Your Tasting Brain
A Sensory Approach to Wine, Beer, and Other Pleasures
Will be published approx. on 1. June 2026
Book
Hardback
376 pages
978-0-226-84819-8 (ISBN)
Description
A scintillating invitation to enrich our culinary pursuits by understanding how our bodies turn a taste into flavor, emotion, and meaning.
Our foodscape has never been more adventurous, but fully experiencing the subtleties of complex cheeses, wines, or cocktails can be challenging. No longer! In Your Tasting Brain, bestselling food writer Randy Mosher assures us that we can all become master tasters by learning more about the brilliant ways our bodies translate smell, taste, and mouthfeel into flavor-without needing to know everything about terroir, varietals, or exotic ingredients.
In Your Tasting Brain, Mosher shares a road map to send us on our tasting journey, one that connects the worlds of science and art. Our bodies are more finely tuned tasting machines than we realize, Mosher explains. Even a simple grasp of how our senses interact with the world can enhance our culinary delight-and Mosher offers us a tantalizing framework, from how our brain processes, categorizes, and rewards (or punishes) encounters with chemicals in food, all the way to how aromas and flavors spur us to language, emotion, and creativity. Overflowing with scientific insight and practical advice, Your Tasting Brain is an appetizing guide for anyone looking to enhance the pleasures they find in food through attention, curiosity, and practice.
Our foodscape has never been more adventurous, but fully experiencing the subtleties of complex cheeses, wines, or cocktails can be challenging. No longer! In Your Tasting Brain, bestselling food writer Randy Mosher assures us that we can all become master tasters by learning more about the brilliant ways our bodies translate smell, taste, and mouthfeel into flavor-without needing to know everything about terroir, varietals, or exotic ingredients.
In Your Tasting Brain, Mosher shares a road map to send us on our tasting journey, one that connects the worlds of science and art. Our bodies are more finely tuned tasting machines than we realize, Mosher explains. Even a simple grasp of how our senses interact with the world can enhance our culinary delight-and Mosher offers us a tantalizing framework, from how our brain processes, categorizes, and rewards (or punishes) encounters with chemicals in food, all the way to how aromas and flavors spur us to language, emotion, and creativity. Overflowing with scientific insight and practical advice, Your Tasting Brain is an appetizing guide for anyone looking to enhance the pleasures they find in food through attention, curiosity, and practice.
Reviews / Votes
"Mosher's decades spent practicing the art of tasting while also studying the science behind it pay off handsomely in his newest offering. This accessible text will be tremendously useful for anyone involved in food or beverage work. And anyone who loves to eat and drink thoughtfully will delight in the insights and revelations that Your Tasting Brain offers into the mysteries of gustatory experience. Brilliant!" -- Ray Daniels, founder of the Cicerone Certification Program "Mosher gives us an easy-to-digest smorgasbord of information that heightens our tasting experiences. The pleasure of deliciousness has never been more accessible now that Your Tasting Brain is on our table. Mosher blends so much of the otherwise overwhelming and sometimes contradictory insights about taste from science and art into a guidebook that's both immensely informative and enjoyable." -- Charlie Papazian, author of 'The Complete Joy of Homebrewing' and founder of the Brewers Association "As students, we always stand on the shoulders of those great thinkers who have come before us. Students of beer, wine, mead, and food will stand on Mosher's shoulders from now on. This book fuses insights into the physiological processes behind chemosensation with appreciation for the mental processes evoking perception. Like Herve This, Nicholas Kurti, and Harold McGee, Mosher is transforming and advancing the way we understand gustation. Bravo!" -- Ken Schramm, author of 'The Complete Meadmaker' and cofounder of Schramm's Mead "Rigorous enough to cite the research, practical enough to change how you eat dinner tonight." * Fisher & Farmer *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Chicago
United States
Publishing group
The University of Chicago Press
Illustrations
64 halftones, 1 tables
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 33 mm
Weight
739 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-226-84819-8 (9780226848198)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Randy Mosher is a food writer and creative consultant who teaches at the Siebel Institute of Technology brewing school. He is the author of five books, including Tasting
Beer: An Insider's Guide to the World's Greatest Drink. He is currently a minority partner in two Chicago-area breweries.
Beer: An Insider's Guide to the World's Greatest Drink. He is currently a minority partner in two Chicago-area breweries.
Content
An Introduction: Function, Feeling, and Purpose
Section 1: The Science
Chapter 1. The Mystery and Majesty of the Chemical Senses: Structure, Function, Feeling, and Purpose
Chapter 2. A Taste of Taste: The Purpose and Power of Our Not-So-Simple Sense
Chapter 3. A Feel for Mouthfeel: Trigeminal Sensations in the Mouth and Elsewhere
Chapter 4. Know Your Nose: Neuroanatomy and the Experience of Olfaction
Chapter 5. Chasing the Aroma Rainbow: The Endless Search for a Road Map of Aromas
Chapter 6. Flavor and So Much More: The Wonder of Multimodal Sensory Perception
Chapter 7. How Can We Even Talk to Each Other? Genetic, Cultural, and Personal History Differences
Chapter 8. The Word Is Not the Thing: The Pitfalls and Shortcomings of Tasting Language
Section 2: Practical Tasting
Chapter 9. What Am I Tasting? An Introduction to the Molecules of Flavor and Their Origins
Chapter 10. Fermented Beverages: A Vocabulary of Wine, Beer, and Other Beverages
Chapter 11. Distilled Beverages: A Vocabulary of Spirits
Chapter 12. The What, Why, and How of Tasting: Tools, Techniques, and Objectives
Chapter 13. How to Be a Taster: Enough with Theory-Let's Taste!
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Section 1: The Science
Chapter 1. The Mystery and Majesty of the Chemical Senses: Structure, Function, Feeling, and Purpose
Chapter 2. A Taste of Taste: The Purpose and Power of Our Not-So-Simple Sense
Chapter 3. A Feel for Mouthfeel: Trigeminal Sensations in the Mouth and Elsewhere
Chapter 4. Know Your Nose: Neuroanatomy and the Experience of Olfaction
Chapter 5. Chasing the Aroma Rainbow: The Endless Search for a Road Map of Aromas
Chapter 6. Flavor and So Much More: The Wonder of Multimodal Sensory Perception
Chapter 7. How Can We Even Talk to Each Other? Genetic, Cultural, and Personal History Differences
Chapter 8. The Word Is Not the Thing: The Pitfalls and Shortcomings of Tasting Language
Section 2: Practical Tasting
Chapter 9. What Am I Tasting? An Introduction to the Molecules of Flavor and Their Origins
Chapter 10. Fermented Beverages: A Vocabulary of Wine, Beer, and Other Beverages
Chapter 11. Distilled Beverages: A Vocabulary of Spirits
Chapter 12. The What, Why, and How of Tasting: Tools, Techniques, and Objectives
Chapter 13. How to Be a Taster: Enough with Theory-Let's Taste!
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index