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At the end of the first book:

[...] Ah! Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans! I was unfortunate enough in my youth to come across a vomit-flavored one, and since then I’m afraid I’ve rather lost my liking for them — but I think I’ll be safe with a nice toffee, don’t you?” He smiled and popped the golden-brown bean into his mouth. Then he choked and said, “Alas! Ear wax!

Can't the most powerful wizard in the world just do magic to find the taste so that he doesn't tastes anything that he may not like?

b_jonas
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Elmo
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    What fun would that be? – Chris B. Behrens Jul 08 '15 at 14:36
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    the same reason people don't look at the guide on boxes of assorted chocolates. – phantom42 Jul 08 '15 at 14:38
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    I think he was busy with more important things. FWIW, there is no canon answer to this question. – Slytherincess Jul 08 '15 at 14:39
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    @phantom42 Why would you not look at the guide? Got to grab the best ones before somebody else does! – Anthony Grist Jul 08 '15 at 14:56
  • Also, Dumbledore does quite enjoy his jokes. There's no guarantee it was actually ear wax flavour. (Please nobody ask that as a question...) – Anthony Grist Jul 08 '15 at 14:58
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    Why didn't XX use magic to YY? This can be asked about almost anything that didn't happen in Harry Potter – user13267 Jul 08 '15 at 15:13
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    I think we've just struck on a fundamental human dichotomy here - the people who just take whatever chocolate the box gives them, and the kind who need the guide... – Chris B. Behrens Jul 08 '15 at 15:14
  • For all we know they're enchanted to stop that sort of thing, as it would, as others have pointed out, ruin the fun. – DavidS Jul 08 '15 at 15:26
  • @phantom42 - they don't? I do. I always guessed everyone does – DVK-on-Ahch-To Jul 08 '15 at 16:16
  • Life is like a box of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans.... – DVK-on-Ahch-To Jul 08 '15 at 16:16
  • @DVK - I am not a smart man. – Valorum Jul 08 '15 at 18:13
  • @phantom42: What? That sounds very dangerous! Many people are allergic to nuts or white flour or milk or other ingredients, and some of these allergies can cause very serious medical emergencies. Awareness to this seems to have started only in the last decade, at least in this part of the world, so I'm not surprised if Wizards in the Potterverse don't care, but do people do that in real life? – b_jonas Jul 08 '15 at 18:51
  • @b_jonas believe it or not, there are people without any major food allergies. – phantom42 Jul 08 '15 at 19:11
  • @phantom42: According to some viewpoints, yes. According to others, we just don't have our allergies diagnosed yet, so we don't know what specifically we should avoid. But sure, some people don't need to read the labels. – b_jonas Jul 08 '15 at 20:08
  • @b_jonas you must be fun at parties. Take a chance in your life, be adventurous, eat an assorted chocolate without reading the label... YOLO. – Zikato Jul 10 '15 at 10:31
  • An alternate possibility is that Professor Dumbledore simply lied, just like he did about the socks. Maybe he could tell which bean is of what taste and deliberately picked the worst tasting one he could find for dramatic effect, or didn't care about the tastes and lied about the bean being earwax. – b_jonas Jul 10 '15 at 22:14

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According to JKR, the whole point of Bertie Bott's beans is that they're hilarious. You literally never know what you're going to get; something wonderful, something mundane or something genuinely disgusting.

JKR: Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans are beans that literally do comprise every flavour, so that you have liver... tripe, marmalade, erm, chocolate... vomit is mentioned, earwax is mentioned... that would be hysterical if they did that, I’d love it. [laughs]

If you were to cheat and use magic to identify the flavour in advance (assuming such a thing was possible, these are magic beans after all), that would remove some of the amusement.

You might just as well ask why students don't enchant their fever fudge not to cause a fever

Valorum
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  • I think they must be enchanted so the user recognizes flavor on tasting. How would Dumbledore know they taste like ear wax? Has he tasted ear wax before and remembered it? – Zikato Jul 10 '15 at 10:29
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    @zikato - He's a old man. I dare say he's tasted earwax at least once in his long life, if only to satisfy his curiosity – Valorum Jul 10 '15 at 13:15
  • and it was such an experience that he remembered the flavour his whole life. – Zikato Jul 10 '15 at 13:18
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    @zikato - For a dare, I once licked a burnt car tyre. Suffice to say, 25 years later the memory has not left me. – Valorum Jul 10 '15 at 15:30
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Firstly, finding out the flavor of the beans would require divination. Professor Dumbledore was a very powerful wizard, but I believe he wasn't very good in divination. He admits himself in Half-Blood Prince chapter 20:

[…] ‘Divination is turning out to be much more trouble than I could have foreseen, never having studied the subject myself. […]‘

And also in Prisoner of Azkaban chapter 22.

