​​​Tables & Identification Guides​​​​​

Tables for Extract Determinations in Malt and Cereals

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Tables Related to Determinations on Wort, Beer, and Brewing Sugars and Syrups

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Beer Inclusions: Common Causes of Elevated Turbidity

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Common Brewery-Related Microorganisms

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Flavor Standard Spiking Calculator

The ASBC Flavor Spiking Calculator was designed to help a brewery’s sensory scientist or lab technician find the appropriate quantities of food-grade flavor compounds to add to base beer for the purpose of training taste panelists to recognize a wide variety of flavors found in beer. By combining the latest beer flavor threshold values from the scientific literature and the information management capabilities of Microsoft Excel, this calculator cuts out much of the guesswork, math, and literature searching that is required to successfully operate a flavor training regimen. With a catalog of nearly 40 food-grade flavors available from chemical supply companies, this calculator is a powerful yet simple tool for producing consistent and accurate flavor training standards. Procedures for creating stock solutions, common flavor descriptors, origins of flavors, and basic information on the shelf-life of the standards are also displayed dynamically.

To operate the calculator:

1. Choose the flavor you wish to create a standard for by selecting the compound name in the drop-down list.
2. Choose the flavor intensity you’d like in the standard (in multiples of the compound’s threshold).
3. Enter the volume of beer you would like to add the standard to (in milliliters).
4. The volume of that flavor’s stock solution that needs to be added to the beer is now shown in microliters.
   

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Beer Flavor Database

This database is the culmination of countless hours of research and comprises a total of 589 chemical names. The overall purpose of this project was to create a flavor database for the brewing industry to use for sensory science and sensory labs. For example, if there is a strong aroma or flavor in beer, a search can be completed to find the chemical names responsible for the aroma. Sensory labs can use the database to compare panel thresholds to cited values or to create a vocabulary of commonly used flavor descriptors in beer.

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Hop Flavor Database

This database is the culmination of countless hours of research and comprises a total of 583 chemical names. The overall purpose of this project was to create a flavor database for the brewing industry to use for sensory science and sensory labs. For example, if there is a strong aroma or flavor in beer, a search can be completed to find the molecule responsible for the aroma. Sensory labs can use the database to compare panel thresholds to cited values or to create a vocabulary of commonly used flavor descriptors in beer.

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Guideline for Growing Your Quality Laboratory

This document is a guideline for growing your quality control laboratory based on instrumentation considerations. Guidelines for purchasing equipment are based on volumes of barrels produced per year and list ASBC methods that call for specific instrumentation and equipment.

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Control Charting Guidelines for Quality Control

A typical question asked by brewers or other brewery personnel utilizing analytical laboratory data is, “how do I know that these results are accurate”? This question will most commonly be asked when the product or process results are out-of-specification. There are a number of potentially serious consequences for out of specification results including: (1) the need to retrieve product from the market, (2) disposing of product, and (3) potential fines for not meeting regulatory requirements. When asked to prove that the analytical data are correct, how do you respond? There are a number of approaches to answer this question, but one statistical tool that can be utilized for internal quality control is control charting. A control chart is simply composed of individual or mean data plotted over time. A set of rules is applied to the data, and any result falling outside of the rules suggests that there is an issue with the measurement system. This documentation on control charting laboratory data will provide an introduction to the topic. Options for more in-depth publications are listed in the reference section.

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Maintaining a Beverage Library Best Practice

A beverage library is a collection of packaged samples from each production run produced at a brewery. Building and organizing a library of packaged beverages is a best practice for every brewery's quality program, allowing for the easy retrieval and analysis of past batches to address potential quality concerns.

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Recommended Reading

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