Tasting 101 ... (or at least how I see it :)

I'm far from a beer expert, but I do love beer a lot. And when you taste a lot of beer, you have to make some sort of classification for yourself, to know which beer you love, and which you don't and how you can compare the beers you tasted with each other.

I always get sort of frustrated when I see descriptions of beers. You always get to see so many descriptions with words that mean nothing (at least to me, I'm sure for a lot of people it does make sense).

Let's take such a description as an example: the Rochefort 10 trappist.

In our beer menu, you'll find the following description:
dark trappist | top-fermantation
deep red-brown, honey evolving to very fruity (pears, bananas, raisins) with touches of fondant chocolate, long-lasting aftertaste
Alc.: 10,3%

Ok, it is a good description (been written by somebody who has far more experience than I will ever have), but to me there are too much things in it I just don't see/taste.

Off course I already drank that Rochefort 10, and it is a great beer, one of the trappists you really need to drink whenever you get the chance! But "honey evolving to very fruity (pears, bananas, raisins) with touches of fondant chocolate" ???

Honestly, I don't taste that ... really ... none of the above. That doesn't mean it isn't like that, it just means "I" don't taste that. To me it is "deep red-brown beer with a very rich bouquet of flavors, which I can't define, and a long-lasting aftertaste (which I like)". And I would add the following: for me it's much better than f.e. the Westmalle Dubbel, but I prefer the La Trappe Quadruple just a tiny bit more. However, I will drink it again :). One of the stronger beers when it comes to alcohol percentage, and thus to be drunk with care.

So, what it the difference between those 2 descriptions? And which one is better?

Most obviously, the first one is written by an expert, and gives a rather objective description of the beer. A description that sounds exotic and would help somebody who knows all the underlying tastes, and who knows a lot about beer. To me, it gives me to much information I don't get, and thus in many ways useless.

The second one (mine) is very personal, and thus rather subjective. A description which is good for me, but probably not good for you, as you might have a complete different taste of what is good and not, than my taste.

Which description is better? In this case, I'd have more information from the second, but is pretty useless if you've never tasted the 2 other beers (Westmalle Dubbel and La Trappe Quadruple) used in the comparison.

So, to make sense of the 300+ beers we serve, I'm working on my own classification system which hopefully will make more sense to people, who are just like me, far from as experienced as the people who write those objective descriptions.

How will it look like? Well, it's still in development and far from done. But I do want to share it with you and would be very happy to hear how you people make distinctions between all the beers.

First I make a distinction between color: blond, amber or dark. For me, this is in most cases already a big indication how taste will be (there are off course many exceptions).
Next: strong or light (in alcohol) ... light being beers with alcohol-percentages ranging from 3 to 6%. Strong being everyting above 7%.
Next: sweet, saur or bitter. This is probably (for me) the most important distinction. Those 3 tastes are usually easy to classify as they are tasted by 3 different regions on your tongue. Sweet is tasted by the tip of your tongue, sour are tasted at the sides of your tongue in the back part of your mouth, and bitter is tasted at the back of your tongue.

To make things easy, you first take some "reference" beers. Beers you've drunk more than average, and to which you can compare new beers you taste. For example a few beers I use as reference beers: normal lager beer, Duvel, Westmalle Tripel, Rodenbach, and some others in specific categories (like Kriek and Gueuze).

Each time I drink a new beer, I try to classify them using my first rules, and then I compare them to my reference beers.

It is maybe a less advanced way of tasting than the real experts, and I guess over time my method will eventually evolve to the more "objective" way of tasting. But for now, I find it personally more satisfying and makes my beer-tastings more enjoyable.

Now I'd be happy to hear how you do it? How do you make your tastings as enjoyable as possible?

Greetingz,
Koen.