How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.
–Benjamin Disraeli, 19th century British prime minister
What background and skills are necessary for you to be able to evaluate, describe, and appropriately understand your beer in context—that is, moving beyond knowing your beer is just something that you like, to understanding how it fits in the world of beer, and how others see it? To do this properly, you should have knowledge of beer styles, have a critical palate, and be able to assess your own beers in an unbiased manner.
Beer styles provide a way for producers and consumers to communicate about what to expect in a beer. Palate development allows you to recognize and differentiate the many different tastes in beer. Critical assessment techniques provide the framework for analyzing your beer. My background as a successful brewer, the principal author of the Beer Judge Certification Program Style Guidelines, and the most experienced BJCP judge makes me as good a candidate as any to discuss these topics.
Brewers often enter their beer in competitions not to win awards but to get good feedback from judges. You can save a lot of money and time if you develop these skills yourself. Your goal should be to not have to rely on others but rather to use your own abilities. This is actually one of my advantages in competitive brewing; I don’t need to enter my beers in competition to get feedback.
Think of the topics in this chapter as sort of a mini-BJCP judge training boot camp. Once you have mastered these skills, you are well suited to judge beer in a BJCP-sanctioned competition. Perhaps you will consider taking the BJCP exam, if you haven’t already done so.
Many brewers focus on the technical side of brewing without paying as much attention to the artistic side. Tasting beer is a subjective skill and one that is often hedonistic. So it’s more important to make a beer that is palatable than one that is technically correct; your goal is to make something that tastes good, not something that matches a certain number. You aren’t judged on mash efficiency, after all; you’re judged on flavor. If you are able to use your own palate and sensory skills to assess your own beers, then you will see the payoff every time you drink your beer.
Beer styles are part of a structured method for categorizing and describing beer. They are intended to be a convenient shorthand for discussing beer, and to allow all who taste the beer to be able to describe it using a common framework and language. A beer style is simply a structured definition of a certain type of beer that may have originated in a certain country, region, or city, or be known by its color, strength, ingredients, process, or flavor profile. It’s the quick response given when someone asks you, “What kind of beer is this?”
Beer style descriptions are typically organized into a comprehensive set of style guidelines, which can add another layer of structure by categorizing the styles into related groupings. The most common set of guidelines for homebrewers is the BJCP Style Guidelines, which are used in most homebrew competitions. The Brewers Association publishes guidelines for commercial competitions it sponsors, and several beer-rating websites (such as Beer Advocate) maintain their own guidelines. Beer writers often have their own categories; in fact, most modern style guidelines are based on the early writings of Michael Jackson and Fred Eckhardt.
In subsequent discussions, I’m using the BJCP Style Guidelines as my frame of reference, since they are the most widely used beer guidelines for homebrewers. Those guidelines don’t describe every beer style made in the world but do include those most entered in homebrew competitions. The guidelines are based on currently acknowledged, world-class commercial examples, historical references to styles no longer brewed, and writings of noted beer researchers and journalists.
Most style guidelines are created with a purpose in mind. The guidelines of the BJCP and the Brewers Association are designed to assist competitions by providing a frame of reference for brewers and judges, and by grouping together similar beer styles for judging purposes. Without beer styles, competitions would be nearly impossible to conduct. Judging would simply become a hedonistic event, where judges would pick beers according to their own personal preferences. The outcome would be totally arbitrary and would depend on the background and whims of those who judge the beers—not a desirable situation.
Style guidelines from consumer-oriented organizations are meant to provide an easy way to discuss beer and to compare similar commercial examples. Beer writers group beer so they can tell a story, usually discussing how styles were developed and how they are currently made. Whichever set of guidelines are chosen as a reference, be sure you understand why they were created and try to use them for their intended purpose. Problems arise when this advice is not followed.
For some professional brewers (and even homebrewers), even mentioning the subject of beer styles is like waving a red flag in front of a bull. Some beer enthusiasts support the idea of beer styles but strongly disagree with particular style descriptions or sets of guidelines. These strong responses are generally either based on a misunderstanding of the purpose of the guidelines, on observations of them being used incorrectly, or on a dislike of the person or group making the guidelines. These contentious issues are what led me to call beer styles a misunderstood necessity.
Some professional brewers look at the style guidelines as limiting, as if they are telling them how and what to brew. Nothing could be further from the truth; style guidelines are an attempt to categorize what brewers are brewing or what has historically been brewed. The guidelines take in the range of world-class examples and the characteristics that make these beers taste so good. Most individual beer styles have quite a wide range and allow for significant brewer creativity.
Guidelines naturally evolve over time as consumer’s tastes and commercial examples change. New styles emerge (look at double IPAs and black IPAs as recent innovations), while others tend to fade away and be forgotten. Some brewers continually push the envelope and try to create new and unique beers. Those are best judged on their own individualistic merits as Specialty Beers, the catch-all category in the style guidelines where creativity is king.
Even if the notion of style guidelines is not something you accept, understand that most craft beer aficionados will use beer styles to communicate. If you ask a bartender in a good pub, “Do you have any IPAs?” you should expect him to tell you about his hoppiest beers. If you go to a beer store and ask, “Can you recommend a stout?” then you should expect to be led to the dark beers. If you go to Belgium and ask for a tripel, you should ask if they got your order right if they hand you a glass of brown beer. Styles exist, even if people just think of them as “type of beer.”
The BJCP Style Guidelines use some specific terms with specialized meanings that might not be immediately obvious; the most important terms are Category, Subcategory, and Style. When thinking of beer, mead, and cider styles, the subcategory is the most important label—subcategory means essentially the same thing as style and identifies the major characteristic of one type of beer, mead, or cider.
The larger style categories are arbitrary groupings of beers, meads, or ciders, usually with similar character or historical ties. However, some subcategories are not necessarily related to others within the same category. If there is ever any confusion about inferring some attribute by how a beer is categorized, always defer to the specific descriptions for each subcategory.
The purpose of the structure within the BJCP Style Guidelines is to group styles of beer, mead, and cider for competition purposes—do not attempt to derive additional meaning from these category groupings. For example, look at the BJCP categories for Light Hybrid Beer, Amber Hybrid Beer, and Sour Ale, where seemingly unrelated beers are grouped according to sensory impact. They don’t all have historical or regional ties, yet they are judged together so as to minimize variation in palate impact that judges would experience.
