This is probably the lamest thing I have ever written, I’m going to get my ass kicked at recess for this.

I feel bad for the sensory-deprived friends and family around me, completely walled off from the world of fine food and drink out there. You know who these people are; they will order chicken fingers or a hamburger no matter what restaurant they are at, they will shun new culinary experiences entirely, they will only drink Budweiser or one brand of liquor.

What these poor souls don’t realize is that learning to appreciate drinking, much like exotic foods, is initially an exercise in endurance. Nobody really likes that first sip of red wine, no one likes their first beer, and no way in hell anyone likes their first shot of bourbon. When I first started drinking I craved only the joy of drunkenness, and viewed the alcohol as a foul tasting, unpleasant, and expensive marathon required to get to that happy place of no social inhibitions and feel good times. I drank only hard liquor, drowned in as much sugary soft drink as possible, and looked on beer and wine drinkers with contempt. You people can’t possibly ENJOY that piss-water, why not just cut to the chase, man up, and do some shots? Turns out, you actually can; you just need to learn to appreciate alcohol (and really this can be applied to any food) on its own terms. Once you do this, you’ll find running that race is actually pretty enjoyable. The scenery is great, and you’ll marvel at how you once had no interest in seeing what was around the next bend.

The American palate is hardly the ideal vehicle to ride to enjoying new foods. From birth we are deluged in a flood of overly sweetened and salty foods. For most people the choice isn’t between ice water and tea, it is between Coke and Sprite. We drown our steaks in A-1, our salads in dressing, and our hamburgers in mustard and ketchup. Any subtle seasonings or flavorings in the meat or side dishes are usually blasted away under too much salt and overpowering sauces. The end result of this is that dishes with complex and subtle flavorings taste bland, watered down, and unappetizing to us. You have to train yourself from the ground up, and learn what to look for when you eat. This topic could encompass probably an entire book, so at this point I’m going to digress and stick to palate development as it relates to alcohol; namely, beer, wine, and liquor.

Beer – Beer is probably the biggest area where people are willfully clueless. Beer has a shit load more flavor characteristics than “cold” and “ice cold” bros. If you drink most American macrobrews, it tastes like ice water with beer flavoring added. This is not necessarily a bad thing (no Irish stouts after mowing the lawn in summer thanks), but it’s a damn tragedy to see so many people sticking to the same old shitty styles and brands regardless of circumstance.

Beer flavor, to me, is divided into two main categories: malt and hops. Malt will provide the “breadiness” of beer, and is where the wheat, fruit, and thickness come from. Hops will provide a wide degree of flavors ranging from citrus to pine needles, but can generally be described as “foresty” or plant like. To train your palate to recognize the difference, take two styles of beer that are an extreme example of each; a Budweiser or a Coors are not going to have hardly any of either.

To truly detect and understand the malt taste, go for a Bock, an ale, or if you can find one, a Belgian Strong Dark Ale like Trois Pistoles or the Trappist ales. Keep in mind that the goal here is not to enjoy the brew, it is learn how to identify malt characteristics. You will probably be intially disgusted by these extremes if you are coming off a watery lager. When you drink it you will smell and taste fruit and bread. The fruit can be anything from raisins to bananas to plum. You may also get notes of brown sugar or vanilla. Conversely, going to an extremely hoppy brew like Sierra Nevada Pale Ale will flood your palate with forest, grass, and citrus hop notes. You will probably hate it at first (I still haven’t developed a taste for extremely hoppy beers), but you will definitely know what hops taste like afterwards, and be able to identify them (or lack thereof) in your beers. As most people tend to either favor malt or hops, you now know what direction to go in when sampling new beers.

Wine – My wine experience is admittedly very limited, and my wine list is nowhere near my liquor and beer rosters. Unlike beer, wine flavors are all over the place. Wine, even within the same grape varietal, can be creamy, mineral, woody, or fruity. There is really just no way to know without trying the bottle. I can, however, tell you what you’ll be looking for:

White Wines – White wines tend more towards the citrus side of the spectrum, and to me taste a great deal “sharper” than their red cousins. In a white wine you will almost always get some sort of fruit note (apple, citrus, grape, and pear being quite common), with either a creaminess or a mineral quality to it. Two white grapes that are somewhat contrasted (but this is by no means a hard and fast rule, as each vineyard has its own take on the grapes) in my experience are Chardonnay and Riesling. Chardonnay, at least at the lower side of the price spectrum, will tend towards creamy, buttery, and rather dry whereas a Riesling will be far more fruity and sweet.

Red Wines – Red wines will almost always be filled with dark fruit like raspberries, plums, and cherries. The key word in red wines is tannins, the things that cause that puckery sensation in your mouth when you drink it. Are the fruits dominated by the tannins? Does the wine go down smoothly? Remember you’re going to hate this at first, but keep at it and eventually you will begin to discern these flavor characteristics. At the very least, you should now be able to figure out if you favor whites or reds.

Liquor – Liquor is a broad category. The best catch-all advice I can give with liquor is that you’re just going to have to drink a whole lot because initially the alcohol is going to dominate and be all you can taste. Mixing may help a bit, but this tends to dull the flavor of the spirit. If you do mix try to use something relatively flavor neutral like tonic water or club soda. Cola or another sugary sweet mixer is going to completely obliterate what is in the spirit.