Wine and/or beer explained for someone very familiar with coffee?

June 7, 2022 9:27 AM

I'm a Coffee Guy. What does it take to become a Wine and/or Beer Guy?

I get super into where beans are grown and different tasting notes and all the different factors that go into making a good cup of coffee. I know essentially nothing about alcohol, but from talking to people in the beer and wine industries, it seems like there's overlap in terms of terroir etc. Are there any good books or free online courses I could use to learn more about the art of either wine or beer production? I suppose I'll include spirits as well. Are there any that I might want to look into with the context of my knowledge of coffee production?

posted by ToddBurson to Food & Drink (17 answers total)

Are you curious about production or to deepen your appreciation?

And is this for personal education, or like a cicerone/sommelier?

Just as coffee is made of beans and water, beer is made of malt, hops, yeast, and water -- and wine is grapes and yeast. But just as with coffee, the techniques and varietals turn those few ingredients into so many possible final flavors!
posted by wenestvedt at 9:34 AM on June 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

I quite like the Beer Advocate site for explaining the many, many beer terms. Brew pubs are relaxed and sociable, which is appealing. Beer snobbery may exist, but it's not as much of a thing.

Wine has centuries of wine snobbery and expertise to learn. Wine tastings are fun and educational. If there's a good local wine store, check them out; they can be an excellent resource. My local Trader Joe's has good wine & beer staff and the local Whole Foods has a big wine selection and knowledgeable staff.
posted by theora55 at 9:44 AM on June 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

I think that there is the additional kilocalories to consider, too.

Experience with alcohol is, like with roasting, grind, and brewing coffees, about buying, opening, and drinking them.

When I tried to start a small drinking habit (like 20 to 40 mL /day of a variety of Irish Whiskeys) I gained a lot of weight.

I stopped because of it.
posted by NoThisIsPatrick at 9:48 AM on June 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

Well, there's not much in the way of preparation. Start by just trying and comparing different types / regions. It's of course hard to compare 5 bottles of wine on your own, so some kind of tasting club with friends would be good. With wine I guess there is so much that you might want to narrow it down to a few classic types/regions. Something like California Cabernet, California Zinfandel, Bordeaux, Cote-du-Rhone, Rioja, Australian or Californian Syrah for reds. See how they pair with different foods.
posted by melamakarona at 10:17 AM on June 7, 2022

There is formal training available, leading to certification.

For example, I work at a university with a culinary program, and you can take classes in each of these areas.

The national organizations also have training for their judges, which might be helpful -- depending on your motivation.
posted by wenestvedt at 10:21 AM on June 7, 2022

Response by poster: Are you curious about production or to deepen your appreciation?

To deepen my appreciation is the goal, but knowing about production helps with that. What I really enjoy is knowing a lot about a specific thing and being able to have conversations about it, and there's constantly new things to experience and learn and compare within that space and a public place to go do it. I would love to be able to go to a whiskey or wine bar and have an engaging conversation with the person serving me. Just as a personal hobby.

I think that there is the additional kilocalories to consider, too.

I'm decently active and enjoy endurance sports in the summer, so I don't anticipate this to be an issue, but noted for the winter lol
posted by ToddBurson at 10:39 AM on June 7, 2022

Next time you're at a brewery, see if you can order a flight of 4 or 5 different beers. Ask a server for help picking beers that are distinct, not five different IPAs. The idea on this first round will be to determine if there's a style of beer you gravitate toward. You'll get four or five small pours, likely 4 ounces. Take notes, like you might for coffee. What tasting notes can you pick up? Are you turned off by any flavor? Too bitter? Too sweet? Too sour?
posted by emelenjr at 10:51 AM on June 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I have to say that brewing a half-dozen batches of beer taught me a lot about the stuff. I make mead now, not beer (because I am laaaaazy), but the hands-on time was really valuable.

My library had a copy of Charles W. Bamforth's "The Great Courses" lessons on brewing: https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/everyday-guide-to-beer After listening to that, and making a couple of small batches, I knew lots more than I had before I started.

The MeFite named drewbage is also a very curious brewer, and you might do well to search out his comments.
posted by wenestvedt at 10:53 AM on June 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

Library, there are a vast number of wine books. Tastings. Lots of wine shops have regular tastings. There are large industry tastings where literally hundreds of wines are tasted (there are buckets to spit as no one would survive). One may need to cultivate an industry relationship for entry, not sure how to do that but certainly doable.
posted by sammyo at 10:59 AM on June 7, 2022

Best answer: Start by finding a few good wine boutiques in your area and get to tasting! Ask the staff for recommendations, let them explain the wines to you, ask questions, google the producers, regions, and grape varietals for the bottles you take home. See if these boutiques have tasting events scheduled and buy tickets and attend (you may be able to find both virtual and in person tasting events depending on your COVID risk tolerance). Meanwhile, I’m actually a big fan of Wine for Dummies as a companion book to support your early exploration of wine.

If you’re comfortable going to restaurants and if your budget allows it, visit some fine dining establishments in your area and order a tasting menu + wine pairing. Ask the sommelier to explain the wine pairings, ask them to explain which notes in the wine might be enhanced by the flavours in the foods.

Yes, your experience with and understanding of coffee tasting will likely give you a good point of reference for beginning with wine, though they’re of course different products, made differently, and coffee-growing regions are not usually very hospitable to viticulture. When I was a sommelier, I would sometimes have customers who didn’t have a great frame of reference for understanding the basics like tasting notes - for example, thinking that a wine literally had cherries in it when a tasting note would list “cherries” - so you’ve already got a leg up if you can understand concepts like tasting notes, food pairings, and regionality/terroir.

