Sensory

Why should flavor get all the attention? Mouthfeel matters, and recent research aims to expand our vocabulary and connect it more closely to beer’s chemistry and the brewing process.

Having a sensory panel to regularly evaluate your beer is good practice—but what about one to evaluate your hops? Brewers and hop-sensory experts share their best tips on starting up a specialized panel—and careful hop evaluation is something that even the smallest breweries can do.

No brewery is too small or too short-handed to get a sensory panel going, and the education and expertise gained can be invaluable to the business. Here’s how to get your panel off the ground.

For a smaller brewery ready to improve data collection and quality control, the idea of adding a lab or dedicated staff may seem out of reach. However, there are real steps that any brewery can take to help ensure quality—and many cost little or nothing.

Relying on the spot market is no reason to accept hops that don’t meet your brewery’s standards. Here are tips from the hop-sensory pros on making sure you get the traits and quality you need.

Independent brewers are prolific consumers of malt, increasingly nudging growers and maltsters into more characterful varieties. What’s lacking is wider adoption of programs that can evaluate and analyze that character—and then communicate it to drinkers.

In this excerpt from our Case Study on Night Shift Brewing—from our freshly published Brewing Industry Guide Winter issue—the Boston brewery’s cofounders explain the process behind their successful Hoot hard seltzer.

From breaking down flavor profiles to proper pouring, glassware, and caring for draft lines, Greg Engert of the Neighborhood Restaurant Group lays out his approach to world-class beer service in this full-length video for All Access subscribers.