Beer Tasting, A Scientific Approach

It all started with a simple question “Is des Zipfa wirklich so a Foazgeschwoabat?” – “Is Zipfer beer really so bad after all”. Having a scientific background there was just no way around setting up an experiment: 8 experts, 12 different kinds of Austrian beer and a blind taste test. Here are some photos before and after I had removed the beer bottle labels

And here’s the panel of internationally acclaimed beer and microwave engineering experts ;)

I had prepared booklets where they could rate the different kinds of beers (#1-#12) by using points and words. It blew me away how many suitable adjectives they found for describing the smell, looks and taste of beer.

 

The results were similarly astonishing. I don’t want to bore you with statistics (that’s what we had LibreOffice Calc for), so here just some major findings:

  1. Zipfer scored the highest number of points from 2/8 testers -> “Zipfer is do koa so a Foazgschwoabat” – Zipfer beer is not so bad after all.
  2. Only one tester (out of 8!!) successfully identified the non-alcoholic beer Schlossgold
  3. The logical conclusion: Marketing really seems to have a huge influence on our favorite beer choices – more than the obvious parameters looks, smell and taste.

I don’t know when, but it was so much fun, I am sure I will do something like this again!!!

3 thoughts on “Beer Tasting, A Scientific Approach

  1. Stefan

    We also ran a beer tasting, splendid winners were Trumer Pils and Wieselburger. However, Schlossgold wasn’t among the contenders (after all, it was a *beer* tasting), and neither was Zipfer, so the results might not be very comparable…

    Reply
  2. Christoph

    Do we get the full data in the supplementary information? Also I’d like to know a few more parameters:
    Served at what temperature?
    In what order?

    Also:
    Why no women among the testers?

    At the end of the day, the result regarding “Schloßgold” is nothing less than a sensation, unless it was beer No.GE.10

    lg
    christoph

    Reply
  3. Pingback: Update on the 30 Escapes Project | Christian M. Schmid

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