The Stoutest Stout

I just got back from a Stout tasting competition. Essentially, a bunch of amateur beer makers submitted their own stouts, and a bunch of amateurs and a few "expert" beer tasters chose their favorites. It was a lot of fun, even if most of the beers were, well, odd tasting. They did tend to blur together, but it was fun to begin to taste the various chocolate, caramel, coffee, and god knows what other odd flavors that were found in a stout. Some were tasty, some were smooth, and some were atrocious.
The amazing thing to me is how detailed any of this tasting is. I suppose it's like any hobby: You can get as detailed as you'd like. Wine tasting in particular is filled with detailed aficionados who can distinguish all the various grapes, vineyards, and years.
One of the guys sitting next to us made a stout and had submitted it to the competition. He always had an opinion on the various beers, and thought he could identify his own; It turned out he was wrong, although that choice was one of my favorites.
It does bring up the question as to how much taste is determined by what we think it should taste like. If someone tells you it is supposed to taste good, you train your brain to taste that as good. It's one of the reasons why I think more men drink beer. As teenagers and young college students, they are stigmatized to like it. So, they drink more of it, and develop a taste for it. It's not that women are biologically less likely to like it, it's just that they aren't embarrassed to order a sweeter drink.
Is there a point to this? Probably not. I'm going to go have a Guinness.