First comes the e-nose, then the beer algorithm

Researchers in Australia have developed an “electronic nose” they say will help craft breweries monitor beer quality. Seems like it would work for other breweries as well.

This e-nose is a small circuit board that measures gases emitted from beer. It uses machine learning (magic words which we’ll get back to soon) to determine if a beer has unwanted aromas. The gases include carbon dioxide, ethanol, methane, hydrogen, hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, ammonia and benzene.

The electronic nose has also been used by the researchers in conjunction with biometric indicators such as heart rate, body temperature, brainwaves and facial expressions to gather more information from consumers while tasting a product.

Basically, it is good at warning brewers there’s something about a beer that consumers won’t like. That’s a positive. However, directing consumers to a beer they will like or providing an idea of what it will smell and taste like is a different challenge. Aroma, and therefore flavor, remains something of a black box.

Kevin Verstrepen and Miguel Roncoroni at the laboratory at the University of Leuven’s Institute for Beer Research and VIB Center for Microbiology head up a project intended to match compounds that can be measured with sensory preferences. One result is a book, Belgian Beer: Tested and Tasted.

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Has hard seltzer given beer the ‘Cross Road Blues?’

Standin’ at the crossroad, baby, risin’ sun goin’ down
Standin’ at the crossroad, baby, eee-eee, risin’ sun goin’ down
I believe to my soul, now, poor Bob is sinkin’ down

– From “Cross Road Blues” by Robert Johnson

Lew Bryson, bless his booming laugh, has written about the soul of beer. In the first years I posted at Appellation Beer the tagline here read, “In search of the soul of beer.” I had to lean on the Wayback Machine to find a copy of the old logo.

Appellation Beer 2007 logo

I changed the tag to “celebrating beer from a place” because I thought it would result in fewer questions like “why appellation?” Also, a lengthy discussion here sometime later documents the sort of trouble a blogger can get into suggesting some beers might have soul and others could be soulless.

Anyway, Bryson writes, “Those pioneering beers were great because of the heart and soul of the people who made them. I don’t want to see the soul go away. I don’t think that the beer world as we know it today could survive that.”

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Why look for reasons not to like a beer?

In Drink Better Beer, author Josh Bernstein writes about spending a day with the sensory panel at Allagash Brewing in Maine, acting briefly as a panelist himself.

I ponder my sample of White, the brewery’s flagship witbier, which should taste slightly sweet and sour, mildly bitter, and faintly of minerals. “Tastes overly harsh,” I write in the iPad set up with sensory software from DaughtLab, which collects data on panelists’ impressions. “Too astringent.” I move on to the Belgian-style Tripel, a beer evocative of honey, bubble game, grapes, and green apples. “This is a sourness I don’t love,” I write. The coffee-infused James Bean, a triple aged in bourbon barrels, has a “drying sourness that turns me off,” while the smoothly malty House Beer hits its pear and grapefruit notes.

Whow, that was a lot of flawed beer, I think.

Except, it turns out only the Tripel was adulterated, dosed with acetic acid.

Later Bernstein tastes three different samples of White, and documents the flaws in each. Except, it turns out two are flawless, and in fact, the same beer. “It’s a combination that I use often with guests and new tasters to show when they are overly critical,” says Karl Arnberg, who manages the sensory program as Allagash.

Think about it for a moment. Why look for reasons not to like a beer? No doubt, quality is important. That’s why Bernstein invested a day in Portland, Maine. There’s good reason for those in the beer business to learn to identify what are classified as off flavors, and it useful to some to understand what causes them.

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Why would a beer that was once a fine representative of a style no longer be?

Boak and Bailey provoked what turned into a longread last week by asking “What’s the reference beer for each style? Especially more obscure styles, we suppose.” @BoakandBailey quickly added, “So, to clarify: reference doesn’t necessarily mean the best, just the most representative. If you’d never had style X before, would that beer help you understand it?”

Start at the top, keep scrolling, take your time, feel free to wander off into some of conversations within the conversation. I’ll wait.

At the end, @joelandrewwinn writes, “Curious to see the responses when North America wakes up tomorrow. My guess is there will be opinions.” If comments broke out, I didn’t find them. That doesn’t matter. This isn’t about the best American reference for a mild (although Rocksteady on cask at Good Word Brewing in Duluth, Ga., was awfully good Saturday before last). Or a reference for Americanized or “traditional” German pilsner, or pastry stout or whatever.

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