Sensory Exercise: Five Basic Tastes for Beer Evaluation

The five basic tastes exercise is designed to give participants a deeper understanding of their sense of taste and how those senses can be used in sensory evaluation. Learning more about our sense of taste gives us additional tools in our sensory evaluation toolbox.

When we use sensory exercises to develop our palates, particularly by building our aroma recognition and descriptive vocabulary, our sense of smell takes center stage. Arguably, it is the most complex and nuanced component of beer - and most consumables, for that matter. I have to admit, it was only a couple of years ago that I started to realize how helpful and important it is to pay attention to other parts of my palate, specifically my sense of taste and my trigeminal sense, both of which contribute to the concept of mouthfeel.