Oh I don’t dispute people can distinguish it by taste. Like I said, if not informed of the possibility that the beer is NA (or the coffee decaf) most people won’t notice. When informed of the possibility less than half of people can distinguish it relyably.
But most people are shure they would distinguish the taste any day of the week, and the chance is biggest that they can’t.
I still find that surprising, do you have stats that you can link?
The smell of alcohol alone is very distinctive, so I don’t think most would need to even taste it to know it’s AF. It might fool them if it’s served in an area with a lot of alcoholic drinks nearby, but even then a quick sniff should make it plainly obvious to me and, I assume, most people. I don’t have a particularly keen sense of smell (my wife smells a lot of stuff I don’t notice), so I don’t think I’m special here.
For instance, people do genrally even exihibit ‘drunken’ behaviour, even though they have had no alcohol.
But genrally people are very addamant they can distinguish by taste their ‘own’ brand from others. If you do a blind taste test of lagers you’ll find out that most people are not able to pick their preferred brand. This is also not only amateurs, even sommeliers get fooled easily: https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/08/the_most_infamous_study_on_wine_tasting.html
Taste is just very difficult and personal. Thats why people are overly confident on their own taste, but generally people tend to mimic each others tastes, as the Sideways movie tanked interest in Merlot and increased interest in Pinot Noir https://winebusinessanalytics.com/features/article/61265/The-Sideways-Effect .
Like I said some people are very good at tasting, but generally people overestimate their abilities, a true blind taste test is very fun and informative. You should do it with friends!
Oh I don’t dispute people can distinguish it by taste. Like I said, if not informed of the possibility that the beer is NA (or the coffee decaf) most people won’t notice. When informed of the possibility less than half of people can distinguish it relyably.
But most people are shure they would distinguish the taste any day of the week, and the chance is biggest that they can’t.
I still find that surprising, do you have stats that you can link?
The smell of alcohol alone is very distinctive, so I don’t think most would need to even taste it to know it’s AF. It might fool them if it’s served in an area with a lot of alcoholic drinks nearby, but even then a quick sniff should make it plainly obvious to me and, I assume, most people. I don’t have a particularly keen sense of smell (my wife smells a lot of stuff I don’t notice), so I don’t think I’m special here.
Most of it is from personla experience, however there have been some areas of research in the matter
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6286248/#R51
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1360-0443.1988.tb03979.x
For instance, people do genrally even exihibit ‘drunken’ behaviour, even though they have had no alcohol.
But genrally people are very addamant they can distinguish by taste their ‘own’ brand from others. If you do a blind taste test of lagers you’ll find out that most people are not able to pick their preferred brand. This is also not only amateurs, even sommeliers get fooled easily: https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/08/the_most_infamous_study_on_wine_tasting.html
Taste is just very difficult and personal. Thats why people are overly confident on their own taste, but generally people tend to mimic each others tastes, as the Sideways movie tanked interest in Merlot and increased interest in Pinot Noir https://winebusinessanalytics.com/features/article/61265/The-Sideways-Effect .
Like I said some people are very good at tasting, but generally people overestimate their abilities, a true blind taste test is very fun and informative. You should do it with friends!