Welcome to Sensory as Strategy
Sensory training is more than memorizing flavor descriptors.
Sensory as Strategy is a growing library of practical exercises, methods, tools, and sensory science designed to help you understand how you perceive beer-and how to develop those skills intentionally.
Whether you’re studying for a beer certification, training a team, looking for a fun homebrew club activity, judging beer, or simply trying to become a more thoughtful taster, you’ll find approachable ways to explore perception, build sensory vocabulary, practice evaluation, and create better sensory sessions.
Inside Sensory as Strategy
Sensory Exercises: Learn by doing
Sensory Methods: Explore evaluation techniques
Sensory Best Practices: Set up better, more reliable sessions
Sensory Bias: Discover what shapes your perception
Sensory Tools: Put sensory knowledge into practice.
Sensory Science: Understand what your brain and senses are actually doing
Unlock Sensory as Strategy.
Monthly Access — $10/month
Flexible access to all premium content. Ideal if you want to start small or stay flexible.
Annual Access — $99/year (Best Value)
Full year of access for less. Includes all updates, posts, and resources with maximum savings.
Sensory Tool: Julian Date Decoder
Found a Julian-style date code on your beer? Use this free Beer Julian Date Decoder to translate day-of-year codes into calendar dates and figure out how old your beer is.
Sensory Best Practices: Sourcing Beer
Buying beer for sensory practice takes a little more strategy than grabbing the right style off the shelf. Learn how to check beer freshness, where to find packaging dates, how to decipher common date codes, and how old is too old for sensory evaluation.
Sensory Exercise: Distinguishing Acetic from Lactic
One of the questions I get asked most often about palate training with flavor standards is how to distinguish acetic acid from lactic acid. This exercise demonstrates several methods and includes a DIY option.
Sensory Exercise: Vague to Vivid
The Vague to Vivid exercise is a fun and easy sensory exercise for a variety of group sizes and skill levels.
Sensory Tool: Sensory Session Calculator
Knowing how much beer to buy and how many cups you’ll need for a beer sensory exercise can be overwhelming. Here you will find calculators for beer volume, cups needed, and more. Great for group beer sensory and beer palate training at home!
Sensory Exercise: Beer Style Exploder
Tell the story of beer, piece by piece.
The beer style exploder is a sensory exercise designed to give you a deeper understanding of the flavors of individual beer ingredients and how those ingredients come together in the finished beer.
Sensory Best Practices: Clearing Stuffy Noses
Sensory advice for stuffy noses is probably not something a lot of us have thought about. That is, until we have a tasting exam, judging session, or other sensory exercise where we need our noses in tip-top shape. Whether from dryness or sickness, having a stuffy nose and/or clogged sinuses obviously affects your physical and mental ability to evaluate beer. In this post, I’ll talk about steps you can take to prevent or mitigate nasal stuffiness, as well as a couple of sinus-clearing exercises to try when our best efforts fail.