UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Although most beer consumers can distinguish between different bitter tastes in beer, this does not appear to influence which beer they like. It seems they just like beer, regardless of the source of the bitterness.
That is the conclusion of Penn State sensory researchers who conducted multiple studies with more than 150 self-identified beer drinkers to see if they could differentiate bitterants in beer. But the question of whether humans can discriminate between types of bitterness remains controversial, according to researcher John Hayes, associate professor of food science.
“Given that countless craft breweries around the country have been very successful in selling a near-endless variety of India pale ales — better known as IPAs — we wanted to move past testing bitter chemicals in water to see if consumers could differentiate different bitters in a real food such as beer,” he said.
To determine beer drinkers’ ability to distinguish between bitter chemicals, study participants in blind taste tests were given commercially available nonalcoholic beer spiked with hop extract Isolone, quinine — the ingredient that makes tonic water bitter — and sucrose octaacetate, a food additive so bitter it has been used as a nail-biting and thumb-sucking deterrent.
Participants, about half men and half women, most in their 30s, took part in three experiments. In the first, researchers asked subjects to rate the amount of bitterness and other beer flavor attributes in samples using an intensity scale, to ensure the beer samples were equally bitter.