In this column, I intend to deviate somewhat from my normal game plan, where I pick a style of beer and critique three new and or extraordinary examples. Instead we’ll dive headlong into a topic called “Sensory Analysis.” I see it everyday: tasting, smelling, seeing and feeling our beverages of choice are processes that are often overlooked or somewhat misguided. Today’s consumer is a tough one, brimming with excitement, education and the wherewithal to get exactly what they want. When it comes to buying something like a car, we go online, read reviews and more than likely take it for a test spin. Now I’m not saying that slinging a few pints carries the weight of purchasing a Pontiac (R.I.P), but we the consumer should know what we’re getting.
Let’s start with a real beer-geek how-to on analyzing a beer. (As a note: Super Bowl parties are for drinking; I will be discussing tasting. It should also be mentioned that the best way to expand our beverage vocabulary and knowledge is by doing it with someone better at it than you, one to suggest what you may or may not smell or taste.)
When I sit down to do some serious tasting, I pull out my BJCP Style Guidelines. The Beer Judge Certification program outlines most beer styles and details their aroma, appearance, taste, mouthfeel, ingredients used, history, overall impression, and gives a few world-class commercial examples.
First step is choosing a beer. For illustrative purposes, let's go with Tröegs Dream Weaver Wheat Beer. They call it an Unfiltered Wheat Beer (American Wheat), but the sales representative and former brewer calls it a German-Style Hefeweizen. So in my BJCP Style Guidelines I go to category 15A and read about weizens and know what I’m looking for. This will serve two purposes: I’ll get a refresh on the definition of what a weizen is, and I’ll know what aromas, flavors, etc that should and should NOT be present. I dust off my weizen glass, give it a four second cold rinse (to bring it down to serving temperature), roll the beer bottle on the counter to stir up the wheat/yeast sediment on the bottom and give it a pour right down the middle of the glass.
Aroma
The first sense we get to use is smell. So many volatile compounds waft up from the beer so quickly after pouring that it’s important to get our noses in there immediately. So as not to overwhelm the olfactory nerves, avoid deep and long inhalations; instead take three “short, sharp, sniffs” as my mentor at the Siebel Institute would say. For a wizen, we’re looking for notes of banana (esters) and clove (phenols) that come from a stressed fermentation. In the Dream Weaver there is most certainly a medium to strong banana presence, low levels of clove, a hint of lemon (probably from the wheat) and an even lower level of noble hop character (woodsy/floral). I also get just a bit of vanilla in the background. Continued on page two...
