To me, alcoholic beverages have a distinctive taste in common (stronger in spirits and weaker in beer or wine), which I always assumed was the taste of the alcohol itself.
Some sources describe pure ethanol as 'tasteless', albeit strongly odoured; if this is true, then I guess what I interpret as a taste is really the combination of the smell & the burning sensation.
But other sources describe it as having a taste -- e.g. CAMEO Chemicals (via PubChem) says ethanol has a 'pungent taste', and a paper I find when googling says 10% ethanol tastes bitter to everyone and sweet to some (and I know that's not exactly alcohol 'by itself' but they do attribute the taste to the ethanol).
I think if something has a strong smell it by definition has a strong taste? Most of what you taste is the smell. If you close your nose a lot of food becomes quite tasteless.
Coffee contains many alkaloids (including caffeine), which are quite bitter but have little or no odour. Alcohol on the other hand has a very strong odour.
There seems to be disagreement over this.
To me, alcoholic beverages have a distinctive taste in common (stronger in spirits and weaker in beer or wine), which I always assumed was the taste of the alcohol itself.
Some sources describe pure ethanol as 'tasteless', albeit strongly odoured; if this is true, then I guess what I interpret as a taste is really the combination of the smell & the burning sensation.
But other sources describe it as having a taste -- e.g. CAMEO Chemicals (via PubChem) says ethanol has a 'pungent taste', and a paper I find when googling says 10% ethanol tastes bitter to everyone and sweet to some (and I know that's not exactly alcohol 'by itself' but they do attribute the taste to the ethanol).