How to Taste

According to Epicurious senior editor Maggie Hoffman

Welcome to the first of a three-part series on TASTING. Over the course of the next few days, we’ll hear from three writers and drink experts about how they evaluate products and make recommendations. Tomorrow, Delmosa CEO Bruce Blosil states a case for thinking bigger when it comes to editorial tasting panels; Friday, journalist Anna Perling will tell us how she put together her list of best nonalcoholic drinks for Wirecutter; and today Maggie Hoffman lets us in on her process. 

Hoffman, who I should mention is a friend, is the author of Batch Cocktails, which features a number of alcohol-free recipes, and The One-Bottle Cocktail; she founded the drinks section of the website Serious Eats in 2011; she was a drinks columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle; and she’s currently the senior editor of Epicurious, where she published an excellent three-part guide to alcohol-free drinking. 

1. Nonalcoholic Spirits for Your Bar: 45 Bottles for Any Break From Drinking

2. The Best Bottles for Your Nonalcoholic Bar If You Love Bitter Drinks and Aperitivi

3. 4 Fundamentals of Nonalcoholic Cocktails

Because I know Hoffman personally and because we share interests in both drinks and service journalism, I know how she works: thoroughly, carefully, open-mindedly but critically. But how, exactly, does she taste? Below, she answers that question—thoroughly and carefully, of course.

• “I have a set of six uniform glasses for tasting. If you feel heightened pleasure drinking something out of a delicate glass, you might be persuaded to like it better. So, if I’m tasting two things side by side, I shouldn't have one in a fancy, thin-rimmed glass and one in a chunky glass. It’s not fair to the beverages!” 

• “Then, I smell it. Much of the experience of tasting is scent. If a beverage smells musty, or full of ester-y banana aromas, or like nail polish, that will change your experience of that drink—and it might even give you some insight into its chemical makeup. At a less nerdy level, an overpowering aroma of, say, vanilla, can throw a beverage out of balance.”

• “I will try to approach any product totally unadorned first, both at room temperature and chilled. Even if you're not planning to or meant to drink it warm, you can often taste more when it's warm. The cold dulls your taste buds and can also dull aromas.” 

• “Then I explore it further. I add a little club soda or tonic, maybe shake it with citrus, or combine it with another product. Some may not be balanced on their own because they're not meant to be drunk on their own. That's okay. I wouldn't stop at something that's too sweet, for example, because maybe it can be used as a tool along with X, Y, or Z. That's useful information. On average, I try each product with three or so different combinations to figure out how to best use it in a cocktail.” 

• “Weight is certainly part of the product's character. You should think about texture when making any kind of drink, but making successful alcohol-free cocktails isn’t fully dependent on one product. Again, how you use the other ingredients also matters.” 

• “Air bubbles affect your perception of flavor. One thing I learned from bartender Sother Teague is that when you shake fresh citrus juice with ice, for example, in addition to water, you're incorporating air bubbles, which lift the flavors off of your tongue. That lemon, instead of being right on your tongue, it's actually floating a little bit above it. So, something might taste best to you when shaken, or better stirred... The difference is not just that one of them is frothy, but that you might perceive its taste slightly differently.”

• “I consider what the product makers say it's supposed to be. Is it meant to be light and refreshing? If it's a vermouth sub or an apéritif trying to replace something in the liquor cabinet, can I actually use it this way? Does it work?”

• “I re-taste multiple times, I write down everything I observe and think, and I organize my thoughts depending on what the story is and what service I'm trying to offer. ‘The Best’ lists all over the Internet are titled that way for SEO optimization, but they're in danger of not meaning anything. If I write a list of what I call the ‘best’ beverages, that might mean that I’m not including things I don't like—and you can trust that I tasted widely, and selected carefully. Sometimes, though, if I’m writing a guide that's meant to be helpful, I might include some honest notes on some products that I don’t love. I’ll explain what they taste like and why they didn't work for me, and that will be more useful information for someone standing in a store and considering a certain product. Someone might only have a few options available where they live, and then they can decide what they want to buy based on the descriptions, not just my personal tastes.” 

Heat is one area where Hoffman and I differ. I’m not looking for the sensory kick, sometimes referred to as a burn, that mimics alcohol, but I do think she makes a good case for it. “As I was tasting so many alcohol-free recipes for Batch Cocktails, one of those characteristics I missed was warmth.” She took to adding a small amount of cayenne pepper to some of her recipes. Since the book was published, though, the market has grown significantly. “So many new bottles have that inherent in the product, and I think that's clever. A tiny bit of heat makes the whole experience of the drink feel more multidimensional.” So, okay, maybe it’s not about the alcohol burn, anyway, and I should LOOSEN THE HECK UP. 

That’s it for today. I’m trying to make these shorter and more digestible from here forward, even if that means breaking down the content into multiple parts. So, see you tomorrow. 

Actually! Three more things: 

1. I wrote a piece featuring one of my favorite new nonalcoholic beer companies, AL's, and it was published in The Washington Post last week. Have a read here.

2. Speaking of The Washington Post, every Wednesday at noon EST, Food section staff members answer readers' cooking questions—and I'm joining them today! Come play with us.

3. If you’re a subscriber and you’re reading this in your inbox, you’ll notice that the Good Drinks banner features a different pattern from last month. That’s how I plan to do things around here: There will be little to no in-line imagery (sorry if that’s boring, but I prefer to get straight to the info and I also don’t think art looks great on Substack for...reasons), but the banner will change monthly. Mike Ley, who designed my book, is helping me source these patterns; follow him on Instagram here. 

K bye!