I need to do some validation through the Monell Chemical Senses Center or some similar scientific institute, but what sticks in my mind is that the bell shaped curve for our species characterizes humans as 25% 'super-tasters', 50% normal while 25% can't taste much of anything. So it isn't surprising to me that some folks would not be able to distinguish IPAs from lagers (by taste), or that to them many VAs, even containing Perique, could be about the same.
Like art and music, you can heighten your discrimination by training. When I ran wine-tastings, by a sequence of judicious pairings I could train tyros who couldn't tell a French Bordeaux from a Cali Pinot Noir to be able to do just that (pretty simple actually). I just heard on NPR that there are a lot more synapses involved in the brain to translate into speech the stimuli that are pumped quite directly from the olfactory glands to the central brain. Although the brain does more processing to figure out images from the retina and optic nerve, evidently it is a shorter route to the language centers. Thus it is easier for us to desctibe what we see than what we taste and smell.
In Western society, the vocabulary and nomenclature to describe smells and tastes are spartan. With tastes there are the familiar poles of sweet, sour etc., and it was only recently that the dimension of umami was developed. But after that, we are stuck with analogies to fruit, flowers and such. It's almost like trying to describe a Monet vs. a Jackson Pollock with only 5 words for color, shape, size and brightness. With that 5 word vocabulary, you would have to say those 2 paintings are the same.
So hak, in a way you are blessed if you enjoy PSLNF as much as Capstan. But it is likely with a few hundred more bowls, your tastes will evolve.
hp
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