“For centuries, physicians used a urine flavor wheel to help them diagnose a patient’s illness based on the taste of the patient’s pee. While this wasn’t particularly accurate overall, it was quite helpful in detecting diabetes mellitus, a disease that makes a patient’s urine taste sweet. Since those more adventurous days, other items have gotten their own flavor or aroma wheel, including chocolate, coffee, maple products, whisky and beer. One of the problems with the beer flavor wheel is that it’s not particularly consumer-friendly. A brewer with at least a passing interest in chemistry will be able to recognize flavor/aromas such as “isoamyl acetate” (that’s the banana ester so very prevalent in, say, German hefeweizens). But your regular beer drinker is probably not going to have a clue what that means. Beer writer Mark Dredge, who has a book, Craft Beer World, coming out soon, decided to make a more consumer-friendly beer flavor wheel. (The link will take you to his blog, where he explains his rationale for creating the wheel.)”

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Click on wheel to enlarge.