Instrumental Evaluation of the Mouthfeel of Beer and Correlation With Sensory Evaluation

Physical and chemical measurements were made on a set of 30 beers which had previously been used to characterize the sensory attributes of the mouthfeel of beer using descriptive analysis techniques; these measurements were then correlated with the sensory attributes. By principal component analysis of the physical and chemical data it was found that the first principal component (PC) was a function of dissolved substances in the beer and the second PC was a function of degree of fermentation. When principal component analysis was performed on the combined sensory and instrumental data, the 30 beers displayed clustering in the PC space based on beer type.