{"id":15892,"date":"2020-02-24T06:33:09","date_gmt":"2020-02-24T12:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/?p=15892"},"modified":"2020-02-24T06:33:29","modified_gmt":"2020-02-24T12:33:29","slug":"first-comes-the-e-nose-then-the-beer-algorithm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/first-comes-the-e-nose-then-the-beer-algorithm\/","title":{"rendered":"First comes the e-nose, then the beer algorithm"},"content":{"rendered":"

Researchers in Australia have developed an \u201celectronic nose\u201d<\/a> they say will help craft breweries monitor beer quality. Seems like it would work for other breweries as well.<\/p>\n

This e-nose is a small circuit board that measures gases emitted from beer. It uses machine learning (magic words which we\u2019ll 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Basically, it is good at warning brewers there\u2019s something about a beer that consumers won\u2019t like. That\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Kevin Verstrepen and Miguel Roncoroni at the laboratory at the University of Leuven\u2019s 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<\/a><\/em>.
\n<\/p>\n

The Belgian book is just the beginning. \u201cWe are now analyzing US beers,\u201d Verstrepen wrote via email last month. \u201cThe first shipment just came in \u2013 we now have a complete cold room filled with US beers ready for analyzing and tasting. In fact, if breweries are interested in having their beers analyzed and (possibly) also appear in a similar US book, they should contact me.\u201d (He receives hundreds of emails at kevin.verstrepen at kuleuven.vib.be<\/em> each day, so make sure it doesn\u2019t look like spam.)<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t just do a standard aroma analysis, but a very thorough one, measuring more than 200 compounds,\u201d he explains. Fifteen trained panelists then blind taste the beers and describe the aroma and flavor. \u201cWe are using this data to have computers learn which, and how, chemical compounds contribute to specific aroma\u2019s and overall beer quality.\u201d<\/p>\n

They can already predict the score a beer will receive at RateBeer.com with 80% accuracy based only on the compounds (in other words, without tasting). <\/p>\n

This is where machine learning, or artificial intelligence, comes in. They aren\u2019t exactly the same<\/a>, but close enough in this instance. Good Beer Hunting posted a story last week that I wrote about sequencing the genomes of the key ingredients<\/a> in beer. The resulting information will aid breeders develop better raw materials. Better<\/em> refers to more than aroma\/flavor, so I suggest reading the story.<\/p>\n

Beer, of course, is a sum of multiple ingredients and the result of multiple processes. \u201cIn my opinion, we will never be able to really obtain a beer’s aroma profile from DNA, and simply analyzing the beer itself will be the only real way to describe it,\u201d Verstrepren says.<\/p>\n

IntelligentX<\/a>, an enterprise based in the United Kingdom, grabbed a bit attention in recent years for creating \u201cthe world\u2019s first AI beer.\u201d However, if you visit their website they are out of stock and it isn’t clear what might be going on. The site invites customers to train their personal algorithm by providing feedback about what they like and don\u2019t like. The scientists in Belgium are taking a different approach, one similar to Pandora (and its Music Genome Project), <\/p>\n

\u201cThe next step would be to use the algorithms to develop new (great) beers,\u201d Verstrepren says.<\/p>\n

It may provide brewers another tool when writing recipes. However, given that there are perhaps 1,000 odor compounds in hops alone, those machines have some heavy lifting ahead of them. <\/p>\n

The book itself is as consumer oriented as it is scientific. \u201cThe results are really super-cool because we really get a scientific \u2018map\u2019 of beers that you can explore as if it was a country, with some beers being neighbors that differ in nuances,\u201d Verstrepren wrote when research was ongoing. \u201cWhereas you can also go to a very different part of the beer \u2018country\u2019 and find beers that are literally on the opposite end; or beers that are very similar in some aspects, but very different in others.\u201d <\/p>\n

Here are sections of a couple of pages, for Saison Dupont and Orval, showing some of what is included about each of 250 beers. Not shown are vital stats or where a beer belongs on the Belgian beer map. What are pictured are the closest \u201cneighboring\u201d beers, that is the ones that most closely resemble the feature beer\u2019s chemical and aroma composition, even though some might taste quite different due to key odor compounds.<\/p>\n

Below that are sensory data and chemical data. The scientists chose 20 chemical compounds to highlight. Clockwise and from 12, they are: 2.6-diamethly-pyrazine, color, 2-acetylpyrrole, ethyl acetate, ethyl hexanote, ethanol, isoamyl acetate, bitterness, humulene epoxide II, citronellol, myrcene, geraniol, linalool, camphor, 1-alpha-terpineol, 4-ethyl-guaiacol, ethyl 2-methyl butyrate, lactic acid, acetic acid, methylpyrazine.<\/p>\n

Saison Dupont<\/strong>
\n\"Saison<\/p>\n

Orval<\/strong>
\n\"Orval<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Researchers in Australia have developed an \u201celectronic nose\u201d 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\u2019ll get back to soon) to determine if … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[701],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-indigenous"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4wTn-48k","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15892"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15892\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15907,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15892\/revisions\/15907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}