Oh for some improved scratch and sniff technology, sighs GAVIN AITCHISON this week.

ONE day, perhaps before too long, technology will revolutionise these little chats of ours. I know some of you already follow them on iPhones or the like and some of you tweet me your recommendations, which is great, or your drunken ramblings, which is less great. But that's not what I mean.

No, I’m waiting for something else – a breakthrough that is right under our noses: scratch-and-sniff newspapers. Or, better yet, scratch-and-taste.

For all of technology’s great advances, that’s where we’re still lacking. You can listen to music on something the size of a penny; store a library’s worth of books on a microchip and watch live online as your best friend’s brother’s dog rides a bike in New Zealand. But when you want to know how something tastes or smells, without handing over your cash first, you still have to turn to folks like me waxing lyrical about hints, suggestions and undertones of this, that or the other thing.

If the whizz kids can’t come up with something new, we should return instead to something old-school. When I were a lad, we would occasionally get scratch-and-sniff freebies with The Beano, offering eight-year-old boys the smells of stink-bombs, rotten egg and mouldy cheese.

Today, police in some parts of the country have been issuing scratch-and-sniff cannabis cards so people can familiarise themselves with the whiff of a spliff, and grass on their neighbours.

So it shouldn’t be too hard to transfer this creativity to newspapers. All we need is an entrepreneurial brewer to have a word with my editor, and we’ll be flying.

We could put a little box beside each beery recommendation; you could rub your thumb over it, and whooooosh: a burst of rich smoky malt or fresh, zingy hops would waft up from the page. Your finger nails might stink, but you'd be more informed when you reached the bar.

The online readers could have a different system, holding down the A, L and E keys at the same time, to prompt a blast of chemicals to squirt out from the speakers. Maybe YouTube would jump on board, and call it YouSmell.

For now though, such ingenious wizardry remains a pipe-dream. For now, you're stuck with me.

It’s a crying shame that, as you really, really ought to get a noseful and a mouthful of the beers that were on the bar at The Maltings on Thursday night.

Carnival from Magic Rock brewery in Huddersfield was almost erupting with hops and spectacular, pale fruit smells. If you've ever been on a brewery tour and been given hops to sniff, then imagine that. Cut grass meets herbs meets freshly-squeezed fruit juice.

If that was good though, then it was nothing compared to my next choice. Titanic Plum Porter sounded intriguing, tasted wonderful and smelt extraordinary. Go there now, and see for yourself.

As soon as you pick up the glass you’ll be hit by the plum aroma. It’s the rich, all-encompassing smell you get when rich fruit is cooked, say for a crumble or a jam. Intense is an understatement.

The fear when beers smell so enticing is that the taste is an anti-climax. There’ll be no such disappointment here. The plum aroma is followed by a deep, robust fruit flavour that is long-lasting and endlessly moreish.

One day, I'll be able to prove that. For now, we can just scratch the surface and hope that in the future, that’s all that will be needed.


Shorts

The Slip Inn in Clementhorpe has its spring beer festival today.