Beer tasting isn’t just for brewers or beer judges. Anyone with a love of beer can develop the skills to appreciate the diverse flavours and aromas even more.
In this blog post, we’ll explore how you can improve your tasting skills through a few simple steps.
Of course, the best place to start is with WSET’s Level 1 Award in Beer. Through our Systematic Approach to Tasting®, you'll become familiar with a range of beer styles.
First of all, let’s have a…
Quick refresher on what beer is made of
Beer is crafted from four main ingredients:
- Malt: Contributes the sugars that yeast ferments into alcohol and carbon dioxide. It also provides beer with a range of colours and aromas, too.
- Water: The liquid base that carries all the flavours.
- Hops: Add bitterness to balance malt’s sweetness, and introduce aromas.
- Yeast: Ferments sugars into alcohol and adds its own flavours.
Understanding these ingredients is essential because they provide the building blocks for the flavours and aromas you’ll taste.
How beer ingredients contribute flavours and aromas
How to taste beer: Sensory evaluation basics
Did you know that flavour is a combination of what we smell (aroma) and what we taste? Let's look at how we assess each.
Aroma
Aroma plays a crucial role in how we perceive flavour. When you smell a beer, you’re detecting aroma molecules that are processed by the parts of the brain responsible for emotion and memory—this is why certain smells can evoke strong memories!
How to assess aroma:
- Orthonasal smelling: Breathing in through your nose before tasting.
- Retronasal smelling: Breathing out through your nose after swallowing, which releases more aromas due to warmth and enzymatic action in your mouth.
Pro tip: If you struggle to describe what you’re smelling, don’t worry - it’s natural. Our brains aren’t wired to name smells easily!
Taste
Taste evolved to help us detect nutritious foods and avoid harmful ones. Humans perceive five basic tastes:
- Sweet: Signifies energy-rich sugars.
- Sour: Indicates ripeness or spoilage.
- Salty: Essential for bodily functions.
- Bitter: Originally a warning sign for toxins, though bitterness in beer (from hops) is often desirable.
- Umami: A savoury flavour found in foods like mushrooms and aged cheeses.
Did you know: Bitterness can take up to a minute to fully develop on your palate!
Understanding our senses
Unlike sight or sound, aroma is processed in a part of the brain linked to survival instincts. This evolutionary background explains why:
- we react emotionally to certain smells and flavours.
- describing these sensations can be challenging because our brains weren’t designed to put them into words.
Building your beer vocabulary
Everyone struggles with describing flavours and aromas at first. The key is to build a framework by following these steps:
- Practice smelling and tasting: Spend time smelling ingredients in your kitchen. Identify the aromas of bread, coffee, spices, herbs, and more.
- Create a classification system: Categorize flavours based on beer ingredients. For example:
Malt flavours include: Toasted bread, caramel, chocolate – thanks to the Maillard reaction
Hop aromas include: Citrus, pine, floral, herbal – as hops contain 400+ aroma compounds!
- Use flavour wheels and lexicons: These tools provide vocabulary to describe what you’re experiencing. How many flavours do you recognise from your favourite beer in this WSET Level 2 Beer Lexicon?
An extract of the WSET Level 2 Award in Beer SAT and Lexicon
Recognize biases in beer tasting
- Colour expectations: Don’t let colour fool you. For example, a black IPA may look like a stout but have an incredibly hop-forward aroma.
- Hype and marketing: Reviews and ratings on apps can influence perception. Focus on your own experience.
Tips for improving your tasting skills
- Be open-minded: Your idea of what a flavour "should" be may differ from what’s in the glass.
- Taste blind: Remove visual cues and preconceived notions by tasting from opaque glasses.
- Compare and contrast: Taste different styles side by side to highlight differences.
Practice makes perfect
The best way to become a better beer taster is to keep practicing:
- Taste regularly: Each beer you taste builds your mental library of flavours.
- Engage your senses: Smell, sip, and savour each beer thoughtfully.
- Reflect and record: Keep tasting notes to track your discoveries.
Anyone can become a skilled beer taster. Your everyday experiences with food and drink already provide a foundation. To take your skills further, deepen your knowledge of beer ingredients and brewing processes with one of WSET's beer qualifications.
With practice and curiosity, you’ll develop the vocabulary and framework to appreciate beers at a whole new level.