‘[…] The consequences of our actions are always so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed … Professor Trelawney, bless her, is living proof of that. […]’

Professor Dumbledore used his great people skills, mind-altering magic, and network of spies to find out a lot of information about the past history and future plans of the Dark Lord, but it doesn't seem like he's ever used divination for that.

(Update: on second thought, it's hard to be sure, because Hermione, who has quit Divination lessons early, has still cast at least one Divination spell in Hallows.)

Professor Dumbledore may have had friends in the Order or Hogwarts who could have helped him in divination magic, and it would have been even in character for him to ask them a favor for finding out the flavor of some every-flavored beans, but he chose not to do that for some reason.

Secondly some magic systems have ways to explicitly block divination. These certainly exist already in the Harry Potter universe too, because the Order of the Phoenix could successfully protect its secrets from even the Dark Lord, who is a very powerful wizard and also had powerful allies. The Fidelius (secret keeper) charm was one method used for this, but I believe there were others, including possibly house elf magic.

Case in point, Hermione has cast some divination blocking spells when they were on the run. This is revealed clearly in Deathly Hallows chapter 19.

‘One thing I would like to know, though,’ she [Hermione] said, fixing her eyes on a spot a foot over Ron's head. ‘How exactly did you find us tonight? That's important. Once we know, we'll be able to make sure we're not visited by anyone else we don't want to see.’

[…]

‘Yeah, well, that would've been me,’ said Ron. ‘Your protective spells work, anyway, because I couldn't see you and I couldn't hear you. I was sure you were around, though, so in the end I got in my sleeping bag and waited for one of you to appear. I thought you'd have to show yourselves when you packed up the tent.’

Thirdly, let me point to a very similar example, from later than Philosopher's Stone, of divination failing in such a frivolous way. In The Order of the Stick strip #413, Haley points out in panel 13 that the royal court of Azure City could not buy booster packs that contain the right pre-painted minifigures, despite that they have a very good sage. This is probably common in the Order of the Stick universe, because there are shops making a business from selling spells in randomized booster packs to wizards, many of whom are likely good diviners.

Update: I added the quote from Prince chapter 20, removed a less relevant quote, and reorganized the text around them a little. Thanks to TenthJustice for pointing out this quote in Why did Dumbledore contemplate discontinuing Divination at Hogwarts? and to Slytherincess for locating the quote.

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b_jonas
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    Divination is seeing into the future. Finding out what flavour a particular bean is doesn't have anything to do with the future. – Harry Johnston Jul 10 '15 at 08:33
  • Agreed, downvoted since the basic premise of the answer is flawed. – DavidS Jul 10 '15 at 09:47
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    @HarryJohnston I tend to disagree, if you look a few seconds into the future you would know what the bean would taste like... – Thomas Jul 10 '15 at 10:28
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    @Thomas: sure, that would be one way to do it. But not the only one. – Harry Johnston Jul 10 '15 at 10:30
  • @HarryJohnston: I don't think divination is only about predicting the future. It's about finding out hidden information in general. For example, see the description of the divination school of wizard spells in Dungeons and Dragons at http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/spellDescriptions.htm#divination : "Divination spells enable you to learn secrets long forgotten, to predict the future, to find hidden things, and to foil deceptive spells." (The Isaac Asimov short story The Dead Past is slightly relevant.) – b_jonas Jul 10 '15 at 11:41
  • That said, I hope at least part of my answer is still relevant even if you use a different definition of "divination". – b_jonas Jul 10 '15 at 11:41
  • Oh! A comment for http://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/67483/4918 claims Prince has a definite quote where Dumbledore says he's never studied Divination. I'll look this up in the book later and update my answer. – b_jonas Jul 10 '15 at 11:55
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    The point is, what other authors/universes states about divination is irrelevant in Harry Potter. In HP, divination == seeing the future/making prophecies (as long as the canon is concerned). – Alfredo Hernández Jul 10 '15 at 18:26
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    @AlfredoHernández: I don't think so, though it's hard to tell. We've only seen lessons from two Hogwarts teachers, one of who couldn't teach too well, and one who didn't represent the viewpoint of Wizards. If you only knew of Defense agains the Dark Arts from Professor Quirrel and Lockhart, you could have a skewed view of that area as well. What divination covers in the HP universe may be an interesting question that maybe I should ask on this site though. – b_jonas Jul 10 '15 at 21:20
  • @b_jonas absolutely. That would be a brilliant question! – Alfredo Hernández Jul 10 '15 at 21:21
  • @AlfredoHernández: now asked as http://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/95287/4918 – b_jonas Jul 12 '15 at 13:41
  • Hermione's protective spells were not divination blocking! Think of them as a giant invisibility cloak that blocks sound. –  Jan 31 '16 at 02:45