Looking for beer tasting "standards"

[jamorgan3777]

Not sure if this is the right forum for this. I am a long time homebrewer and think my beer is pretty good. People tell me its pretty good. I want to take it to the next level of quality and consistency and toward that end I need to know what off-flavors are. I need to taste them. Do any of you know where judges get standards for tasting? "This beer is tannic" or "this beer has esters" etc. etc." Where do you get those references? I am thinking to truely know if I have good beer, I need to taste some objectively and well characterized "bad" beers. Also I would like to know what the differences are due to. SNPA tastes different from Anchor Steam but what all is that due to. (talking the finer points here).

 

[m00ps]

You should look into entering bjcp sanctioned competitions or try trading with a few HBTers. I've sent out 7 packages or so to other homebrewers to try. Ive found feeedback from fellow homebrewers is much more useful and potentially rewarding than even the snobbiest of beer snobs

 

[microbusbrewery]

There are sensory analysis kits you can buy. They're not cheap...most that I've seen are around $100. There are also instructions for homemade kits on the web. Basically you dose a sample of BMC beer with one of the compounds then taste it. We did it for a club meeting and it's pretty awesome. On that note, join a club. Clubs are great places to get feedback. Everyone has different sensitivities to various flavor compounds. For example, I have a pretty high threshold for DMS...there has to be quite a bit there before I can pick it up, but others in my club can detect it at much lower levels. Other options, BJCP test prep resources (e.g. betterbeerscores.com) will help you train your palate. Randy Mosher's Tasting Beer is another good resource.

 

[Yooper]

I am on my phone at the moment, so posting a link is very difficult. But if you Google BJCP guidelines , that will tell you the standards for every style of beer.it can really help with tasting, when you are drinking a sierra Nevada pale ale and reading the guidelines for American pale ale. Drink the beer as you read the guidelines and try to taste the things that are described..

 

[Rcbandl]

http://www.bjcp.org/docs/2015_Guidelines_Beer.pdf

 

[LandoLincoln]

The Siebel Institute sells beer sensory tasting kits. Various concentrated off-flavors that you add to a base beer. Not cheap. But the kits are designed to be used with about 10 people at a time, so if you all go in on the kits, not that bad. Brew clubs are made for this type of thing. Find a brew club in your area and see how many people are willing to do an off-flavor tasting session.

I got three out of six off-flavors. My taste buds are not that refined.

 

[BeatnikTom]

If you want to learn to drink your own homebrew more critically, become a BJCP judge. Enter competitions. Gordon Strong covers this topic extensively in Brewing Better Beer, a book I highly recommend if you want to "take it to the next level" in terms of quality.

Friends and family are notoriously poor sources of feedback for obvious reasons.

 

[jamorgan3777]

Thanks a lot everyone for the responses. This is exactly the information I was looking for. I am mostly a DIYer so I like the idea of the "build your own" off-flavor kits.

 

[Homercidal]

Grab those BJCP recommendations and download some scoresheets. Start practice scoring all the beers you drink. And start judging at competitions. You get the idea pretty quick.

 

[Jim_Holmes]

theres a good article on off flavors in the December 2015 Brew Your own magazine if you can get a copy

 

[Qhrumphf]

A beer doctoring kit is a good start. The Siebel sensory analysis is a good start, but if you're not already a BJCP judge and able to get it on a subsidy, it's not cheap. I've used Aroxa's kit a couple times, which is more expensive for less with BJCP subsidy, but cheaper than unsubsidized straight from Siebel.

If you look up the BJCP exam study guide on the BJCP website, there's some guidelines in there for how to home-doctor beers for the same purpose. When doing BJCP study groups with my club, I've done some of them (adding chloroseptic for phenolic/chlorophenols, lactic or white wine vinegar for lactic and acetic acid, wine tannin for tannic, and so on) to fill in the gaps between what the sensory kits don't cover.

 

[passedpawn]

Thanks a lot everyone for the responses. This is exactly the information I was looking for. I am mostly a DIYer so I like the idea of the "build your own" off-flavor kits.

The sensory kits are pretty popular in clubs, as everyone else said. But if you want to taste every nasty flavor you can find in beer, just join a club and tell them you want to help judge. New brewers make all the mistakes, you you can taste them that way. Don't worry, you'll be partnered with a club member who knows what to look for. I learned a lot in this manner.