Some styles are quite well known, others are historical notions, while still others are artificial creations for the purpose of categorizing relatively unique beers or for grouping similar beers for judging purposes. That said, there is a notion of narrowness of style that applies to the variation between commercial examples within a style. Some styles are based on a small number of examples (e.g., California Common), while others may have explicit requirements (e.g., Kölsch)—those are narrow styles. Other styles embrace multiple stylistic variations (e.g., Foreign Style Stout, Old Ale), and hence are broader. Some styles allow a great degree of creativity on the part of the brewer, and therefore are wide open (e.g., Mild, Belgian Dark Strong Ale). All of these factors contribute to styles being handled differently.
The nature of the research into the styles is another factor. Some styles have many commercial examples; these styles are relatively easy to describe. Some styles are historical, have few sources, or are not widely available; these styles may be less fully described. Styles also tend to evolve, and descriptions may describe variations over time. In some cases (e.g., English IPA), the styles describe beers the way they used to be made more than the way they are currently made. This allows the historic heritage of a style to be preserved and the beer to be brewed by homebrewers, even if most commercial brewers no longer make it that way. Styles may be rediscovered (e.g., Porter, Witbier) and be revived in their historical context. It is a judgment call on the part of the BJCP to decide how best to handle a style. Beers tend to be described in the way that they were when they were the most authentic and popular.
I like to think about the style space a beer occupies—that is, which styles of beer are closest to the style you are discussing, and which variables are different. For example, an American Pale Ale fits between a Blonde Ale and an American IPA in hoppiness and strength. Back off on the hops (and maybe the strength) and you have a Blonde Ale. Increase the strength (and maybe the hops) and you have an IPA. Tweak the malt-hop balance to favor the malt a bit more, and you have either an American Amber Ale or an American Brown Ale (add more crystal malt for an amber, add some chocolate malt for a brown). Play around with the varieties of malt, hops, and yeast while keeping the strength and balance the same, and you have an English or Belgian Pale Ale.
The style space also comes in handy if you’re interested in making a specialty beer. The gap between styles is fertile ground for identifying “out-of-style” beers that could be described by their own style. Black IPAs are an example of a gap in the styles. There are dark pale ales but not dark IPAs. American Stouts are dark, strong, and hoppy, but the roast character, body, and balance are different. If you can change a few variables and make a new style, then you have something you can enter as a specialty beer. There are black IPAs but no black pale ales; decrease the gravity of a black IPA and you have another style.
If you’re judging beer (even your own beer), it helps to know the nearest neighbors in the style space. If you think a beer is out of style, then maybe it’s a better fit in an adjacent style. Each different characteristic in beer (gravity, bitterness, color, flavor, body, etc.) is a potential vector in the n-dimensional style space. If you determine your own beer hits an adjacent style better before entering it in a competition, you may wind up with a higher score, since you’ll be judged against a different style description that may be a better match. If you’re judging in a competition, you may be able to give the brewer better advice on how his or her beer tastes if you can refer to another style by name.
Some people have attempted to map the style space graphically (I sometimes see charts like this when a brewpub is trying to explain its lineup). Such an exercise is difficult, because beers typically have more dimensions than are shown on the graph. You can show a few attributes, like color and strength, but those don’t fully model the profile of the beers. They only show you a small part of the actual difference between the styles. Those limited models may be helpful if you are only concerned about the balance between two of the variables (for instance, graphing bitterness versus gravity shows the relative hop intensity of a beer).
A better way to illustrate the style space is to focus on one style and then show only its nearest neighboring styles. This type of chart could show the attributes which, when changed, result in the adjacent styles. That’s much easier to understand and use in the general case, but it doesn’t show you the full landscape of beer. You would have to compare multiple charts (or use spider graphs) to get that type of information.
As someone with a keen interest in improving the BJCP Style Guidelines, I’ve observed countless times how the descriptions are used in practice. Most people generally understand how to use them properly, but I’ve also seen many get confused and wind up with poor results. I’d like to cover the practical use of the style guidelines and identifying what is important to know when brewing beer, entering competitions, and judging beer.
Here are my lessons learned in how to properly read and apply the guidelines:
• Don’t overfocus on a single phrase in the style description. You may be giving it more importance than it is due. For example, if a hefeweizen is described as “may have a tart character,” don’t think you have to add lemons or acid malt in order to generate this impression. It’s a natural component that can come out in some beers; don’t force it.
• Pay attention to the order and intensity of the descriptors; this will give you an idea of the overall profile. Try to map out primary, secondary, and background components. Your idea is to capture the balance; if you change the priority and intensity of the style components, then you are describing a different beer.
• Understand what is required versus optional in a style. For example, old ales and barley wines may have an oxidized character; don’t penalize beers if they don’t. IPAs require a hoppy aroma; if it is missing, then it’s not right.
• Avoid the halo effect of a single commercial example defining the entire style for you. For example, not all American pale ales will taste like Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. That doesn’t mean they aren’t good examples. Styles aren’t meant to be a clone beer exercise.
• Understand the range of the style (how narrow or how broad it is, as described in the “narrowness” discussion). This defines how much creativity a brewer can apply and still be within style. Don’t make a style more narrow or broad than it is; think about the overall style space.
• Avoid looking at the details without looking at the overall impression. The various attributes of beer styles have some range to them (for example, the allowable bitterness or hop flavor). It’s possible to choose values for each of these attributes that seem to fit the style definition yet create a beer that doesn’t fit the style at all. When in doubt, the overall impression and balance trump the individual style attributes. The beer as a whole has to make sense for the style.
These factors help you understand what is important for the style. As you can tell, I’m trying to get you to envision the essence of the style, the overall impression and balance of the components present, to know what must be present for the style to be valid and what separates it from other styles. That is how a style is defined; by the big picture.
To evaluate a beer properly, you have to develop your palate and be able to critically distinguish flavors. Aroma plays a strong part in flavor recognition, since the tongue can recognize five basic tastes (sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami), but the nose can recognize literally thousands of scents. The perception of flavor depends on the basic tastes, the olfactory (aromas and smells) responses, and the physical sensations in the oral cavity (the mouthfeel). When I discuss developing your palate for beer tasting, I’m concerned with building skills in all three of these areas.
