Lesson 6 - Sensory Analysis
This lesson deals with the sensory analysis of beer. It details how to set up the elements of a sensory panel, such as panel selection, training, and the design of the sensory facilities, and then covers how to run the panel and collect the results. It discusses the various types of sensory test and their benefits before going on to cover the use of statistics to convert sensory data into information about the sensory quality of beer. Finally, it looks at the presentation of results from sensory tests and lists key flavour compounds in beer.
Preface
Most brewers choose to enter the beer-making profession because they love beer. And how it tastes is almost certainly top of the list of things they love about it.
All consumers of beer will be more driven by flavour than any other attribute when it comes to selecting their beer of choice. Knowing this should, in theory, make our job as a brewer easy; we just need to brew a beer and check that it tastes good using a taste-testing machine in the lab. Unfortunately, no such machine exists yet.
We have advanced technologically to the point where we can precisely and accurately, with repeatability and reproducibility, measure beer attributes like colour, haze, pH, and foam using machines. We can also measure the levels of elements of beer flavour like iso-α-acids, vicinal diketones, and sulphur compounds to the same standards. But as yet we are a long way from understanding all the chemical elements of beer flavour let alone developing the technology to measure them. Instead, we rely on human senses.
In this lesson we look at how to use the human instrument(s) to provide reliable information on beer flavour. We begin by exploring the process by which our bodies transform a beer’s flavour compounds into a sensory experience.