Staling in Two Canned Lager Beers Stored at Different Temperatures - Sensory Analyses and Consumer Ranking

Abstract

Two canned lagers, lager A (5% abv with late hop character) and lager B (4% abv) stored for 0, 7, 14, 21 and 28 days at 4, 12, 30 and 37°C were scored by trained sensory assessors (10) for liking and stale and related attributes of : cabbagy, cardboard, catty, grainy, honey, leathery, metallic, musty, skunky, and sour. Principal component analysis explained 80% data variance in 3 significant (p < 0.05) and 75% in 4 significant factors for A and B, respectively. In both lagers, aging correlated significantly with stale, cabbagy and musty and in A with metallic and sour and in B with catty and skunky. Partial least squares regression (PLS1) models showed good explanations: stale had regression coefficients of 0.88 (calibration) and 0.84 (validation) for A, and 0.96 and 0.91 respectively, for B; for liking 0.92 and 0.90 for A and 0.96 and 0.93 for B. For both lagers, liking was positively correlated with honey and grainy, and inversely with staling attributes. Lagers from 30°C were ranked for liking by 40 consumers against fresh as a hidden reference. Significant (p = 0.05) ranking of A, but not B, correlated with that of trained assessors.

Relationship of Sensory Staleness in Two Lagers to Headspace Concentrations oftrans-2-Nonenal and Three Staling Aldehydes

“…Although the concentration of the aldehydes increased in a direct relationship with time and also storage temperature in lager A, this was not observed with lager B. In the sensory data from this study 15 , the score for sensory stale character for B showed a second minimum. This suggested that differences between the beers related to style, original gravity, ethanol content, composition and Fig.…”

“…In the sensory data from this study 15 , the score for sensory stale character for B showed a second minimum. This suggested that differences between the beers related to style, original gravity, ethanol content, composition and Fig.…”

“…Staling characters in lagers remain unclear -firstly in relation to canned beer shelf-life and secondly as to whether assessors provide information relevant to consumer perceptions. The latter is discussed for these lagers elsewhere 15 .…”

“…Sensory data was taken from experimental work reported elsewhere 15 using assessors (10) trained with 9-month old lagers to understand stale characters. Aliquots (25 mL) were scored for intensity of stale overall character 15 and data was averaged after two-way ANOVA to check assessor performance.…”

“…Aliquots (25 mL) were scored for intensity of stale overall character 15 and data was averaged after two-way ANOVA to check assessor performance.…”