Glossary of Beer Flavors and Characteristics

I recently compiled a glossary of common beer flavors, description words, and characteristics. A sort of guide for anyone looking up a beer or reading a review and wondering: "Sounds great, but what does that mean?"

Obviously beer is incredibly complex and varied, so I definitely didn't cover everything. I also decided to leave out most off-flavors, as a list of those is more for diagnosing botched homebrew — not flavors you'll often encounter in commercial beer. Hopefully I accomplished my goal of cataloging 98% of the flavors you'll find in 98% of beers.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Critiques? The list is too long for a single post, so hopefully you'll humor me and click on through to my blog, here. I'd love to hear what you guys think, and I hope it's genuinely helpful to someone somewhere sometime.

I think you left some flavors out. What about "amazing" and "awesome" and "fantastic?"

The American Society of Brewing Chemists (ASBC) is way ahead of you...

http://www.beerflavorwheel.com/

Brewskii said:

The American Society of Brewing Chemists (ASBC) is way ahead of you...

http://www.beerflavorwheel.com/

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Fair enough, I've seen that before and it is very cool. I was going for a glossary explaining things in more detail than I think they are, though. But that is more comprehensive in other ways and a fantastic chart to have.

othellomcbane said:

Fair enough, I've seen that before and it is very cool. I was going for a glossary explaining things in more detail than I think they are, though. But that is more comprehensive in other ways and a fantastic chart to have.

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It's more of a guide to help tasters arrive at specifically what they are tasting by means of grouping similar notes and breaking them out into more and more detail. I've seen it too but never knew anyone to use it. Makes for cool tee shirts though!

You may want to also add dark roasted malts as a contributor to bitter flavors as well.

I like your hop guide,
Here's a link to an article on the most common beer descriptors on the beer sensory science blog,

http://beersensoryscience.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/overview-of-guest-beers/#more-98

PhelanKA7 said:

You may want to also add dark roasted malts as a contributor to bitter flavors as well.

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Good suggestion, thanks. I think I actually had that in the first draft and deleted in a moment of uncertainty.

Buna_Bere said:

I like your hop guide,
Here's a link to an article on the most common beer descriptors on the beer sensory science blog,

http://beersensoryscience.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/overview-of-guest-beers/#more-98

Click to expand...

That's a great article, much more scientific than my glossary!