A New Flavor In A Classic Beer

Thanks for the interesting question, Joe. I also enjoy all types of beer, so I went to the store and purchased a selection of beers in attempt to put a finger on what you are describing. It sounds like you are describing grain flavors that are either new to your favorite beer or new to you.

My own taste panel consisting of me, myself, and I, did note a grainy/grassy note in several beers by one of the major U.S. breweries; Brewery Z or BZ for sake of discussion. In my statistically insignificant, but otherwise enlightening sensory exercise, the grainy/grassy notes in beers from BZ were much easier to detect when tasted against other beers. This sort of tasting requires a solid palate, keen attention to detail, and the persistence of a mule. Because of the solitary approach to my analysis, I repeated the sampling a few times (I did buy 6-packs after all) so that I was convinced that my palate was not the issue. My conclusion is that beers from BZ have a pronounced grain/grassy note. But as I mentioned, this observation has zero statistical validity.

This flavor, it’s real and not somehow related to bias, is probably from the grain because these beers don’t have too many ingredients that could contribute such flavors. How’s that for being obvious? I don’t know if this character is a new character for BZ because, up until reading your question, I had not previously tasted several domestics at one time and had not noticed this pattern with BZ.

What I do know is that not all base malts taste the same. These differences may be due to differences among malt houses, barley sources (growing region), growing year (weather effects), barley variety (genetic effects), and how the malt is produced/kilned (process effects). Differences among malts is one of the many things that makes brewing interesting. It’s very easy to make malt teas to assess the aroma and flavor of malt before brewing. Just like with hop evaluations, much of the aroma found in malt does not survive wort boiling and some of the more volatile and overt notes are removed with water vapor. One of the keys to raw material sensory is knowing what may make its way into finished beer. So all of these observations need to be taken, at least to some degree, with a grain, er, kernel of malt.

But there is something else that may be going on here. As people age, our senses change. Unfortunately, this change is usually accompanied by a decreased sensitivity to subtle notes. It’s possible that your perception of your go-to beers is changing, rather than the beers themselves changing. Another possibility is that you are recovering from something like COVID-19 that temporarily whacked out your senses. What once tasted clean and crisp is now being perceived as grassy and green. Now I am questioning my own palate!

Not sure what else to write about this. Perception can be a transient thing as can flavor profiles of beers we may know very well. Breweries generally avoid making changes to beer that can be detected by consumers, but sometimes changes are abrupt and are detectable. If you don’t like the change, my suggestion is to find a new commercial fave for those times you are low on your own brew. In the meantime, pick up the pace and brew your own!