Berry, earth, cloves, hay, banana, How do all these flavours end up in beer?
These and so many more flavours all come from just four basic and natural ingredients.
Water, Barley Malt, Hops, and Yeast provide all the tastes in most beers but for a new beer drinker it can be awfully difficult to figure out what component provides what taste.
It's no wonder that so many people find so much to say about beer.
For the most part experience will be your guide, along with seeing what other people have to say about a particular beer and then comparing with what you yourself are tasting.
It is very difficult to use words to describe a taste, everyone knows, for instance, what an egg tastes like. Go ahead and describe one to someone who has never tried one. What words do you use to describe the taste you know?
Describing the tastes of beer is much the same. The words we use are not exact, the flavours are similar to "berry" for instance, this does not mean that the taste is exactly that but that the tastes make you think of the berry tastes. It's as close as words can come to describing tastes.

Here is my attempt to "break down" the tastes and what component of beer is most likely to create them. I try really hard to avoid saying things like "A very malty beer" or "A very hoppy beer" since the words hoppy and malty have no real meaning except to people who already know what these tastes are.