Leaves a bitter taste in your mouth.

"Leaves a bitter taste in your mouth" is often an expression that is used for something bad. If you look it up, this idiom focuses on the lingering effect of unpleasantness. When this idiom is applied to things other than food, it is about the lingering bad taste. Here's an example I found on the internet:

We had been dating for two months and I liked him very much. Monday night we went out and he became drunk and abusive. He has called me ten times since but I haven't returned his phone calls. His behavior on Monday left a bitter taste in my mouth.


Seems like he was drinking too much of the wrong beer. She did right. (although after 10 unanswered calls you think he would have clocked onto the fact that she didn't like him. Must be a Stella drinker).

But is bitterness all about bad taste and abusive phone calls? In beer, bitterness is extremely important. So important in fact, that it's the key taste that people decide if they like the beer or not. Like smell, taste has an evolutionary role in protecting the body from ingesting anything harmful and identifying tastes that give us pleasure

As you can see above, the tongue is split into four different zones. Each of these play a part in tasting beer, because the liquid washes over your tongue before ending up down your throat (or t-shirt depending on how many you've had). Right at the back of the tongue is where bitterness is detected

Most natural toxins and medicines are bitter and acids are sour. These tastes are often perceived as unpleasant and potentially harmful to the body, whereas sweetness is seen as acceptable. This is why you normally stick your tip of your tongue onto an untasted food to check if it's ok  If it's bitter or sour, then by the time you've got it in your mouth, your tongue will be detecting that it's potentially harmful and give you massive signals to spit it out.

After smell, taste is the next most important factor in flavour perception. Once again, genetics, cultural background and experience play a role in taste ability and preference. It's also sad to note that as you get older, the ability to taste and smell declines with age (which explains why it's only young people who complain about smelly old people on buses and trams - not the other way around.).

Culture is an interesting one.  I'm from a culture in the UK where we are used to drinking quite bitter beers. The main cause of bitterness in beer comes from the addition of hops. Hops are added at the start of the boiling process, which means the brewer gets the flavour but not the aroma of the hops (that is lost in steam up the brewery chimney. If the brewer wants the aroma, then he'll add some more hops for the last 5 minutes of the boil, in a process called "late hopping".). Hops also act as a preservative of flavour, as the resins in hops have anti bacterial effects on organisms which can make beer taste "off". It's these preservative effects that were noticed by brewers who were sending their beer on the long trip to India in the 1800's. They used loads of hops to make sure the beer tasted fresh at the journey end. This type of beer was called India Pale Ale (IPA) and it, aswell as the hops inside it, became very popular in the UK and fashioned our style of beers still drunk today.

But Estonian beer never had to travel to India. Which means that Estonian beer on the whole, doesn't exactly rate high up on the bitterness scale. And a scale there is. All beer when it's brewed is measured in International Bitterness Units (IBUs). The more bitter it is, the higher the amount of units. These days it's becoming more and more popular to display the amount of IBUs on the label, because as I mentioned before, it's the bitterness that most people use to determine if they like a beer or not. Think of it like the numbers on a coffee packet to indicate how strong (roasted = bitterness) it is, or the amount of chilli peppers next to the food description at your Chinese takeaway (unless of course you are in Estonia, whereas you might as well disregard these entirely). Some examples:

Sol = 0 IBU (doesn't contain hops)
Bud = 10 IBU
Saku Originaal = 12 IBU
Saku Hele = 18 IBU
A Le Coq  = 12 IBU (suprise suprise)
Abbot Ale = 35 IBU
Pilsner Urquell = 45 IBU
Punk IPA = 68

Anything above that, and it starts to get very interesting! Currently, the beer with the most IBUs is from Danish brewer Mikkeller. Their "Hop Juice" has. Wait for it. 2007 IBUs. These brewers are similar to Brewdog in that they do a lot of experimental brews just for the hell of it. I have however spoken to them about bringing their beers to Estonia (mouth drooling) and the suggested brands they gave me included the beer called "1000IBU light". No prizes for guessing what the amount of bitterness units are in this one. I might be a bit scared to try it though!

The nearest we've got to something in the way of a beer with high IBUs is Brewdog Hardcore IPA, and it's that beer I'm reviewing now.

Brewdog Hardcore IPA (ratebeer rating: 99) 33cl 9.2% abv

You can't help but be a little bit scared when you are about to open this. It's the combination of the fact that it's 9.2% alcohol, its 150 IBUs and it's from Brewdog. When I first had a bottle, it sat in the fridge for quite a while, because I was waiting for "the right moment" to drink it. This is not a beer you grab when you've just finished playing football, just about to watch a football match, or the beer you give your father in law for the first time. I actually had mine on Christmas day, which I thought was the right moment - I was nice and relaxed, plus had a nice full stomach after stuffing my face all day. This beer took the role of a cognac or glass of port in front of the fire at the end of a long day.

It pours an amber golden orange colour, and suprisingly considering the amount of IBUs has quite a small head. What little head it does have packs a lot of aromas - toffee, caramel, banana and maybe a bit of honey and pine.

The taste is as you would expect - powerful, dry and full bodied. After the initial bitterness, it's got a sweet taste, and then finishes again with a long dryness. Almost like the juniper taste of a dry gin. The sweetness give it great drinkability - caramel and toffee flavours combined with the resin like sweetness of pine and orange peel.

So nothing to be scared of. Apart from the fact that I finished it and immediately wanted another one. It's definitely a drink to take at the end of the night, because in the morning (ok, I had another one) the first thing I tasted in my mouth was hops Unless of course, Hardcore is the ONLY drink you choose to drink all night.

"Leaves a bitter taste in your mouth"? Maybe in time this will be a phrase to describe something good and agreeable instead of the otherway around. I can't guarantee about getting drunk and making 10 abusive phone calls though...