BLUME: Tin Man brewer offers tips on judging the suds

Many years ago, a friend announced to me that all beer was the same, but some of it was colored darker so “they” could charge more.

As America’s beer culture has matured over the past couple of decades, this kind of thinking has blessedly diminished. Craft brews are discussed with the same passion as wine and tasting parties and beer-pairing dinners are becoming popular.

“I want people to learn about beer and appreciate it,” said Sean O’Rear, head brewer at Evansville’s new Tin Man Brewery. “Because you can. It’s cheap and available. There are thousands of styles, something to suit anybody. Our mission is to build and cultivate a knowledgeable, responsible and thriving craft brew culture in Evansville.”

Like any study, the appreciation of beer takes time and effort on the part of the learner. O’Rear agreed to give a lesson in how best to taste and experience beer.

“It’s all about the different parts of the beer,” he said. “There’s appearance, aroma, flavor, mouth feel and the overall impression. The overall category sums up the parts, whether they are in balance and work well together.”

He suggests tasting with a beer scoresheet from the Beer Judge Certification Program at, which will help guide you.

In the professional realm, individual beers are judged on whether they demonstrate the qualities expected from their style (for example, German pilsner, blond ale or oatmeal stout), and not on whether the judge likes it. Style guides detailing 77 beer styles in 25 categories are also offered at

Appearance: O’Rear explained first how to look at a beer’s appearance. “You pour the beer and look at the color of it,” he said. “Hold it up. Is it clear or cloudy? Look at the head (layer of foam on top). How fast does it dissipate? Is it thick or thin? What size are the bubbles? Swirl the beer around to build a head. If it has no head, it has very little smell. All the volatile compounds that make aromas are trapped in the bubbles, and as those pop you can smell them.”

Aroma: Next, smell the beer and analyze the aroma. “Smell slowly, like a dog. Really fill your nose with the aroma,” said O’Rear. “Get your nose inside the glass. The far side of the glass needs to touch the bridge of your nose.”

The aroma of a beer may contain malts or yeast, which would smell like bread, wheat, a roasty smell or caramel. Hops smell floral. There could be fruity aromas such as banana, vegetable aromas or nonfood aromas such as solvents, plastic or a medicinal smell.

Flavor and mouth feel: The next step, tasting, involves three distinct components: mouth feel and flavor, followed by the aftertaste.

Mouth feel is literally how the beer feels in your mouth. Sense the carbonation or how fizzy the beer is. It might feel flat, wet, hot from alcohol, heavy, thin, sticky or astringent.

Flavor may include malt, hops, sweetness, caramel, dried fruit, fresh fruit or infinite others. A particularly important component of beer’s flavor is its bitterness.

“The bitterness of a beer is important, and it is measured in international bitterness units, or IBUs,” said O’Rear. “It’s an empirical measurement of the amount of certain types of acids in the beer; the problem is that it does not tell you how bitter the beer actually tastes. Sweetness from sugar and roasted flavor from malts mask bitterness. If you have a beer that is sweet and roasty, you can have a high IBU but you might not taste much bitterness at all. A Pilsner might have fewer IBUs, but there isn’t anything there to mask it, so it will taste bitter.”

“When you taste beer, don’t sip,” said O’Rear. “Fill your mouth half-full with beer. Push it up with your tongue to feel the bubbles. When those bubbles burst, it pushes out the aromas. Swallow and push the air out your nose, slowly.”

Finally, there is the aftertaste, the sensation that lingers in your mouth after the beer has been swallowed. Does your tongue feel fuzzy or dry? It might be bitter, creamy or sticky.

Here’s a tip for novice beer tasters such as myself. When you pick up a beer, don’t feel bad if what you first get from the aroma or flavor is “um, beer?”

Try tasting a few beers side by side, and you’ll find subtle differences appear and can become quite overwhelming. Also, make sure the beer is at optimum tasting temperature, around 54 degrees. More volatile compounds are released as the beer warms.

After a few samples, a beer that tasted like “beer” on the first sip may suddenly seem saturated with cloves or taste like banana, tangerines, burned popcorn or, unfortunately, cabbage.

It’s best to taste with a few friends. Taste four to six beers and discuss how you feel about the main factors of appearance, aroma, flavor, mouth feel and the overall impression. You don’t need to use fancy words, just strive to differentiate as many qualities as you can. The more you do it, the more you’ll get out of it.

O’Rear and I tasted Paulaner Hefeweizen, Great Divide Belgian-Style Ale, Fat Tire Amber Ale, Summit Extra Pale Ale, Schafly Oatmeal Stout and Tin Man Dry Cell Irish Dry Stout, in that order.

I won’t reproduce all our notes, but the exercise was very enlightening, especially concerning the more subjective factors of aroma and flavor.

My first sniff and sip was of the Paulaner Hefeweizen, a pale wheat beer. It was very light, neither bitter nor hoppy, with a fruity, lightly spicy aroma and taste. I sensed apples or pears, while O’Rear got more banana.

Next came Great Divide Belgian-Style Ale. It was stronger and had more hops aroma and a bit of bitterness, but the biggest difference was the heat it produced after it was swallowed. As O’Rear pointed out, this is the mark of a higher alcohol content and sure enough, this beer contained 7.8 percent, which is high for a beer. The sugar added to Belgian golden ales to produce the extra alcohol leaves a slightly sticky mouth feel.

Next up was Fat Tire, normally a beer I like very much. After sampling the first two beers, however, it struck me with the aroma of cooked brussels sprouts and bacteria-ripened French cheese. O’Rear referred to it as “vegetal.” I still like Fat Tire, but I sense it differently.

Number four was Summit Extra Pale Ale. It is highly hopped toward the end of the brewing process, giving it a strong hops aroma without excessive bitterness. The aroma was very floral, even perfumy, and the high carbonation made this one very pleasant and refreshing.

At this point, I went back to the Paulaner Hefeweisen, to see how it might have changed since I had tried others. To my surprise, it tasted and smelled clearly of banana taffy.

Next came Schafly Oatmeal Stout, a black, thick and creamy beer that tasted roasted and chocolaty and to me had a bit of soy sauce flavor.

O’Rear emphasized that there are many styles of stout, all very different. To illustrate he brought us samples of Tin Man’s Dry Cell Irish Dry Stout, which approximates Guinness Stout. It could not have been more different from the oatmeal stout. It tasted of burned popcorn and coffee, but the mouth feel was much thinner, wetter on the tongue, refreshing and easy-drinking.

“Beer does not taste like ‘beer,’” O’Rear said. “Every single one is different. Once you get to looking at them and thinking about the appearance, aroma, flavor, mouth feel and overall impression, you see that. You don’t have to use fancy language, but you understand there’s a lot of something here, or not much going on there. Pretty soon you’ll be doing it every time you put beer in your mouth.”