Your goals should be to understand what contributes to being able to taste beer critically, to learn techniques for tasting and smelling beer, and to learn how to practice the skills necessary to develop a discriminating palate and to master tasting. Your tastes change and your palate evolves over the course of a lifetime. You lose taste buds as you age, but you learn to distinguish and appreciate more flavors and aromas as you experience them and commit them to memory. Sensory experiences are very closely tied to memories and often provide the most vivid learning episodes.
Before we talk about tasting, we first have to clear up a huge misconception about taste: the tongue map. (You know the one; it shows the tongue as tasting sweetness at the tip, bitterness at the back, and sour/salty at the sides.) It’s completely wrong; the map was based on a misinterpretation of earlier research and has been almost impossible to purge from beer and brewing literature. Just like cooking enthusiasts who say, “searing meat seals in juices” (it doesn’t), people still think the zone-oriented tongue map is accurate.
The article “Making Sense of Taste” states:
In reality, all qualities of taste can be elicited from all the regions of the tongue that contain taste buds. There is no evidence that any kind of spatial segregation of sensitivities contributes to the neural representation of taste quality, although there are some slight differences in sensitivity across the tongue and palate.1
This means that flavor receptors exist throughout the tongue, and all tastes can be sensed in all areas. There are localized regions of higher sensitivity to certain tastes, but that does not imply that other areas do not sense those tastes. The maps also leave out the fifth basic taste, umami or savoriness (the taste of glutamate, an amino acid found in meats, fish, and legumes, and a flavor enhancer in MSG—monosodium glutamate). The bottom line is that to taste something properly, you should involve your whole mouth, tongue, and palate.
There are four kinds of projections called papillae on the tongue; three of these structures have taste buds (specialized taste cells in the mouth). Taste buds are also present on the soft palate. The front half of the tongue, the lips, the insides of cheeks, and the soft palate are sensitive to all flavors. The sides of the tongue (at the back) are slightly more sensitive to sourness. The very back of the tongue is a little more sensitive to bitterness and umami. The center of the tongue is slightly less sensitive to flavors.
The concept of balance in beer seems very simple on the surface, but it turns out to be quite challenging. Balance refers to the interaction and harmony between two or more of the beer’s constituents in the overall flavor profile. The topic is somewhat complex, because determining balance is somewhat arbitrary—it may differ dramatically depending on the subjectivity of the taster, the type of beer, or the tasting conditions.
More specifically, beer balance is the synergy of all the components that formulate an enjoyable tasting experience: aroma, flavor (taste, malt and hop flavors, esters, phenols), bitterness, alcohol, acidity, residual sweetness, and mouthfeel (body, carbonation). In a balanced beer, individual components support and enhance each other, and the resulting combination is appropriate for the particular style of beer.
The use of words like synergy, balance, and harmony shouldn’t imply that all flavors are of equal intensity. That is much too simplistic (and generally wrong). It means that the components complement each other in a pleasant way. Balance is extremely style-specific; a balanced IPA will be way more bitter than a balanced cream ale, for instance. Confusingly, “balance” can also mean equal intensity if speaking only of two components in relation to each other without regard to the underlying style; the usage depends on the context.
By far, the most straightforward balance to discuss in beer styles is between maltiness and bitterness. Without bitterness, the maltiness would seem cloyingly sweet. Without maltiness, bitterness would seem harsh and unpleasant. The ratio of bittering units to gravity units (BU:GU) is a rough approximation of balance in a beer, with bitter styles generally having a ratio of 0.6 or higher. Malty beers are generally 0.45 or lower. Evenly balanced beers are usually between 0.45 and 0.6. This formula works best when the beer styles being compared have similar final gravities.
Sweetness and body also balance bitterness, so if a beer has a higher final gravity and more residual sweetness, the apparent bitterness will not seem as high as the same number of IBUs in a dry beer. Sweetness has much more of an impact balancing bitterness than does body, however. Alcohol can sometimes provide a sharp bitterness, as can roasted grains. These aren’t measured in IBUs but can affect the maltiness-bitterness balance in some styles.
The ester profile can affect the balance, since fruity esters can enhance apparent sweetness. Sourness in a beer balances sweetness, so a sour beer will seem more bitter (and often thinner in body). Phenols and tannins can be astringent and bitter, and both also enhance the apparent bitterness. None of these are taken into account in standard measurements of gravity or bitterness, yet each can impact the balance.
So how can we reconcile all these disparate characteristics? For starters, avoid relying too heavily on the BU:GU ratio—it’s an approximation at best and influenced by all the factors listed. Next, try using your palate and detecting these individual components. If you are able to detect warming alcohol, you can conclude that some of the bitterness may be coming not from hops but from that same alcohol. Likewise with dark roasted grains, phenols, tannins, and other bitter substances—you can taste their flavor or mouthfeel in addition to their bitterness.
The “scrubbing bubbles” of high carbonation can cut through malty sweetness, providing balance and making the apparent sweetness seem lower. Carbonation can also add a prickly acidity that can make a beer’s body seem lighter. Likewise, a flat beer will often seem thin, even though it may have a full body.
Finally, remember that serving temperature can play a role in balance. A cold serving temperature numbs the tongue and suppresses malt flavor, and makes the beer seem more bitter, since the bitterness components (hops, tannins) are not affected. Lower temperatures make beer seem a bit less acidic. Higher serving temperatures will make alcohol more apparent. So sometimes balance can be achieved simply by manipulating the serving temperature.
To assess the aromatics of the beer, swirl the glass and tilt it toward you. Inhale deep in the glass—the lower side of the glass near the surface of the beer. Be careful, you’re judging aroma, not nosefeel. Use a deep inhalation lasting a few seconds, which should get heavy aromatics. Then consider what you’ve smelled. Swirl again, stop swirling, then tilt and smell again—this time towards the upper side of the glass (farthest from the beer). This will get lighter aromatics. Repeat again, smelling in the middle of the glass using a series of short, quick sniffs. Finally, keep the glass level and smell a few inches above the glass. Each of these sniffing techniques may give you a different impression.
It’s easy to overwhelm your sense of smell with repeated sniffs of the same substance. To help alleviate this sensory overload, cleanse your olfactory bulb between each set of sniffs. I like to just turn my head and take a few sniffs of my shirt sleeve—it’s a totally different aroma, and helps reset your nose to sense new aromas. It works with almost any different aroma, as long as the cleansing aroma isn’t too strong. I’ve been offered coffee beans for this purpose at some beer competitions but found them way too strong. You want to reset your olfactory bulb, not fry it.
