I’m trying to learn to appreciate beer as more than an alcohol delivery method. So far, it’s pretty easy to tell which flavors go with which names – chocolate and toast are the first flavors I was able to pick out.
But pale ale? PLEH. I’ve tried Flying Dog, and a couple of others that I got in a mix-pack but I don’t remember what they are. They all tasted like licking the back of an envelope. What’s that taste called? I can’t imagine anyone writing “envelope glue” in a review. 
It’s only been the past year or so that I’ve developed a taste for beer. I still don’t bother with anything I can read a newspaper through.
Basically, I’m a bock or darker kind of girl. Guiness is still a little too strong for me to really enjoy, but I’m liking regular ales, bocks, and a couple of others.
That’s hops, baby. Hops. Once you get past the bitterness, you’ll learn to separate the hops flavors into several categories, most commonly: citrus, floral, piney, spicy. American hops tend to fall into the citrus and pine categories. European hops tend to be more flowers and spice.
You may never learn to like pale ales. I love beer, especially ones with lots of taste. But I’m not big on heavily hopped beers. And that’s just what a pale ale is…an otherwise weak tasting beer that has a ridiculous amount of hops thrown in. I’ll pass.
There are only four ingredients in beer: malt, water, yeast and hops. Two of those don’t impart any real flavor (let’s ignore the delicious and distinctive character the yeast gives to a good Bavarian hefeweizen). So the character of the beer you’re drinking is really a balance between the two main flavor ingrdients: malt and hops.
There are a huge variety of malts that give different beers their particular characters. From crisp, light crystal malts to dark roasts like chocolate malt, that’s what gives the beer its color and non-bitter flavors. Hops are there to balance the sweetness and cereal qualities of the malt by adding a complex bitterness (their original purpose was as a preservative). If you start by evaluating beers based on those two dimensions of flavor, you’ll be able to zero in on the range of styles you like.
I love beers that are strong on the malty axis, and weak in the hoppy dimension. In other words, the exact opposite of a pale ale. Brown and amber ales are great examples. For readily available, off-the-megamart-shelf types, I’d have to pick Newcastle Brown Ale as my favorite example of that style. I also love wheat beers…nothing beats a good hefeweizen. Really, I love it all if it’s tasty, and that taste isn’t too much hops. 
I think you’re understating the flavor component of yeast here. Brewing beers myself, there definitely is a difference when you use, say, an American yeast for your pale ales (my favorite style is India Pale Ale) and an English yeast. The sweetness/dryness of a beer, the fruity esters some yeasts produce, etc., are all evident from the type of yeast being used.
Here’s a thread about it, for example.
Thirty percent may be an overestimation, but there’s no doubt in my mind that the yeast largely influences the taste of a beer.
I understand you’re trying to simplify, and analyzing beer on the hops-malt axes is a good idea for a beginner, but I wanted to add a note about the importance of yeast.
Yeah…I’m guilty of oversimplifying. I’ve done some brewing before, too, and I’m aware of the extra subtleties brought in by the yeast. (Though maybe not as aware as I ought to be because I haven’t experimented with it much.) I also omitted the different characters the varieties of hops can impart…but for beer tasting 101, you gotta start somewhere.
Ah, so that’s what hops taste like! It’s kind of weird trying to match a flavor to a name if I’ve never had it before.
I did have a raspberry flavored wheat beer that was damn tasty. Is wheat beer what you’d call malty?
I also had a chile beer that was fantastic. IIRC, it was a lager with a pepper dropped into the bottom. drools Lager is pretty good too, come to think of it…
You had to start a beer thread just as I’m leaving for the day?
Hops are what gives beer its wonderfulness. Hops, hops and more hops. Wheat beer isn’t “malty,” it’s “wheaty.” Sounds like you like the lighter end of the beer spectrum, and should stick to lagers and wheat beers until your palate develops. You may decide that you like other beers as well. Or not. No sin in that. Just leaves more of the Hop Monsters to those of us who like their beer “chewy!”
Try Pilsner Urquell. This is the beer that defines the style.
OP, since you cited a pale ale it seems the assumption is you dislike hop flavour but there are so many other things that affect taste your envelope licking analogy is too vague.
It might help you to learn some of the traditional fundamentals of beer making, which doesn’t involve brewing your own but simply what differentiates an ale from a lager, and picking a premier version of each from which to make points of departure.
I second Pilsner Urquell for the lager, great balance between malt & hops. Just the four ingredients; water,yeast, malted barley and hops.
For the ale, the American Sierra Nevada pale ale which is readily obtainable and not offensive to ale purists. Same four ingredients.
Understand there is a world of complexity to each of the ingredients. The same brewer using identical procedures but different water, barley, yeast and hops will produce a different beer.
Pretty much. I’ve had a couple of beers that I thought would be easier to eat with a knife and fork than to drink, and I didn’t like them much at all.
Oh, yeah, I tasted plenty more than licking an envelope, but that was the strongest flavor I got. I’ll definitely look for the beers you suggested next time I’m at Total Wine.