skinnier, which any doctor would consider me on the heavy side.

Supertasters don’t care for vegetables, either, so they are more at risk for cancers and there is a link between supertasters having a higher number of colon polyps due to vegetable avoidance. Compared to my husband, to plays with his food rather than eating, I like my vegetables more cooked than him (though not took cooked), which reduces bitterness. I eat them because I know I should.

Sources:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supertaster
  
• http://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/18/science/chocolate-lover-or-broccoli-hater-answer-s-on-the-tip-of-your-tongue.html?sec=health&spon=&pagewanted
  
• http://www.slate.com/id/2168768/pagenum/all/#p2
  
• http://health.howstuffworks.com/taste4.htm