The Jen Blur Method is a great beer sensory exercise that not only builds your beer style discrimination skills but also helps you become a more confident blind beer taster. The Jen Blur Method can be adapted to varying skill levels, from those looking to train their palates for beer tasting to those preparing for beer exams such as the Cicerone or BJCP tasting exams.

The jelly bean test is a quick and simple sensory exercise designed to demonstrate the difference between orthonasal and retronasal olfaction. Understanding how orthonasal and retronasal olfaction are different is a foundational key to becoming a better beer taster.

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.

Flavor standards are a key element in learning to taste beer and improving your beer sensory skills, particularly for identifying off-flavors. However, not all flavor standards are created equal when preparing them. Understanding how to prepare different flavor standards properly will ensure that you are achieving the correct concentration.

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.