You love craft beers: their very special flavors, their textures, their aromas… even their cool names and labels! But sometimes you get the feeling that something is missing, that you could get more out of that drink.
Don't worry, you just have to learn how to taste a beer to appreciate even more all the nuances of the beer recipes you love so much.
Anyone can learn to taste beer. It is not complicated, you just have to know the steps to follow, and we are going to tell you about it with a small reference guide. Let's get to it!
Beer tasting: the first steps
As a preliminary step to a beer tasting, there is a simple but fundamental step: serve the beer. The ideal is to choose the right glass for each style of beer. In this article we explain more about the subject. If you don't want to complicate things too much (or you don't have any of the glass models) you can also serve it in one of our Beer Sapiens glasses, good, nice and very beer!
To serve correctly it is necessary to tilt the glass about 45º and pour the beer gently. Then you must straighten it when you are reaching the end. The foam you should have left should be approximately 2 fingers.
How to do a beer tasting: sensory analysis
As you can imagine from the name, the tasting (and the analysis that we are going to do) of the beer is going to be based on the perceptions that we are going to have through our senses, that is:
- view
- smell
- touch
- taste.
In the tasting process there are some orchestrated steps, that is, this search for sensation will take a certain order:
View: what is the color of your beer?
As with almost everything, we start with our main sense, sight. Stare at your beer. Holding the glass up against the light can help. What color has? Pale or bright yellow? Black as night or Reddish tan ? Then focus on the foam. What color has? Is it thin or dense? Is it creamy?
With a bit of practice, you'll find that with beers, the range of colors is much wider than we might first think.
How to move your beer
This is one of our favorite parts of the tasting, and the one that's going to make your friends gasp when you do it!
Cover the beer with your hand and stir it a little, in circles. This will allow its aromas to intensify and you will also be able to check the retention of head, that is, what the foam holds in the glass.
Smell: the aroma of beer
After you've stirred the beer, bring it up to your nose and uncap the beer: this way you'll detect the flavors you'd notice in the beer if you took a sip.
Broadly speaking, you could detect three characters: the malt character, the hop character, and the yeast character. In terms of aroma, things get a little crazier here, because you can find from smells of grain, bread and wheat, to coffee or chocolate. The hops will be the ones that provide an aroma citrus, floral or herbal. And the yeasts will give the fruity/complex touch if they are top-fermented, the low-fermented ones are more balanced and "neutral" (let's say).
Flavor: how to drink your beer
The moment you've been waiting for has arrived: take a shot of that beer! For a successful tasting, we advise you to do it 3 times :
- ethe first sip will cleanse your palate
- the second will suit you and,
- the third will allow you to live the full taste experience
Another tip is to let the liquid run through every part of your mouth, in other words, don't swallow immediately, try to enjoy those sips. This is where you can start to detect sweetness, salty flavors, acidity or bitterness in general.
Touch or sensation in the mouth
Another aspect you should pay attention to is the mouthfeel. This is intended to notice the texture of the beer, which can be silky, dry, dense, gassy
These are just some indications on how to carry out a tasting. In the next article we will explain more about everything you can feel when tasting a beer, or technically speaking, the organoleptic sensations that a beer will cause.
If you want to learn more and more about beers, we are waiting for you at our Private Beer Tastings!
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