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I sometimes feel like science — or the broad spirit of inquiry — is considered childish these days. Of course, scientists are allowed to practice science. But that requires grants and laboratories and gleaming stainless steel bits and precision instruments. Is home experimentation childish?

Not that I want to keep it from the kids. Far from it. A recent bit of writing I ran across on discovering the mechanisms that cause water to freeze warmed my heart, as did the deft touch with which the author both worked to assist and, at the same time, stay out of the way. I love the Socratic method; it's even better when the mentor doesn't need to ask the questions.

The Beer Trials is a book operating in the same spirit of inquiry, and there's a lot you can do to take that same spirit into your life as a sensory-aware food consumer. The starting point here is to calibrate your instruments: your senses of taste, smell, and touch. Once you've done that, it becomes drastically easier to understand what you're consuming and why you like it. This is most useful in assisting you to find novel and exciting foods, but I think it also almost necessarily increases your connection to the food you eat, by transforming it from a homogenous agglomeration of flavors into a story. When you can recognize the component flavors in a dish (or a beer, etc) you can start to ask why those flavors came together in that way, and where the ingredients came from, and so on.

This kind of inquiry is remarkably central to some cultures' experience of food; particularly in France, where the notion of goût de terroir ("the taste of the earth") is so central that government-ministry-run programs teach children about tasting and sensory evaluation.

But you don't have to be trained from childhood to learn to taste accurately and identify component flavors and ingredients. Here are some approaches you can take to start to learn to identify the flavors and nuances of beer; you can tackle any food in essentially the same manner.

First off, use your nose. A major component of our sense of taste is tied up in our sense of smell, which has dramatically more kinds of receptors — and therefore, finer discrimination — than the tastebuds located in the mouth (though there are a growing number of identified tastes). Note that temperature plays a major role in the smell of beer, as cold beer doesn't release the volatile aromatic compounds as readily as cool beer does.

Taste similar beers side by side. Ideally, you should do this without knowing which is which, by having someone else pour your samples.

Reflect on the differences between the two (even if you can't pin down or name exactly what they are). Figure out what you can name about the differences. Is one sweeter than the other? More bitter? More citrusy? As you become better versed in answering some of these questions, you'll start to do it automatically, leaving your concious mind with more attention to spend on the bits that you don't understand as well.

A highly informative test is to taste, blind, your favorite beer alongside another beer or two that are of the same style. Can you identify your favorite? Is it still your favorite? Is it actually different? You don't have to tell anybody if you don't like the answers. But be honest with yourself.

The classic test for discrimination is the triangle test: with two beers, pour three samples. Now try to identify which two are the same. Most people won't have a problem doing this with, say, a Budweiser and a Deschutes Black Butte Porter, but consistently identifying the difference between Pabst and Pacifico is a trickier proposition. Somewhere in the middle, probably, is your ability. You can move that line towards the latter end.

Smell things. The more familiar you are with, and the more of an internal language you have for the way that everyday foods and plants smell (and taste), the easier it is to map the similar aromas and tastes in beer to those words.

Remember that everyone's palate is different. We have variations in the genes that distribute taste buds through our mouths and create aroma receptors. The overlap we have in shared langugage isn't precise; it's approximate. That means that you don't owe anyone an explanation for why you don't like bitterness, or why your friends can't find the grassy notes in a beer that seem obvious to you. Or that you can't find. It's okay.

I can't recommend it for everyone, but I make a point of regularly revisiting beers I don't like to see if there's something I missed about what the brewer was trying to accomplish, or if my palate has changed since the last time I tried it. I've found over the years that many flavors I didn't like when I was younger have grown on me.

In the end, be playful. Have fun. Try a different blend of coffee beans next week. Pick up a handful of dirt from your garden and smell it. Heck, taste it. Smell the dust that the spring rains kick up off the street, the spices in your kitchen, and, of course, the roses.

Engage with the world. What else is there to do?

This is the end of my week blogging at Powells.com. I hope you've enjoyed reading these as much as I've enjoyed writing them. I will continue blogging at my regular home, The Daily Wort. Also, if you're in Portland in May, join us May 12th for the Beer Trials release party at the Green Dragon pub.

I read an interesting pair of blog articles today on generating sourdough starters. Debra Wink, writing at The Fresh Loaf, describes some challenges to getting a yeast culture going and a somewhat technical discussion of her solution, which involves adding pineapple juice to speed up the process of building the yeast-and-lactobacillus culture that bakers use to make sourdough breads.