You are looking to pick up as many different aromas as you can find. You will definitely want to assess the malt character. How strong or intense is it? Is it sweet? Does it have a noticeable and identifiable malt character? Is it bready, caramelly, richly malty, toasty, or something else? Can you give those specific aromatics a name? Malt is to beer as grapes are to wine; you need to describe the character of the primary ingredient and relate it to any expectations you may have been given by how the beer was described.
Next look for the hop character. Do you detect any? If so, how intense is it? Is it grassy, harsh, or clean? Can you give the aromatics a name, such as citrusy, earthy, floral, herbal, piney, spicy, or woody? How is the hop intensity as compared to the malt intensity; how are they balanced?
Now assess the fermentation character. Did the yeast add any interesting aromatics (fruity esters, spicy phenols, etc.)? Is there alcohol noted? Are there any fermentation faults? If a certain type of yeast was mentioned or is implied by the style (hefeweizen, for instance), does it have the characteristic aroma? Alcohol can definitely be sensed in stronger beers. If it is sharp and aggressive to the point where it overwhelms other components, it is a negative.
Refer to the chapter on Troubleshooting for a list of common beer characteristics; many of them are detectable by aroma. Do they persist or do they blow off quickly? Characterize the overall fermentation character: is it clean, fresh, dirty, yeasty, sulfury, or something else?
Were there any special ingredients (fruits, spices, herbs, smoked malt, etc.) used in this beer? If so, do you detect their presence? If a special ingredient is fermentable (e.g., fruit), then the character might not have the same impression as the fresh ingredient. For example, wine does not smell like grapes, it smells like fermented grapes. Don’t expect fruit in a beer to always smell like the raw fruit. The amount of residual sugar in the beer can affect the impression of fruit, since fruity aromatics are often found with sweetness in fresh fruit. Declared special ingredients should be noticeable but balanced, and in harmony with other ingredients.
Noticeable acidity is not typical in most beer styles but is a feature of some such as lambic. It can often be sensed in the aroma. Acidity that comes from fruit or yeast can often be sensed more readily in the aroma, since the presence of balancing malt in the flavor can sometimes mask it. Carbonation often will play up the nose, since the bubbles help volatilize aromatics.
Was there any special processing (e.g., oak aging) used in this beer? If so, do you note the character? Oaking will often impart a woody, toasty, vanilla character. Other special handling techniques will produce aromas as well. Icing (or “eising,” as in eisbock) will concentrate aromatics, for instance.
Finally, you’ll want to consider the overall balance, harmony, and pleasantness of the beer. Do the ingredients complement each other? Are they in balance given the style and declared special ingredients of the beer? What is your overall impression of the quality of the beer? Is it well made from good ingredients? Does it have any off-odors? Is this something that you are now eager to taste?
Tasting a beer involves exploring the full range of flavors (malt, sweetness, bitterness, alcohol, esters, phenols, acidity) and mouthfeel character (body, carbonation, warming, creaminess, astringency). Flavor and mouthfeel are normally described in different sections of a beer scoresheet, but they both involve tasting and are discussed together here.
As with aroma techniques, it’s important to cleanse your plate between samples. Anything relatively neutral will help; plain bread, matzo, or unsalted crackers work well for this purpose. Avoid strongly flavored artisan bread, salted crackers, and heavily toasted products. Beer and bread share several common flavors, so you don’t want to carry over any flavors from the cleansing to the tasting. Use clean water (without a chlorine taste) to rinse your mouth and finish the cleansing of your palate.
To assess the flavor of a beer, there are several techniques that can be used. All involve taking small sips; some beers can be quite strong, so taking gulps is a quick way to shorten your effectiveness as a judge. Take a sip into the front of your mouth, and swish the tip of your tongue through it. Take a sip and move your tongue side-to-side to swish it through your mouth. Take a sip and let it rest on the top of your tongue. Chew your beer; get your entire mouth involved. Take a sip and aerate the beer by breathing over it in your mouth (it will make a slight slurping or gurgling sound). Take a sip and swallow, focusing on the aftertaste. After swallowing, keep your mouth closed and exhale slowly through your nose—you may pick up additional aromatics this way. These techniques can be combined. They each involve different areas of your mouth and may give you additional flavor impressions. As you develop your tasting skills, you may decide to use different tasting techniques to look for different flavor or mouthfeel elements.
The first task is to characterize the malt flavors and any residual sweetness. Do you get a distinct, clean malt flavor, or is it muddy and indistinct? Are there specific malt flavors you taste? Is the flavor distinct and identifiable, or rather generic and grainy? How well does it blend in with the other flavors? How strong or intense is it? How would you describe the malt character: Is it grainy, caramelly, bready, biscuity, cookielike, richly malty, toasty, roasty, burnt, or some other flavor? Use the descriptors discussed in Chapter 4: Mastering Ingredients.
What is the level of sweetness in the finish? Common descriptors include dry, medium-dry, moderately sweet, moderately high sweet, sweet, or cloyingly sweet. Do not confuse sweetness with maltiness—sweetness is only a measure of residual sugar. The perception of sweetness is also affected by the sweetness-to-bitterness balance; the absence of balancing bittering hops can make a beer seem sweet.
Now address the bitterness and alcohol level. The bitterness is normally apparent in the finish, although it can rise sharply early in the palate in strongly bittered beers. The point in your palate where the balance flips from being malty to being bitter is a measure of the overall balance of the beer. Very malty beers will start malty and taste malty in the finish and aftertaste. Balanced beers will start malty but finish with an equalizing bitterness. Bitter beers will seem bitter on the tongue and stay bitter into the aftertaste. The intensity of the bitterness should be described (high, medium, low), the character of the bitterness should be noted (is it harsh or clean), and the balance between the bitterness and the maltiness should be characterized.
A useful skill to develop as a brewer is to estimate the bitterness level in a beer. This can be difficult but can be developed, as long as you have known reference samples. Look up the measured IBU levels of commercial beers and taste them. Remember how you perceive the differences. Know that malty sweetness can offset bitterness, so see how the perceived bitterness changes in dry to sweet beers. Personally, I think it is more important to be able to characterize the perceived bitterness level (low, medium, high) than it is to state an IBU level, since it is the perception of bitterness that plays the more important role in the overall balance of the beer.
