Brewing sensory

Our experienced sensory team can help you to maintain the highest quality in the flavour of your products. Through a combination of services we can help you with everything from tasting the raw materials and tracking the flavour of your product through to troubleshooting taints and panel training.

Benefits of using Campden BRI for sensory services

• Specialist sensory panels for beer and alcoholic beverages
• Independent objective assessment
• An internationally recognised centre of excellence for sensory capabilities
• UKAS accredited analyses
• Proven track record in brand support and troubleshooting

For non routine issues with flavour, we are able to help you with your problems by using our wealth of in-house experience and technical support. We can arrange to visit your site or host a technical visit at Nutfield. We can perform audits, conduct bespoke training or provide a second opinion as needed.

Brewing sensory services we offer include:

• Flavour assessment
• Flavour tracking
• Sensory training
• Taint troubleshooting

Flavour assessment

We have a large pool of expert tasters and specialist panels for products such as beer, malt, wines and spirits. Depending on requirements of the client, we can offer the following range of tests:

• Descriptive - provides a qualitative and quantitative flavour profile of the product using Quantitative Descriptive Analysis (QDA) or Technical Profiling. These quantitative and qualitative descriptive tests are most commonly displayed graphically by use of a radar plot. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) or more complex multivariate analysis (eg PCA, GPA) can be performed as appropriate
• Difference - this test will ascertain whether there is a statistically significant difference in the sensory attributes of two or more products. The most commonly used test is the Triangle Test, for which we hold UKAS accreditation
• Selective - a rapid and powerful test, most often used in the identification of flavour taints

Flavour tracking

How consistent is the flavour of your beer? Has the flavour profile of your beer drifted with time?

Our Flavour Tracking service can help you answer these questions. A benchmark brand flavour profile is established against which the flavour of subsequent brews can be compared and consistency tracked over time. The benchmark profile can also serve as a reference against which multi-plant operators can check consistency and/or the impact of raw material/process changes can be assessed. Sensory evaluation and instrumental analyses would be used to establish this profile.

If flavour anomalies are detected or a drift in flavour is identified then recommendations to rectify the situation is reported.

Flavour benchmark

The benchmark profile is based on the tasting of three discrete samples of the fresh beer by our expert panel. The beer can also be subjected to the following analyses: pH, bitterness, ethanol, PG, OG and flavour volatiles (esters, higher alcohols, acetaldehyde, vicinal diketones and DMS).

A full benchmark report includes:

• Spider diagram
• Description, highlighting key flavour notes
• Analytical data

Flavour check

To measure flavour consistency it is recommended that monitoring occurs on a six monthly basis. A report on this monitoring can include:

• Spider diagram of benchmark and sample flavour profiles
• Description, highlighting key flavour differences
• Comparison of analytical data
• Recommendations to rectify any flavour anomalies observed

Sensory training

Our sensory team offer a variety of training courses and workshops to help you to maintain and build the skill sets of your staff.

We can provide courses at Nutfield or Chipping Campden, which can also be conducted at your site and tailored to your requirements.

Training in sensory for beer

Sensory panel management for beer

Taint troubleshooting

Our approach to identifying and providing advice on the source of taints and off-flavours is to combine our expertise in sensory and analytical chemistry. First, our sensory team will profile the taint in order to provide an indication of the source of the taint or off flavour. Second, this work is backed up by the chemists who may use sophisticated analysis such as LC-MS/MS or GC-MS to identify the compound causing the taint.

Combined, we aim to provide you with a rapid and robust answer to your taint problems.