I love sourdough; my partner bakes regularly with a well-tended starter that we got from King Arthur Flour. We've also experimented with building our own starters in the past. Part of it is the flavor — I love tart flavors in general — and part of it is my seemingly never-ending wonder about the alchemy of fermentation and maintaining living cultures.

I sometimes think there may be some overlap between my interest in sourdough and my interest in beer and wine.

Alchemy is a word I love to throw around in conjunction with fermentation. With beer, there are typically two alchemical steps: the conversion of starch into sugar, where grainy cereal is turned into sweet, sticky wort by soaking malted grains in hot water; and the conversion of sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide by yeast. Each of these techniques was developed over thousands of years of beer brewing, and trained brewers had the skill to perform these steps repeatedly and reliably with essentially none of our modern understandings of technology.

That last sentence doesn't begin to describe what a marvel it is.

When I brew, I use a large Igloo cooler to maintain my mash in the narrow temperature range required for proper starch-to-sugar conversion. I have a fast, accurate modern bi-metallic thermometer to ensure that I hit my target temperature. But the thermometer has only been around since the 17th century and wasn't used in brewing until the 18th century!

There are a lot of... different understandings of the mechanisms of wild fermentation: like where the yeast and lactic acid bacteria come from and how to get them into your starter. Part of me really appreciates that there is still some mystery. Another part of me wants to know what is going on in this invisible, microscopic world and that part absolutely loved the discussion of how yeast might be activated from dormancy in sourdough starters.

There are many spontaneously fermented wines. There's a tendency in the fine-wine world to equate "natural" fermentation (without the addition of cultured commercial yeasts) with better wines. Some winemakers I've talked to, however, scoff at the notion, believing that the ambient bacterial culture in a winery will overwhelm anything that's present on the grape skins, meaning that, in a sense, they feel that the "wild" fermentation in many wineries is actually a form of cultured fermentation.

And in the Belgian breweries around Brussels where sour lambic ales are produced, some of the breweries have special slatted roofs over their fermenters, so that the outside air can carry in the complex mix of microorganisms that are responsible for the distinctive dry-tart character of lambics. It's claimed that the airborne bacteria change by season and that a true expert could identify winter lambic or spring lambic.

It seems highly likely to me that there are plenty of people out there operating on models of yeast propogation that are, by scientific judgement, incorrect. Despite that, many of them are able to produce breads, beers, and wines that I find utterly compelling. As much as I love science and deep understanding, I'm happy to have a little room for some good old-fashioned alchemy in my life. While I'm not going to stop reading articles like Debra's — and will recommend them in a heartbeat to my baker friends — I'm also determined that I want to leave some room in my life for

The first couple of posts this week were fairly serious looks at what we've done with The Beer Trials and my philosophical take on food criticism, but please rest assured that the life of a beer writer is not entirely one of Ivory Tower theorizing about the epistemology of sensory perception. There are also occasional opportunities for such frivolities as drinking beer.

Last night I had the opportunity to celebrate the hard work that our many volunteers — the folks who participated in our blind tasting panels and served beer to those panels; the people who helped find the beers we tasted; etc. — gave to help the book succeed. We handed out copies of the book and customized beer openers, and of course, bought a few pints from our hosts at the Green Dragon.

I adore the Green Dragon (with whom Fearless Critic has an ongoing relationship as they have hosted and continue to host book-related events like last night's), and what it says about Portland as a beer-loving city. Opened in 2007 as an independent pub with aspirations of brewing their own beer, they were sufficiently entrenched that a great ruckus was raised when the bar was sold off to the folks at Rogue Brewing over the objections of minority stakeholders.

Two years post-sale, the pain of that transition has largely faded, and most of the predictions about the negative impacts of the sale have been forgotten. The Green Dragon is up to an impressive fifty taps (of which one is generally dedicated to the parent company's beers) of eclectic, diverse beers.

Last night's patrons celebrated, in addition to the publication of The Beer Trials, the tenure of beer buyer (and Beer Trials expert taster) Sam Sugar, who is, sadly, departing the Green Dragon and Portland to move to Newport. Sam (whose business cards sport the awesome job title "Beer Gazelle") has played a huge role in making the Dragon the remarkable beer destination that it is, and while I'm sad that she'll be out of town (and presumably unavailable as a taster for future blind tastings), it was awesome to be able to share a pint and see her off.

