PREDICTING THE ORGANOLEPTIC QUALITY OF SOME ROMANIAN BEERS FROM PHYSICAL-CHEMICAL DATA USING MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS

Abstract

Two categories of pale lager beer produced in Romania, of which twelve samples are common pale lager beer type and eight samples are superior pale lager beer type were studied to evaluate their quality through physical-chemical (apparent extract, original extract, alcohol concentration, pH, turbidity, viscosity, colour, acidity, bitterness value) and sensorial (appearance, colour, odour, taste, gas release, foam stability) characteristics. Beer characteristics measurements were examined by multivariate data analysis, using principal component analysis (PCA). The analysis of the principal components sheds light on the correlations between variables as well as on differences between the samples analyzed. The values of correlation coefficients indicate important direct statistical relations between the variables taste and alcohol concentration for all the 20 samples of beer analyzed. For the samples belonging to the category of common pale lager beer type, the values of correlation coefficients show that there are reverse statistical connections between the bitterness value and characteristics used in the sensorial analysis (p ³ 0.05). For this type of beer, Skol was mostly appreciated, while for the superior pale lager beer category Ursus Premium was considered the best, both types of beer being regarded as very good quality beers according to the sensorial evaluation methodology described by SR 13355-1:1997.