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Sometimes, however carefully and accurately you describe something, you just can’t capture what it is that makes it great. Yes, Abraham Lincoln was a tall man with a beard who wore a black hat, but, factual as that description is, it somehow misses the point.
A few times recently, we’ve described the general characteristics of a beer and realised that they could apply to a thousand other brews. We’ve had to resort to words like ‘zing’ to get across an additional, elusive quality that makes that particular beer great.
Is it freshness? A quality of carbonation? Subtle flavours which more refined palates than ours could identify? We don’t know and, until such time as we do, ‘zing’ will have to do.
I can live with zing. Sometimes you sip a beer and thing “zing”, right?
Glad it’s not only me
thing = think
thing, think, zing, zinc?
Nice graphic. Schultheiss (RIP) if I’m not mistaken. If I am mistaken, it isn’t Schultheiss!
It is indeed a Schultheiss sign, as seen on a boarded up bar in Luebeck. They have excellent artwork, these German breweries.
zing sounds pretty good to me. keep zinging!
Bailey, don’t be gettin’ all Dr. Seuss on me now!
I’m with Barry — I know zing when I taste it. It’s a great word to describe what beer sometimes does. When it’s zingy, I mean.
I would hazard that Cascade contains high levels of zing.
I overuse tang, but some beers just have it and other don’t. And zing too, although used a little less often. Cascade has a bit of zing too it (and a little fairy liquid on occasion so a good friend reckons).
Beer Nut — can a beer be ‘beery’ and have zing? Or are they mutually exclusive?
i like a beer with a nice beery zing. no don’t think they work like that. I do like a beer with zing and i do like a beery beer
Beeriness and zing are definitely mutually exclusive.
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‘Zing’ definitely makes me think of a big gobful of zesty citrus hop flavours.
Darren — we’ve definitely had beers in which you’d be hard pressed to describe any big flavours but which nonetheless had ‘zing’. Probably the best synonym we’ve yet come up with is vitality — or “the impression of freshness”.