The beer list, as always, was stellar. The list tends towards the strong and the unusual; while I sometimes wish for more options in straightforward, session-strength beers (like the tasty house-brewed Special Bitter they were serving for a recent cask-ale festival), the stronger stuff is sensibly served in glasses, and it's hard to complain about a surfeit of interesting beer.

Perhaps the most interesting they've had on recently is from Cascade, a local brewery specializing in barrel-aged beers. Their Spring Gose is a rare example of a nearly extinct style from Leipzig, Germany.

Gose is brewed with coriander and salt, and has a distinct but bizarrely-tasty brininess that I think is just wonderful. It's not for everyone; I'd have a hard time drinking more than one, but it's the kind of eye-opener that reminds one just how broad the world of beer is.

I also enjoyed a ginger-infused pale ale from Caldera, which reminded me of one of my early (and successful) homebrewing experiments. Dry, light, and less carbonated than most beers, it would be a delightful front porch beer for the summer, I think.

We filled up the back half of the restaurant side of the Green Dragon with Beer Trials helpers, and I signed and inscribed copies of the book and reflected on how many people it took to make this book happen. I like working with other people; when I make beer, it's my preference to have a crew. Not because there's a lot of work that needs doing, but thinking about beer, like drinking beer, is a social activity for me.

We'll be back at the Green Dragon in a few weeks for a release party for The Beer Trials. If you're in Portland on May 12th, please feel free to join us in the evening for a beer.

I'd like to follow up a bit on yesterday's post by thinking about the role of the critic in food writing (including restaurant reviews and wine, beer, and spirits writing of the sort that we're exploring in the Trials series). I think that understanding the components of the critic's job is useful from both sides of the relationship. Hopefully it will be evident by the end of this article that my understanding of my job has an impact on how I do it; I hope that it will have the added benefit of increasing the value you can take from The Beer Trials when you read it.

The goal of The Beer Trials (and its sibling The Wine Trials) is to educate consumers on the options available to them, to help them make informed choices about the huge landscape of beer and wine available across North America. From my perspective, there are three key pieces to how we do this.

First, I have to entertain the reader. All of the data in the world will do me little good if you can't be bothered to turn the page and read on. There are critics who lose sight of this; they're so focused on telling you why this new album is great or why that new restaurant is a failure that they forget to remind you why you should care.

But readers never stop asking themselves why they should care. Or at least I don't. Any doubts I had about that disappeared when I started observing how people use the book when they first see it: they immediately turn to see what we said about their favorite beer.

We do a few things to try to make The Beer Trials simply fun to read. The most prominent of these are the design reviews — most of the bandwidth of that section is reserved for me to be silly. We do spend some time in that section pushing the importance of brown glass and freshness dating, but more commonly we take an opportunity for levity — see, for instance, Magic Hat #9 ("the perfect meeting point between the psychedelic poster art of the late 1960s and a colorblindness test at the optometrist's office") or Boulder Planet Porter ("It's a little surprising that the Tax and Trade Bureau approved a label that might be construed as advocating the combination of alcohol and telescope operation").

Second, we try to have enough basic factual information to educate the reader. Or, as we call it in the nonfiction business, content. It's totally possible to miss this one. It's a serious challenge with wine reviews, where studies suggest that consumers don't do well at connecting the often-heady adjectives used by wine writers to describe flavors with the actual experience of drinking the wine. It's part of the reason that we included chapters on beer ingredients and flavors.

I know that there will be readers who disagree with the opinions we express in the book (and as I noted yesterday, that can be something to celebrate) but I hope that it's rare that the tasting notes about what is in the bottle seem jarring or off-base to readers. I think there's room for poetry in describing food, but it should certainly be paired with concrete, down-to-earth descriptions.

As a reader, you should be looking to identify and separate factual information from opinion. Particularly if you don't have an established understanding of where the critic is coming from, which brings me to my final point...

Perhaps most importantly, critics have to help you contextualize their opinions. This is something on which we worked hard for our book. Our opinions are only opinions, and we respect that. We've tried to be consistent and fair (both in writing and in setting up a system for tasting that will help push our internal biases out of the way), but mindful of the fact that all of the experts in the world have to play second fiddle to your tastes.

