🍺 Can you make the smell of beer without beer? I've been working on something a little different: a Beer Accord. At first, it seemed straightforward. Malt. Hops. Alcohol. Done. Not even close. What makes beer smell like beer is a complex combination of malted grain, hops, fermentation products, fruity esters, alcohols, sulfur compounds and acids. My first attempts smelled like bread. Then fruity bread. Then boozy bread. 😂 Getting from there to something that actually registered as BEER meant building it in layers. 🌾 MALT & GRAIN Maltol, Bran Absolute, Methyl 5-Furfural and Acetyl Pyrazine create the warm malted-grain character. Too much, though, and you're suddenly in a bakery instead of a brewery. 🌿 HOPS Hop Flower, Myrcene, Linalool and Cis-3-Hexenol create the green, herbal and terpenic character of hops. 🍌 FERMENTATION Isoamyl Acetate, Ethyl Butyrate, Ethyl Caprate and Phenyl Acetaldehyde provide fruity fermentation effects. Isoamyl acetate smells distinctly of banana—but in the right balance, these esters stop smelling like individual fruits and begin to suggest fermentation. 🥃 BOOZE Ethyl Acetate, Cognac Oil, Rhumacetal and a trace of Rum CO₂ help create that volatile alcoholic impression. 🦠 THE WEIRD STUFF Yeast Thiazoline. Capric Acid. Dimethyl Sulfide. Not exactly the prettiest smelling materials on their own—and that's the point. Real smells aren't made entirely from pleasant-smelling molecules. Tiny amounts of fatty, sulfurous, yeasty and funky materials create the imperfections our brains associate with something that has actually fermented. After plenty of trial and error, 24 aromatic materials finally came together to turn bread, fruit, hops and booze into something recognizable as beer. 🍺 Perfumery isn't always about making something smell beautiful. Sometimes it's about figuring out what makes something smell real. What should we recreate next?

First steam distillations experiment.

So I have a completed formula, the smell itself is amazing but I'm having a problem with it not lasting over 4 hours. Has typical fixatives like ambroxans/ musk/ isoe/cedramber for example. Im figuring the problem is too much of a certain aroma chemical. How do you go about finding specifically which one (or multiple) it is

I thought I'd share this Excel sheet I put together that is focused on the different types of vanilla. I have gone down the vanilla rabbit hole now.