Alcohol in beer can be noted as a flavor, can add to the perceived bitterness of beer, and can provide a warming (sometimes hot and burning) mouthfeel. Most average-strength beers should not have a noticeable alcohol character, or else it is a flaw. Stronger beers should have a smooth, aged alcohol, not a hot, burning, solventy character. A hot alcohol character is often an indication of a young beer that needs more cellaring. The best strong beers often have a “sneaky” quality to them, in which the alcohol is more often felt than tasted. Note if any alcohol was detected, and if it was a flavor or a mouthfeel. Characterize the alcohol (warming, burning, smooth, aged), and mention if it adds to the perceived bitterness. Identify where you detect it (as a taste or an aftertaste).
What about the hop flavor and any fermentation character (esters, phenols, acidity)? Identify the intensity and the character of each. Try to differentiate the type of hop character, using descriptors from Chapter 4: Mastering Ingredients. If you can identify specific hop varieties, that’s great; otherwise, try to describe the perceptual characteristics of each. Be as specific as possible (“grapefruit” is more descriptive than “citrusy,” for instance). Try to rank the individual flavors in the order they were perceived, often the most intense coming first. Do these flavors enhance or clash with other flavors in the beer? Do you get them as distinct and readily identifiable flavors, do they all mingle together in tasty union, or do they step on each other in a muddy mess?
The special ingredients and processes can add another whole realm of flavors: fruit, spice, oak, etc. Some malts and yeast can produce flavors that mimic those from fruit and spices. However, if there are special ingredients declared, those should be noticeable and generally identifiable but well balanced and harmonious with the other ingredients (relative to the style and intent of the brewer). Try to generally describe the character and strength of each flavor component you detect. See if you can give it a name (e.g., cinnamon) or at least a general description (e.g., spicy), and an intensity (light, moderate, strong). The more descriptive you can be, the more information you are passing along.
Normally, yeast-derived flavors are mentioned along with discussions of fruit, spice, or alcohol. However, if there are fermentation flaws, those should be noted. See the list of characteristics in Chapter 7: Troubleshooting for more information—most of the faults can be tasted. If no fermentation issues are noted, identify the beer as having a clean fermentation.
The aftertaste of the beer is the flavor impression you get once you have swallowed it. You can describe the length (short, medium, long, memorable) of the aftertaste, which is the duration it takes for the flavors to dissipate. What kinds of flavors are you getting? Are they different from flavors noted when tasting the beer? Are they pleasant and balanced? Is there anything off?
Note that taste perceptions can be influenced by mouthfeel textures. Alcohol enhances the perception of sweetness, reinforces acidity, can mask odors, and may cause a burning sensation. Astringency may have a rough, gritty character and can mask bitterness and reduce the perception of sweetness. Bitterness is often confused with astringency (bitterness is a taste, astringency is a mouthfeel).
The overall balance of the beer should be described, as discussed in the section on Balance earlier in this chapter. Balance is relative to the specific style of beer; it does not mean that flavors are in equal proportions or intensities. Balance describes how well the individual components complement each other in the intended style of the brewer.
When discussing balance, identify if any components are too strong or weak. Does any individual component overshadow the beer, even when taking style into account? Is there any component that is lacking (e.g., not enough alcohol in a barley wine)? Are the special ingredients identifiable yet not overly dominant? The best beers are not one-dimensional; they have interest and character. They do not all have to be complex; dry, delicate, restrained beers can be wonderful. Do not attempt to equate a dry, crisp lager with a sweet, rich old ale in complexity and character; judging them each on balance relative to their intended style is the best way to level the playing field.
Keep the aroma in mind when evaluating the final taste of the beer. Do the flavors you get match what you expected, given the aroma? Do the flavors mirror the aromatics? For example, if you smelled citrusy hops, did you taste them as well? Are there any additional flavors? If so, what are they? Is the beer balanced? Are the tastes present in the proper proportion given the style? These questions often will give you the best idea of the overall impression of the beer.
Mouthfeel describes the nonflavor sensations in your mouth when you taste something. It includes the tactile sensations, the textures, and the feelings associated with drinking. The sparkle of carbonation, the warmth of alcohol, the sharpness of acidity, and the roughness of tannin are all mouthfeel characteristics. The body of the liquid provides weight on your tongue and may coat your mouth. Tingling, numbing, drying, cooling, warming, and coating are all mouthfeel sensations. Beer can be described in textures such as smooth, soft, velvety, rough, hard, or harsh. Flavor, mouthfeel, and aftertaste are best characterized together.
The most straightforward components of mouthfeel are body, carbonation, and alcohol warmth. Body is a measure of the relative viscosity of beer (weight of the beer on your tongue) and can range from light/thin to medium to heavy/full. These are the normal ranges for body, but a beer could have lighter or heavier body as a fault. A very light body is described as watery, while a very full body is viscous, thick, or syrupy. As a very general analogy, light body is like skim milk, medium body is like whole milk, and full body is like cream. The perception of body is influenced by alcohol and sweetness levels; stronger and sweeter beers will seem to have a fuller body.
Carbonation describes the level of dissolved carbon dioxide in solution and ranges from low to high. Most styles should not be totally flat, but in some, such as English cask ales, a light level of carbonation is acceptable. High carbonation has a fairly wide range as well, with some Belgian ales and German wheat beers being very highly carbonated. The amount of carbonation can often be sensed by the outward pressure on your cheeks when you hold a full sample of beer in your mouth, by the prickly feeling the bubbles make on your tongue, or by the way in which sweetness and other flavors are quickly wiped away from your palate.
The alcohol in a beer can be unnoticeable or range from a pleasantly warming sensation to a hot burn. A smooth, warming quality is a positive character in a stronger beer. Hot, solventy, burning sensations are always a negative. Stronger beers should have noticeable alcohol, but the alcohol should be well blended and balanced with other flavors. Higher alcohol generally is perceived as having increased body, more warmth, and perhaps a bit more bitterness.
The acidity in a beer might be noted, particularly if it becomes sharp, puckering, or tingly. Low levels of acidity can be a flavor enhancer if it is in the background. High levels of acidity might affect mouthfeel in a generally negative way.
Tannins and creaminess also affect mouthfeel. Tannins can produce astringent, drying, harsh, and puckering sensations. They can come from hops, dark grains, oaking, or brewing process faults. They are generally undesirable in most styles; note them if you detect any. Creaminess is a velvety, silky, smooth, luscious sensation in the mouth, as from drinking cream. It may be present in some styles, particularly oatmeal and sweet stout. Describe the level you note.
