FOOD PAIRING
01
Tasting beer properly isn’t about memorising technical vocabulary; it’s about slowing down. Follow four simple steps: look at the beer’s colour and clarity, smell it before your first sip, let it sit briefly on your palate rather than swallowing straight away, and pay attention to what lingers afterward. Describing what you taste in concrete terms works better than reaching for vague words.
Tasting beer properly has nothing to do with swirling a glass theatrically or rattling off tasting notes that sound like they belong on a wine label. It just means paying attention, noticing what’s actually in front of you rather than knocking it back on autopilot. Anyone can do this, whether they’re on their first pint or their five-hundredth.
A structured approach makes the whole process easier, and it comes down to four steps.
Look first. Hold the glass up to the light and check the colour and clarity. A pale, almost see-through gold points to one style of beer; a hazy, orange-tinged pour points to something else entirely; a deep brown or near-black glass tells its own story before you’ve even lifted it to your nose.
Smell before you sip. Aroma carries most of what you’ll register as flavour, so give the beer a proper smell before the first mouthful. This is where you’ll pick up hints of citrus, fresh bread, roasted coffee or ripe stone fruit, long before your tongue gets involved.
Taste, and let it sit. Rather than swallowing straight away, let the beer rest on your palate for a second or two. This is where the actual flavour reveals itself, sweetness up front, bitterness creeping in afterward, or fruit notes that only show up once the beer has warmed slightly in your mouth.
Consider the finish. What lingers after you swallow? A dry, bitter edge that clings to the back of your throat? A gentle sweetness that fades quickly? The finish often tells you more about a beer’s character than the first sip does.
Try walking through these four steps next time you’re working through a flight of draft beer. The differences between pours become much easier to spot when you’re tasting side by side.
Here’s the part most people skip: putting your impressions into words. And this is where the advice from wine tasting doesn’t quite translate. Words like “complex” or “balanced” sound knowledgeable, but they don’t actually tell you, or anyone else, anything useful. What’s complex about it? Balanced against what?
Concrete, specific terms do far more work. Grapefruit. Toast. Caramel. Fresh-cut grass. Burnt sugar. These are things you can actually picture, smell and taste, which makes them more useful in the moment and easier to remember later. If you’re trying to figure out why you liked (or didn’t like) a particular beer, “caramel and toffee, mild banana finish” tells you far more than “well-balanced” ever could.
The easiest way to build this habit is to start with something familiar. Pick a beer you already know well, one you’ve had dozens of times without really thinking about it, and run it through the four steps above. Because you already know what you expect, you’ll notice more easily when something concrete jumps out: a hop character you’d never clocked, a maltiness you’d taken for granted.
Once that feels natural, take the same approach to something new. The next time you’re at this craft beer bar, ask what’s currently pouring, pick something you haven’t tried, and run through look, smell, taste and finish. Chances are the team at Craft Beer by Ki-setsu will have a recommendation ready if you mention what you usually enjoy.