Once you’ve built up some baseline knowledge, see if there is a provider in your area that offers WSET (Wine and Spirits Education Trust) courses and take level 1. It’s very educational and a lot of fun and totally appropriate for non-wine industry enthusiasts. Have fun!
posted by rodneyaug at 11:12 AM on June 7, 2022

This isn’t what you asked, but they’re so similar - chocolate!
The beans grow at similar latitudes (but different altitudes), the outer part of the “cherry” is fermented to remove, beans are dried, then roasted, then ground. All of this is true for both chocolate or coffee.
If there are any “bean to bar” chocolate makers in your area, see if you can get a tour, and explore the world of single-origin chocolate, and the various blends. It’s fun! And easier on your liver.
posted by dbmcd at 11:22 AM on June 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

Wine Aroma Kits for Tasting are a thing, and your FNWB (or winery) will almost certainly have tasting events and workshops. My local community college even offers extension courses (multiple!) in wine tasting and education.

A gentle side-note, if I may, with regard to: I would love to be able to go to a whiskey or wine bar and have an engaging conversation with the person serving me. Just as a personal hobby.
This suggests a certain level of entitlement, please be mindful that your server could well get in trouble for having engaging in-depth conversations with customers. And it's *bad* customer service to say something or risk being perceived as rude, so they're never going to tell you that because their livelihood often depends not just on your tip but their other tables, which they can't service while they're having an engaging conversation with you.
posted by ApathyGirl at 11:39 AM on June 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: @ApathyGirl: Noted. I didn't necessarily mean specifically the person serving me, just a person. My context for this is I already have some friends in both the wine and beer industries (and have already asked them a bunch of questions) so whenever I've done that thus far it's been in that context of like me and a group of friends going to the brewery that my friend runs after hours kinda thing. I'm not bothering random bartenders who could be serving other customers or anything like that.
posted by ToddBurson at 12:35 PM on June 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

The homebrewing scene extends to wine as well as beer (and cider and mead and...), and homebrewers are a gregarious bunch. Your friendly local homebrew shop, while possibly already out of business, can be a great place to meet people who love their brew. Brew clubs, tastings, and classes can all be good ways to be exposed to nerw flavors and new science.

On the other hand, at homebrew shops there's also a lot of That's The Way We've Always Done It and received wisdom and such, so take what they tell you with a grain of salt. :7)

Anyway: homebrew shops. Find one if you can, or join an online group. There are beverage-specific subreddits which aren't bad, as they include a mixture of professionals, chemists, alcoholics, and fairly sophisticated amateurs. I like r/mead and r/cider, and r/prisonhooch is a good antidote sometimes. :7)
posted by wenestvedt at 1:21 PM on June 7, 2022

Lots of awesome suggestions above!

When starting out I also found it super helpful to visit smaller craft breweries offering tours of their kit and brewing process - it helped me understand the process that went into my beer and to chat to people really passionate about what they do.

Randy Mosher’s Tasting Beer is the book you need to help you on your way!
posted by ozgirlabroad at 3:30 PM on June 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

Wine snobbery is mainly for people in places that produce no wine. Here in Europe (Hungary, for instance) we have access to everyday, affordable good wines and the fancy stuff is mainly for bringing to dinner parties and birthdays. If you are in France or Italy or Croatia or Spain people will drink their local wines without snobbery (except for localized patriotism.)

When we were visiting family in New Jersey we went to a local liquor shop and found that my favorite cheaper Italian wines (from Friuli and Vallpolicella) were promoted as snotty $25 bottles, while the relatively unknown Slovenian wines - grown five miles away across the border - were $6 a magnum bottle. Go figure.

I have yet to encounter a drinkable beer in the United States (and I used to be a Budweiser Guy before I left the USA.) I drink Asahi or Red Stripe when I am there.
posted by zaelic at 2:12 AM on June 8, 2022

Best answer: This Wine Folly book is excellent. (And their website and YouTube is also full of great content too with zero pretentions.) I've found this to be a super approachable way to understand: 1) different types of wine, 2) which area/country makes what type of wine, and 3) how do you figure out the "language" of what they taste like so you can find more of what you like to taste.

This Wondrium course about wine was also pretty helpful as an overview. Wondrium has a few other courses, one of which is kind of like a "drink along with me" per episode course where you buy some varietals that they'll taste/talk about.

I do think that there is something special about getting yourself to a winery (on a quieter day) to taste/sample and hear how the pourers talk about the wine and how it's special. If you are near a wine producing region, figuring out if they have a festival or "passport" type event is another way of sampling a bunch of wine from a bunch of wineries. Alternatively, just buy a bunch of a wine along a theme -- a bunch of pinot noirs from Oregon, the same bottle across different vintages/years of production, a variety of wines from the same region.

Important note -- this is probably ridiculously obvious in retrospect, but it took me a LONG time to figure out: 1) most wine is better with food... so a wine tasting environment w/o food will probably bias you to certain types of wines, and 2) wine is often produced and drunk with the local cuisine -- so, if you're eating Italian, get some Italian wine! The Wine Folly book does a great job of suggesting which wines go well with which types of food.
posted by ellerhodes at 7:06 AM on June 8, 2022