One common misunderstanding with many brewers and judges is the difference between sweetness and maltiness. Sweetness is simply a measure of the residual sugar in beer, while maltiness is the flavor of malt. A beer can be malty without being sweet (many German lagers and Belgian ales fit into this category), and a beer can be sweet without being malty (it could be sugary-sweet, like some mass-market Belgian fruit lambics that are back-sweetened). If you drink wine, the equivalent to maltiness is fruitiness; a wine can be fruity without being sweet, yet many people routinely confuse the two.
It’s easier to think of sweetness as the opposite of dryness. It is something sensed in the palate and aftertaste. If you perceive sweetness initially on your palate and it lingers through the aftertaste, this is likely to be actual sweetness. If it seems malty-sweet initially but then finishes dry, then that is how maltiness is perceived. A beer can be both sweet and malty (malty-sweet); English barley wines and old ales are obvious examples.
Sweetness is one of the five basic flavors, but there are many flavors that can be associated with sweetness depending on the source. Sugars developed in malt in the kilning, mashing, and boiling processes will have the flavor of their constituent malt. Munich will have a richer flavor, Vienna a toasty flavor, crystal a caramel flavor, etc. If these sugars remain in the finished beer, then the perception of maltiness and sweetness will both be present. The flavor of cane or beet sugar will taste like common table sugar. Sweetness from honey will have a different flavor and can also have the floral character associated with the nectar from which the honey was made.
The confusion comes from wanting to use “sweet” to describe both the basic flavor and the flavor of the raw ingredient. It helps to be more specific in identifying the type of sweetness as the flavor descriptor (sugary, caramelly, malty, etc.) while reserving “sweet” as a description of the finish (as opposed to “dry”). This is both more accurate and less confusing.
When judging beer, I often use sweet in several contexts but I try to be clear as to what I mean. I might say something like “starts out malty-sweet but finishes dry and refreshing.” If a malty beer finishes dry, it enhances drinkability. This is why Germans can drink liters of Oktoberfest, while a similar amount of old ale would be nearly impossible to finish. A sweet beer that finishes sweet will seem heavy and harder to drink; connoisseurs might call it a sipping beer. In extreme examples, a sweet beer could be called cloying, tongue-coating, and heavy or thick in body.
You don’t often get sympathy from people when you explain you’re trying to build your skills in beer tasting, but it is actually work that requires practice and concentration. My favorite way to build skills is something I call cross-training—that is, to learn about tasting other things besides beer. Take a wine tasting class; I learned more about tasting from a 10-week class given at a local wine shop than I did by almost any other method. You can participate in food tastings, whiskey tastings, and several other venues where your palate can be put to the test.
When I work on palate training, I focus on three key areas: learning to identify a specific flavor, learning to recognize a flavor at threshold level, and learning to distinguish the flavor from similar flavors.
When you taste a beer, try to sense and identify the flavor or aroma. Does it remind you of a food or of a raw ingredient in beer? Some roasted malts smell like dark chocolate or coffee, for instance. When combined with sweetness, the chocolate could take on a milk chocolate tone. Use your memories of those aromas and flavors to try to associate the flavors in beer with a descriptive term. Always try to attach words to your perceptions. You might be triggering memories, but unless you can recall the associations, they’ll be of limited value in tasting.
Tasting a wide range of fresh foods will help you develop more recent associations. Look for food terms that are used in the style guidelines to describe beer, then go find those foods and smell and taste them. Try the blindfold test. Have a friend feed you various items and see if you can identify them by smell and taste alone. Do this in a group for more fun.
If you can identify a smell or taste, try to detect it in lower intensities. See if you can determine your thresholds and if you have any sensory “blind spots.” If you can’t smell something, it’s likely genetic and there’s nothing you can do about it. However, you can know that you have this handicap and rely on the senses of others when you are tasting.
Sometimes you can blend beers to get new flavors, or to dilute existing flavors to test your threshold levels. This can be another way of generating new beers to test. It can also give you practice on beer blending skills (see Chapter 8).
When you can tell smells and flavors apart, try differentiating those that are subtly different. For instance, collect all the citrus fruit you can find. Try to tell them apart using only your senses of smell and taste. Then repeat this experiment with hops that have similar characteristics.
Training and practice involve repetition. You may not be able to build a lasting memory with only one exposure. Try these experiments over and over, alone and with groups. Practice picking apart flavors when you taste a new food. See how many ingredients you can identify. Then do the same thing with beer. Understand the taste of the single ingredients, and see how many you can find when tasting a new beer. Run this mental experiment every time you taste a beer. Go drinking with beer geek friends who won’t mind discussing the details of beer with you; spouses often tire of this exercise, so don’t be a bore to unwilling accomplices.
A common method of palate training is using doctored beer—spiking samples of beer with chemicals associated with beer components or flaws. This is a great way to test your threshold levels and to test if you have any blind spots. It is very easy to adjust the levels and compare them against common sensory levels that have been tested in the general population. The BJCP provides sensory kits from the Siebel Institute free of charge to groups preparing to take the beer judge exam. Getting in on a study group that has one of these kits is a perfect way to practice your sensory evaluation and to compare your skills with others.
Keep in mind that doctored beers have limitations. You aren’t actually tasting homebrew or commercial beer that is flawed. You are tasting beer with chemicals added that simulate a flaw. An actual flawed beer will often have other flavors and clues as to the root problem. Don’t assume that the flavors you taste in a doctored beer will always be the same in actual beer. Flaws such as diacetyl, DMS, and oxidation can take on many different flavors, for instance. A doctored beer kit will typically only have one of those flavors.
One way you can build your practical skills is by using the triangle test, a common technique in sensory analysis. To do this, you need to taste three samples, two of which are identical, and see if you can select the different one and identify why it is different. You can’t do this on your own, since the samples must be unknown to you. It’s a fun project with a group, so you might want to enlist some beer geek friends and practice together. Take turns preparing the samples so everyone can learn.
Here are some tips to reduce sources of error that could influence the results:
• You should have some palate cleansers available, such as plain crackers and water.
• Samples should be presented uniformly (same cups, same sized pour, same lighting). If color or appearance could be a clue, present the beers in opaque cups. Each sample should look exactly the same, or the testers could be blindfolded.
