Instrumental measurement of beer taste attributes using an electronic tongue

The present study deals with the evaluation of the electronic tongue multisensor system as an analytical tool for the rapid assessment of taste and flavour of beer. Fifty samples of Belgian and Dutch beers of different types (lager beers, ales, wheat beers, etc.), which were characterized with respect to the sensory properties, were measured using the electronic tongue (ET) based on potentiometric chemical sensors developed in Laboratory of Chemical Sensors of St. Petersburg University. The analysis of the sensory data and the calculation of the compromise average scores was made using STATIS. The beer samples were discriminated using both sensory panel and ET data based on PCA, and both data sets were compared using Canonical Correlation Analysis. The ET data were related to the sensory beer attributes using Partial Least Square regression for each attribute separately. Validation was done based on a test set comprising one-third of all samples. The ET was capable of predicting with good precision 20 sensory attributes of beer including such as bitter, sweet, sour, fruity, caramel, artificial, burnt, intensity and body.