To my mind, a key measure of a critic's success is how useful their work is to a reader when the reader disagrees with the critic's opinion. The iconic example of a critic who excels at this is wine critic Robert Parker, founder of the Wine Advocate. There's a lot of criticism these days about whether Parker has undue influence on the wine world; whether his 100-point scale makes sense; and whether his version of "perfect wine" is good or in some cases even drinkable. But regardless of how you feel about his preferences, there is nearly universal consensus that his palate is impeccably consistent, and his writing is typically full of  enough description and context that, with a little practice, it's possible to assess your interest in the wines he's reviewed even if your tastes don't align with his.

Any reduction of the dimensions of food or wine or beer to a number, a grade, or an adjective involves a loss of information. The best critics give you the background you need to begin to reconstruct the complex interplay of flavors, aromas, and other senses. The dialogue that we as consumers can have with that kind of criticism is infinitely more satisfying and interesting than simply agreeing or disagreeing with a thumbs-up/thumbs-down critic (however long they may take to make their point).

Good criticism requires the reader to engage their own critical faculties, to consider their preferences, and to form their own judgment. And engaging with our food — or more broadly, the world around us — is a high and noble purpose, in my opinion.

Who are your favorite food critics? Do they write short-form criticism, like Parker, or long-form expositions of food and our experience of it, like Michael

My life changed recently, in a lot of ways, when I finished my new book, The Beer Trials. That's hardly a surprise, I suppose; most writers probably experience a lot of changes with the publication of a new work. It's profoundly satisfying to announce to your friends and colleagues that your efforts have reached a point of closure, and that instead of seeking their input on how to structure your thoughts or whether your toughest passages have the clarity and candor you were seeking, you'll now be looking for advice on how to sell copies of your book to all of their friends, or suggestions for new topics for a guest blog column you'll be writing at an independent bookseller's site in the near future. Good times, indeed.

But in my case, the book has changed the tone of my role in my friends' relationships with beer. And not necessarily for the better.

Of course, like any critic, I have conversations about how I could possibly have given famous and best-selling products poor ratings. I have these conversations not only with people who have just picked up my book for the first time and flipped immediately to the page of their favorite beer. I also have these conversations with people who have seen the book through all stages, and who understand that the ratings are aggregates, produced by experienced beer drinkers who, tasting blind, had utterly no way of knowing who produced a given sample of beer or how much it cost — in other words, people who should know better.

These conversations seem to be an important way for people to engage with the book, or to test their understanding of the subject, and I don't argue to win. I love that the world of food and drink is one where there need not be any dissonance between contrasting opinions. I share my point of view, and try to listen respectfully. I'm pretty sure the world of beer would be a poorer one if everyone liked the same stuff. I would probably also be out of a job.

But more worrisome is the tone of my friends as we sit down at a pub and glance over a tap list, and the inevitable question arises: "What should I drink?"

This is a fine and fair question. If I can't answer it, after several months of daily controlled beer tastings and research, Fearless Critic (my publisher) has received a raw deal. And it's not a new question; I've never been shy about encouraging my acquaintances to try beers that I think they'll like. But the pitch and timbre of the question has shifted.

It seems that now I'm a published author on the subject of beer, the question has become a weighty one. There's suddenly a new possibility, that of drinking the wrong beer.

Let's accept that beer is a rich and complicated subject, well worthy of books, discussion, and thought. And here in Portland, it's easy to wind up in a setting where you may have two dozen or more options about what to drink. But, my friends, let's also remember this: we're talking about beer. Just beer.

The discomfort with ordering makes most sense to me in situations where someone has strong aversions to particular flavors, like bitterness. And the search for your perfect beer can only come from understanding what you like — what you want. If you aren't there yet, with a clear picture of your ideal beer, there's no need to get uptight. Pick a beer. Any beer. And enjoy it for what it is. Along the way, don't forget to note what you like about it, and what you didn't like so much... and don't forget to toast your friends and enjoy yourself.

We label beers with scores, but as much as I want to celebrate the triumphs of brewing, I want people to enjoy themselves. We can gush about our mutual love of the tart Rodenbach Grand Cru, or I can toast you as you explain to me how much you appreciate Samuel Adams Cherry Wheat, which is a total mystery to me. Finding the right beer is not a matter of looking up scores and picking the highest available. The perfect beer is the one that fits your tastes, your mood, and your setting.

The perfect beer is not a number. It's a beer. Drink it with pleasure, not anxiety. That's the point,