Republished from BrewingTechniques' July/August 1994.

To the non-beer person, determining the quality of a beer must seem pretty simple: "If it tastes good, drink it." The brewing community, however, knows full well how difficult rating beers and identifying their flavor components (both good and bad) can be. Much effort has gone into educating brewers and judges to get them all speaking the same language and identifying the same components correctly.

Evaluating Beer presents a compilation of articles and transcripts that deal with various aspects of beer evaluation. The list of authors involved reads like a Who's Who of brewing technology: David W. Eby, George Fix, Jean-Xavier Guinard, Jim Koch, Ted Konis, Morten C. Meilgaard, Grosvenor Merle-Smith, Greg Noonan, Raoul Palamand, Charlie Papazian, Ian Robertson, Ilse Shelton, and Ron Siebel.

Whatever your level of involvement in beer or brewing, you will find something useful in Evaluating Beer. The information presented is certainly exhaustive. The book covers just about every aspect of beer scrutiny. The evaluation techniques included cover commercial tasting quality control procedures, consumer preference determination, competition judging, and developing flavor profiles. The book does focus more on the commercial beer market than on amateur beer brewing and judging, but it certainly offers home brewers and beer judges a means of expanding their understanding of beer components and their perception. I take exception with the cover's statement that ". . . you don't have to be a brewing scientist to understand beer evaluation." The book is clearly intended for brewers or those with a good understanding of beer production.

Among the topics presented are professional consultants' explanations of how to determine consumers' perceptions of beer as a product; formulas for introducing specific flavors into beer samples to train palates; charts listing the recognized beer flavor/aroma components and their causes; and detailed explanations of scientific sensory evaluation techniques and the analysis conducted to define the flavor/aroma components of beer. The book also includes explanations of how our own senses work and how local conditions affect our perceptions of sight, taste, and smell.

If I have any complaint with this book it is with its format. Reading Evaluating Beer is more like attending a seminar than reading a book - unfortunately, without the added benefit of question and answer periods between chapters. Because of the diversity of the authors and their original audiences, the tone of these assembled dissertations runs full range. Some are very, very technical and some very conversational. This format makes the reading inconsistent and at times distracting. It is often difficult to switch between the presentation styles when looking up specific subjects. Some pieces also tend to overlap, creating a fair amount of redundancy. The book does not flow in a logical sequence, and it does not cover the subject in terms understandable by nonbrewers (who are clearly addressed in the introduction).

Evaluating Beer also tends to speak more to commercial brewers than to competition judges. As an amateur beer judge, I would have liked to see more coverage of suggested methods of self-training and practical guidance for honing my skills. There is more to judging than simply identifying off-flavors. Evaluating Beer contains virtually no discussion of beer styles, for example. I realize that the specifics of the AHA style guidelines and category descriptions (those most commonly used in competitions today) are under constant revision. Nevertheless, the inclusion of a general description of world beer styles and their respective flavor profiles (including appropriate serving temperatures) would have been helpful in rounding out the book and would have made it more attractive as a reference for judges in training. The several erroneous references to the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) "training" judges; the BJCP evaluates and ranks judges but has no active training program.

Nevertheless, this book does bring together some of today's best minds in brewing to discuss the technical aspects of beer evaluation in great detail. The book contains plenty of information for brewing professionals and advanced amateurs interested in increasing their depth of understanding of the subject. There is a well-constructed index that facilitates the use of the book as a reference tool.

Perhaps someday, someone will take the information presented in Evaluating Beer, distill it down, sort it out, expand on the areas where this book is weak, and present it in a single narrative that will read more easily and be more effective as a handy reference for judges and tasting panels. Until then, a well annotated copy of Evaluating Beer will do.

-Russ Wigglesworth San Francisco, California