All right, let’s be honest - (almost) everyone can drink beer. But what if you would have to evaluate a beer, not just drink it? This is not an easy task, although it may seem like it. I will try to tell you more about the beer tasting and evaluation.
Each of us receives odors and flavors differently, we also have our own tastes. To make a beer evaluation non-judgmental, you should focus on some basic factors, and forget for a while about your personal preferences.
The simplest way is to give a beer a general opinion. For example, evaluate it for 3 on the 1-5 scale. But this is boring and tells nothing to the others who may want to use your evaluation to decide whether to buy a beer for example. If you want to feel like a judge during a beer contest, you should evaluate a beer in a more detailed way, based on BJCP. And what’s that exactly? It is an organization which trains professional beer judges and certifies them. It also promotes beer literacy and the appreciation of real beer. If you are interested in beer styles, please visit BJCP guide. It contains EVERYTHING about each beer style.
But to the point - let’s make a short overview about what we should pay attention to when tasting and evaluating a beer in details.
It’s important to be able to separate a beer aroma from its taste. There is no such thing like banana or raspberry flavor. Those are all fragrances. And a beer may contain quite a lot of them, each on a different level of perception. The best way is just to close your eyes and take a deep sniff. A lot of beer faults, which were raised up during the production process, are shown in its aroma. Each beer style has its own aroma characteristics. If you have problems to determine which aroma you can smell, start with getting acquainted with the style characteristics description. And then smell a lot - practice makes perfect :)
Here is how a beer aroma diagram looks:
source
It seems simple, right? You just have to evaluate if a beer is tasty or not. But there is one little problem - the intuition tells us that there are 4 tastes to be recognized in the beer, and in fact, there are 5 of them. Beside sweet, salty, sour and bitter, sometimes you can recognize the umami taste in beer. So, what is the best approach when it became to evaluate a beer taste? To clog your nose. Seriously. Clog your nose and taste a beer. It may happen that a beer which was sweet a moment ago is, in fact, sour for example ;)
A beer sight is, in fact, two things - a color and a beer foam (collar). Each beer has its own style and its color should meet the beer color palette for this particular style. The same is with beer lucidity - if beer should be clear from a definition, then every opacification or limescale is a fault. The EBC scale looks like this:
source
The beer foam (or collar) is a vast topic. Some people like a beer without the foam, others cannot live without it. In the beer evaluating process you should pay attention to something called lacing. It’s a residue left from the beer foam as you drink your beer. The foam is all at the top with a full beer, then with each sip, it moves down the glass a bit. It’s common rather for craft beers, not the commercial ones.
Evaluating this parameter means to describe if there is any strange or unpleasant aftertaste in your mouth. Some beer fault like acidity or iron aftertaste can be detected when tasting the beer. You need also to pay attention to beer richness and CO2 saturation. Describe what can you feel on your tongue - is it refreshment, tingling or maybe something completely different.
Each beer style has its own primary, secondary and collateral features, both for taste and aroma. You can consider it as a description of the harmony which should be present in each beer style. A good beer should not be bland, it should “work” and evolve during the drinking time. It should make us desire another sip...
At the end I would like to mention some simple set of advice which may be essential for you if you want to start your adventure with beer tasting and evaluation:
* Taste feeling is an individual matter, the same is with preferences. Just be yourself while evaluating a beer.
* Consider the style of a beer you’re evaluating.
* Don’t drink from the bottle or can - always try to use a proper glass. Otherwise, you won’t be able to evaluate a color, foam, and aroma of the beer.
* Always smell a beer.
* Do not smoke and avoid the cigarette smoke - it will stupefy your senses.
* Don’t drink a beer if it’s cooled down too much. A low temperature won’t allow you to feel the whole spectrum of taste and aroma.
* Don’t taste a beer with spicy, salty or sweet snacks.
And remember - tasting and evaluating a beer should make you happy, so enjoy every moment of it :)
See also:
HomeBrewing - the basic process description
HomeBrewing - the needed equipment
HomeBrewing - THE INGREDIENTS
HomeBrewing - ROAD TO PERFECTION
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Great post! I'm trying to review venezuelan beers, this is an useful guide to improve my posts, cheers
Great to hear that there is someone who will actually use this knowledge :)
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