A panel of amateur beer tasters at Washington State University showcased that not all flavours found in craft beer comes from the infamous hops ingredient. They discovered that malt barley can also have a variety of flavours.

100 craft beer drinkers were brought in to taste the so-called SMaSH beer made of barley malt and only a single hop. All beers contained the same hop variety,Tahoma, but each had malt from a different barley genotype or genetic makeup. What they discovered is even untrained testers could taste and identify the difference between all the strains.

“We found that untrained panelists could distinguish between barley breeding strains of beer,” said a PhD student at Washington State University. “They did a good job of choosing the attributes that reveal the characteristic profile of each beer.”

The Commission generally preferred four barley breeding lines developed at WSU over controls, known as Copeland, a high-quality malt barley widely cultivated in Washington State. Panelists were able to easily identify the flavor profile of the beer. For example, beers with a “fruity and sweet aroma” flavor and a “citrus” profile beer made from barley called palmer, a variety recently released by WSU for commercial use.

Although the untrained panel was able to distinguish between flavors and brewed beer, they were not experts at tasting the difference between “hot steep” samples made by combining boiling water and barley malt before filtration. Creating a sweet tasting liquid, this process is similar to what the brewer made before adding yeast to make alcohol.

Click here for the full testing results. 

Photo courtesy of Washington State University