• Samples should be marked with random three-digit codes, since some people may associate certain numbers with better choices. Use a spreadsheet to generate the numbers (e.g., the RAND function in Excel).
• Don’t let different testers talk or provide suggestions to each other. Boothlike partitions are used in professional panels.
• Randomize the position or order of the odd sample. The middle sample is often chosen as the different one. If you present the samples in a triangle shape, then there is no middle sample.
• Only include those tasters who are interested in the project, and stop when they are tired. Motivation plays a role in performance.
Have the tasters record their results on paper as they go along. Collect the data, tabulate the results, and share the outcome with the tasters. Discuss what differences existed, and see who did the best job of identifying the differences.
Commercial breweries often use this technique in their quality-control testing. It allows researchers to determine if there is a significant difference in samples (for instance, in the taste of an older versus a newer beer), or if a new variety of hop can be distinguished from one previously used. As a brewer, you can use this technique for a variety of purposes, but practice using it is a good way to train your palate and measure your results.
When people ask me for the single most important thing they can do to become a better brewer, I usually tell them to learn how to judge beer. Yeah, I get a lot of surprised looks in return—maybe they were expecting a lecture on mash techniques, yeast management, or sanitation. But thinking like an engineer, I know that you can’t really control a process without incorporating a feedback loop. Brewing is one such process where a feedback loop provides better results. If you think about the process of producing tasty beer, critical structured tasting (“judging”) provides just the right information to make subsequent corrections (“brewing better beer”).
Evaluating your own beer is an advanced skill. You have to be a good beer judge—which requires its own special set of skills—but you also have to be able to set aside your biases and knowledge of the beer in order to assess it as another judge would. Getting practice as a judge in the BJCP is invaluable, since it forces you to repeat the basic assessment of a beer over and over again. This repetition allows the evaluation process to become second nature, which makes it easier to block out any advance information you have about the beer.
I’m not going to discuss how to become a BJCP judge or take you through the process of how to judge in competition or how to fill out a BJCP scoresheet. But I do think it’s important to be able to use the basic assessment skills a judge employs and to understand how a judge evaluates a beer. This is a skill known as structured tasting. It provides some rigor to the simple sensory analysis that palate training employs. These skills can help you greatly if you enter your beers in competition, but they will also help you shorten the feedback loop and make your brewing process more responsive to change.
Evaluation is a systematic, structured assessment of something, or a determination of merit, worth, or significance against a set of standards. Good beer judges will perform an evaluation of every beer they sample, even if it isn’t for a competition. This evaluation can be performed silently and as a mental exercise, or it can be written down as notes. Regardless, this is the basic practice needed to develop the skill of assessing beer as a judge.
Before you begin assessing your beer, you need to decide what you are trying to determine. Are you evaluating a new beer for faults or for style fidelity? Are you trying to decide if your beer has finished conditioning and is ready to drink? Are you checking if your beer is ready to send to a competition? Are you picking which keg to bring to a party? Are you taking notes on what you need to improve when brewing the beer again? Are you doing a basic triage where you decide if an old beer is drinkable, should be dumped, or needs some fixing up? All of these are valid questions to ask, and each might cause you to alter your approach to assessment, since some questions are more detailed than others. If you’re just trying to decide if you should bring a keg to a party, you don’t need to do a full-blown assessment; just taste it and jump to the overall impression. If you’re going to be adjusting your recipe to incorporate feedback, you’ll want to be as detailed as possible.
You don’t have to be a BJCP judge to assess a beer properly. The training, study, and practice all help, but I know many excellent judges who have never taken the exam. However, these judges know how to perform structured tastings of beer. That is, they can completely, thoroughly, and accurately describe the major perceptual characteristics (aroma, flavor, appearance, mouthfeel) of a beer. This is most important aspect of judging, and one that many BJCP judges and novices gloss over in their quest to identify faults, discuss beer styles, and hypothesize about potential corrections.
First things first—to judge a beer, you have to understand and be able to articulate what you are tasting! Brewers entering competition, or friends just handing you one of their homebrews, want this information first. If they are advanced brewers (or professionals), chances are this is the only feedback they’ll want. Yet this is scary for many new judges, since they don’t always have the trained palate or the vocabulary to describe what they are sensing. I recommend that judges in training start with the checklist version of the BJCP scoresheet, since it lists much more detail about possible sensory characteristics. For the latest BJCP scoresheets, look on the BJCP website (www.bjcp.org) under the Competitions section.
When evaluating a beer, follow the same general order as the sections on BJCP scoresheets: Aroma, Appearance, Flavor, and Mouthfeel. These categories guide you through the entire sensory experience of evaluating a beer. Within each category, look at the sensory aspects listed under each section. Ask yourself whether the beer contains that attribute or not, and if so, in what intensity. I like to think about the sensory characteristics in the order I perceive them, rather than how they are listed on the scoresheet. If you were describing the beer to someone, you’d want to list the most intense characteristics first, since those are the dominant flavors and aromas. Use the checklist scoresheet to check your thoroughness—get used to looking for all those flavors and aromas, even if they aren’t present.
Use the techniques and methods described earlier in the Developing Your Palate section. Once you can identify if a perceptual component (say, malt or hops) is present and in what intensity, then you can get down to the business of describing it in more detail. This is where the additional adjectives come into play on the scoresheet. For example, is the malt grainy, bready, biscuity, toasty, caramelly, roasty, or just richly malty? Are the hops citrusy, piney, earthy, floral, spicy, or grassy? Can you be more precise? Is the citrus like grapefruit, orange, or lemon?
Think about all that was discussed in the Mastering Ingredients chapter. Remember that beer can be made of many ingredients, and each lends its own character. You can describe a beer with multiple adjectives, if they all apply. An imperial stout will have more than just a roasty malt character—it will be quite a bit more complex. Describe all that you perceive, taking care to identify the quantity (intensity) and quality (detailed description) of each. Identify which characteristics are most dominant, and try to determine the relative balance of each of the components.
Those are the essentials of structured tasting. Repeat the process for each section of the scoresheet, describing what you perceive in the beer. Once you get enough practice using this process, you don’t have to use the checklist scoresheet—you can simply take structured tasting notes. I often use a small pocket notebook for this purpose, but any medium that captures your thoughts will work.
