Beer Tasting

Taste is one of those senses we tend to take for granted. If pushed we could summon up some descriptive powers but most of the time we prefer the standards 'Good, Bad or Average' to cover an enormous range. Not everyone feels comfortable copying the tasting experts who sometimes appear to deluge praise on everyday food and drink so that even a cup of coffee can have a beautiful, summery woodsmoke and gunpowder twang.

Ask most people why they drink a particular beer and the answer will be invariably because 'It's good and I like it'. Do we really need to know that a particular brew has a 'flowery base note'or that its 'mouthfeel is pungent potassium'. Of course not. But consistent quality beer would be harder to come by if experts didn't use a dictionary of description where most would make do with a one-word answer. The aroma and taste of a beer are, naturally, crucial to its success and, to build loyalty to a particular brew, the customer has to be guaranteed that it will have the same quality every time. Variations cause dissatisfaction and a lost customer.

Tastebuds reign supreme

Most breweries invest heavily in quality control to maintain brewing process standards but Heineken has a unique ‘sensory lab’ that became the first of its sort to get official accreditation for its work in descriptive quality control. With the company selling around 98 million hectolitres of beer each year in more than 170 countries, keeping a close eye on taste is a combination of artistic flair and technical discipline.

Testers can pinpoint the most minute taste sensation and then describe them. The words Leathery, Papery, Caramel, Grassy and Floral may not seem important words in brewing but they are key indicators as to as overall taste. The ability to track them and others ensures that a beer tastes good every time. For instance, Heineken insists that its beer is constant whether you buy it in Africa, Alaska or America.

All the senses come into play but the tongue, with 10,000 tastebuds, is the leader. The beer stimulates receptors on the tongue which pick up shades of sweet and bitter and nerves transmit the results to the brain. Sounds technical? It is exactly the process we all use when we take a drink of beer. The subconscious does all that complex work, leaving the drinker with a simple ‘good’ or 'bad' judgement.

Relaxing tastes

Heineken is a fruity beer. It is typical of North European beers with a smooth, mild bitterness and no defects. The customer does not need to know that detail but it has to be the best beer possible – in line with what he or she had yesterday, last week or last month.

Samples arrive daily at Ronald Nixdorf’s laboratory, which resembles a relaxed café-bar rather than a chemical testing zone. A team of around 50 trained tasters are given glasses of beer to analyse with nothing more technical than their senses of aroma and finely-tuned tastebuds. They are not told the brewery or country of origin. The room is furnished with light wood and stainless steel with dimmed lights and an extra-clean atmosphere to avoid any flavour coming into the process. Tasters must not see the shape of bottles the samples are poured from because we do not want any influence involved.

Some tastes may not even reach the human detection thresh-hold but the team still explore every section of the beer’s taste to ensure Heineken is the best every time.

“We had one taster who could even tell the difference between the same beer brewed in separate breweries just a few miles from each other – he was a unique talent and it gives you an indication as to the levels of detection this can be taken,” says Ronald Nixdorf, senior scientist, corporate sensory evaluation at Heineken.

'The object is to pinpoint exactly any difference from the normal. You have to concentrate very hard to isolate a particular aroma and then you need to be able to describe it. That is where the words we use come into play.'

Hey, good looking

Heineken is the world's most international beer with 22 million hectolitres sold worldwide and its quality is subject to constant assessment.

Ronald Nixdorf, previously of the University of Utrecht, is an expert in the psychology of chemical measurement, which means he has to translate all those flowery descriptions into relevant information. Although the senses are cleanest at 8 a.m., his team tastes samples from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. because few drink so early in the morning and any results would be 'unnatural'. The tasting team have graduated from a sophisticated training scheme and develop a clear image of what a beer is to taste like.
You can try to put their expertise into practice with a simple five stage tasting routine: Look at the colour and presentation of the beer; Smell the aroma (look for a lightly fruity note with Heineken); Taste the beer and let the tongue’s tastebuds go to work;
Touch is defined by the ‘Mouth-feel’ when you have taken a drink and finally Reflect on the overall impression of the beer on all the senses. Satisfied? Then carry on drinking.

“It is very important for the company which values taste above all. Heineken is a premium brand which people recognise from a distance. They know what they are getting and that has to be true of every beer.” Brewers will still invest millions in technology but there is no machine yet that can handle the complexity of taste and aroma better than the human senses. Food and drink preparation remain the realms of the personal touch no matter how advanced technology becomes.

“If you like, we do all the hard-edged tasting that requires intense concentration so that the customer can simply get on with enjoying the beer,” says Ronald Nixdorf. So, even if you can’t quite summon up poetic justice to describe that drink in front of you, rest assured that someone has done it all for you and your only tasks are to sit back, relax and have a drink.