A difficult sensation to weed out from the rest is hop flavor, especially when you are starting out. If you can taste the hoppy aroma of a beer, or an herbal spiciness in your beer, you've found the hop flavor. Another frequent taste word is estery. Esters are aromas and flavors in the beer that are a byproduct of fermentation. Fruity is the most common ester that people notice.
Ales have more esters than lagers and fresh beer also tends to have more esters than aged beer.
To smell an ester you can't miss, taste one of the German-style Hefeweizens. Ale and lager are the words that describe the biggest division in the beer world. But over the years, the difference between the two broad styles is much more than where the yeast hangs out as it eats sugar and makes alcohol. Ales and lagers have much in common. Both can be pale to black in color.