[stavros]

> Something that my wife will insist has no or little seafood in will taste like I am eating the entire ocean.

I can relate, I'm the same with coffee and alcohol. Coffee just tastes like I'm eating/drinking charcoal, and alcohol tastes like bleach.

People always go "oh but you can't taste the alcohol in this cocktail!". No, you can't taste the alcohol, it tastes like lemon-flavored bleach to me.

[sethammons]

Wait - are there people who don't taste alcohol that way? I also taste charcoal for all coffee/espresso and people say the beans were burnt. Nope, my buddy ran a coffee shop and my kid is a coffee aficionado. All charcoal. But I just assumed everyone thought alcohol tasted like what I imagine bleach to give impressions of.

[lvturner]

Interesting!

I've never thought alcohol tastes like bleach, though in some I can now certainly get a taste of "ethanol", same with the charcoal coffee thing -- many flavours I've found in coffee, but never charcoal.

I wouldn't be surprised if we all have some kind of genetic marker/mutation (I'm not a biologist, sorry!) that impacts the way we taste certain foods.

[stavros]

It very much seems that they do not.