As with any new skill, the amount of practice you put in will have a measurable effect on how well you perform. Get into the habit of doing a structured evaluation every time you taste a beer. You don’t have to write it down; you can do it mentally, if you remember the process and the steps. This is what I often do if I’m at a bar, or drinking in a social setting. Take a few sips and run through the process. I can do a quick evaluation in less than 30 seconds and then get back to the fun of drinking. A more thorough check will take a few minutes. It’s the mental exercise that counts, not how you write it down. If you do this exercise with other beer geeks, you can turn all that talking about beer into practice.
So far, we’ve focused mostly on the positive sensory aspects of beers—those attributes that can be considered desirable or features of some styles. There is another class of perceptions that don’t belong in beer—these are faults, or potential errors to correct. Faults can be broken into two major groups: technical faults and style faults. Technical faults are generally derived from brewing, fermentation, or storage mistakes, while style faults are often balance-related (too much or too little of a certain attribute—such as esters or bitterness—for the type of beer brewed).
A discussion of common faults in beer is presented in Chapter 7: Troubleshooting, but the method of evaluation can be summarized quickly. When you are evaluating your own beer, you describe what you perceive as a fault, try to identify the root cause, leveraging your knowledge of your process and ingredients, and select plausible solutions for the problem. This will tell you whether you can fix this batch of beer, or whether you must make the corrections in your next batch. See Chapter 7 for a full treatment of this topic.
Sensory training is mostly a function of practice. The more you do it, the better you get. However, there is another dimension to judging that requires more study and knowledge—understanding beer styles and how well a beer matches them. Admittedly, this is more important to some brewers than others. Those who enter competitions will likely be fairly fanatical about beer styles, while many professional brewers act as if they could care less about them.
Beer styles and sensory analysis have been discussed earlier in this chapter. When you know the beer style, you develop a mental picture of what you are tasting, so you can immediately begin looking for the key characteristics of the style. Once the perceptual components of a beer have been described and any technical flaws identified, you can compare the sample beer against a reference standard, like the BJCP Style Guidelines. If you are trying to clone a specific commercial beer, that reference beer itself is the standard. If you’re creating a new type of beer, your basic vision for that beer should also suffice as a standard.
Regardless of the reference used, you need to understand the essentials of the style you are brewing or tasting. Style guidelines can contain a wealth of information, but it’s easy to get lost in all the detail and miss the big picture. You should be able to describe any beer style in a paragraph, touching on the main required points that define the style and separate it from others. Often this is simply the overall balance of the beer and the major flavor impression. Don’t worry about specific style parameters as much; you’re trying to hit the key style characteristics.
Think about what best defines the beer style in question, and evaluate your beer against those aspects. You can get many small points correct, but if you miss any of the major defining characteristics, then the beer won’t seem right. Again, it’s more important to get the impression correct than the measured parameters. An IPA should be a bitter beer, not simply one measuring more than 50 IBUs. The impression of bitterness is affected by the intensity of the malt and other flavors, the amount of body, and the overall attenuation of the beer. When all those factors are considered, the impression needs to be one of bitterness, and that’s how the beer will ultimately be judged.
Balance is probably the most important point to get right. But balance is a very misunderstood word, since it somehow implies an absolute balance. In beer judging, balance is always relative to the target style. A balanced IPA is very different than a balanced Scotch ale. A malty beer needs enough bitterness so that it doesn’t seem cloyingly sweet, while a hoppy beer needs enough malt so that it doesn’t seem harsh. Understanding what constitutes a balanced beer in the specific style is the key to brewing a good example. The rest is mostly choosing the right malt, hop, and yeast varieties to get the right flavor profile.
Your goal in critical tasting of your own beer is to identify gaps between what you have and what you want. These differences are what you need to focus on when making changes or adjusting your beer. The first changes you should make are the ones that hit key stylistic elements of the beer—those important attributes that define the style. Worry about the lesser changes later.
I like to record tasting notes along with the recipe, so I can see what changes to make the next time I brew it. If a flavor element is off, I think about the cause and effect of ingredient selection. Should I use a different variety of malt, hops, or yeast? Should I vary the percentage of some element? Knowing which flavors are produced by the different source ingredients is very helpful when making these adjustments. Some of this is learned by trial and error, which is another reason for keeping detailed tasting notes of all your beers. Quiz other brewers when you note a flavor you like, asking them which ingredients produced that outcome.
One technique to use when figuring out what changes to make with a future batch of beer is blending (a topic covered in depth in Chapter 8). If a beer needs more bitterness, I might add a little bit of an IPA or other strongly hopped beer. If that works, I’ll note it in the recipe log and try adding more hops in the next batch. This works with just about any flavor component. You can blend on a small scale (in a glass, not a keg) so you can keep trying different proportions. If you find something you like, scale it up. This is a fast way to try different ideas without having to brew a batch again. It’s an experiment, and not all experiments work out. That’s OK—you’re still learning something.
When judging your own beer with an eye towards improving your brewing, it’s most important that you be objective and honest with yourself. It’s often difficult to judge your own work, but you have to set aside those feelings and put yourself in the shoes of a dispassionate judge in a competition, or a consumer at a bar. Judge your beer as you judge other beers.
Practice is an important part of building and maintaining any skill. While self-study is helpful, you also need to periodically check your skills against others, so you know that you have learned them well. In matters of perception, you need to know that you haven’t got a perceptual blind spot (for example, not detecting diacetyl) or other bias that may affect your judging. For your tasting notes to be useful to you, you have to be able to trust them.
When performing structured tastings of your beer, take good notes. You will want to record a full evaluation at least once, then make notes on how the beer changes over time or how it tastes under different serving conditions. You are developing a profile of your beer that you will use as a reference. If you make changes, you will want to compare your current version against previous incarnations. Not all changes work out; you need to be able to tell from your notes which version turned out the best.
Use the feedback wisely, whether your own or from others. Be careful about making too many adjustments at once, unless you are very well practiced. You need to be able to gauge the impact of your changes. If you are fine-tuning a beer, you probably should only make one change at a time. If you are quite far away from your target or have multiple problems, feel free to make more changes.
Finally, know why you are brewing. Are you trying to brew better beer for yourself, are you trying to win competitions, or do you simply want to have something you’re proud to share with others? Keep in mind that judging and tasting are subjective, and that you won’t always please everyone. As long as you are happy with yourself, you are getting the right enjoyment out of brewing.
1 David V. Smith and Robert F. Margolskee, “Making Sense of Taste,” Scientific American 284: 3 (March 2001), 32-39.