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019 Lindsay Barr : Sensory Scientist From Sample Ox
605 Plays4 years ago
Lindsay is a sensory scientist and a founding partner of Sample Ox and Draught Lab. We talk about the software and about the art/science and geekery of sensory evaluation in general.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction and Sponsorship
00:00:00
Speaker
How's it going chasers? I hope you're having a kick-ass week number 19 of the chase the craft podcast is brought to you by Gladfield's malt awesome craft malt made right here in New Zealand If you haven't tried it yet, I would thoroughly suggest you give it a go
00:00:15
Speaker
It is also brought to you by Adventures in Home Brewing, an awesome, awesome platform to get all your wine making, beer making and spirit making needs as well. In America, it's a great online shop that you can buy from if you go to homebrewing.org slash CTC, it'll take you to the specials page. And the great thing is that they give me a kickback for that, which helps support the podcast and it doesn't cost you anything.
00:00:44
Speaker
So check them out at homebrewing.org slash CTC. And last but definitely, definitely not least, the podcast is brought to you by the Patreons. Thank you so much, Patreons. I literally can't do this stuff without you. And yes, the Q&A session from this podcast with Lindsay is already over on the on the Patreon platform.
Lindsay's Background in Sensory Science
00:01:06
Speaker
My guest today is Lindsay from Sample Ox. I'm excited about this one guys. Lindsay is a sensory scientist based in California and she helps run a company that creates software to help people deal with the sensory side of the business. They've mostly been in beer and she's got some amazing connections and pedigree within that industry that you'll find out soon enough. People like Dr. Charles Banforth, New Belgium Brewery,
00:01:36
Speaker
If you're into whiskey and you don't know beer, that may not mean anything to you, but for those of you that do know beer, that's saying something. Anyway, these guys are moving out into other products and whiskey spirits is one of those things. We get to talk all about the apps, how they help consumers, how they help owners or managers or brand ambassadors, people that are developing products within the industry and how that relates between
00:02:01
Speaker
you know, the consumer and the business.
Application of Sensory Science in Business
00:02:04
Speaker
And also we just get to talk about some sensory geekery that'll apply to you at home or if you're developing your own products for commercial needs. Without further ado, Lindsay from Sample Ox. And we're live, guys. Lindsay from Sample Ox. Thank you so much for doing this. And I apologize for the scheduling.
00:02:29
Speaker
errors, but we hear now. It's awesome to talk to you. I think that before we get stuck in, we should probably explain to people, uh, the, the niche, the profession that you're in on a sort of more general scale rather than a job description. And then how you got here.
00:02:48
Speaker
and what you're doing now. Do you want to fill us in? Sounds good. Yeah. So I am a sensory scientist. My background of getting to the sensory science world.
00:03:00
Speaker
was a little roundabout, but I don't know that any sensory scientist just falls into sensory science. I think it's mostly a passion science. I think we all nerd out about flavor. But my path was I studied biochemistry and molecular biology back in the day, and I worked in a number of labs. And if anybody's done nitty gritty biochemistry lab work, you'll know that it's isolating and not that
00:03:26
Speaker
fun after a little while. And so I decided to kind of look for something that was a little bit more engaging with human beings and also scientific as well. So then I went to UC Davis to study fermentation. So I have my master's degree, yeah, in food science and technology.
00:03:45
Speaker
I studied beer and brewing for the most part. I worked with Dr. Charlie Bamforth there. Oh, dropping the big names now. Dropping the Bamforth name. Yeah, I worked with him for a few years. We had a lot of
Sample Ox and Draft Lab Overview
00:03:59
Speaker
fun. I studied gluten-free beer, did publish some work on that back in the day before it was much of a thing. That's where I fell in love with sensory science.
00:04:10
Speaker
I ended up just taking a whole bunch of sensory classes, mostly offered through the viticulture and enology world. But I just loved the stats. I loved the science. And so I just took all those classes. So anyway, I ended up getting my degree from UC Davis. And then I started working for New Belgium Brewing Company.
00:04:30
Speaker
where I was there for almost 10 years. And I was in the sensory world, so I managed the sensory QC and R&D consumer research kind of section of that facility. So that was where I kind of spent the last 10 years. And draft lab slash sample ox. Sample ox is our new consumer research app, but it's under the draft lab.
00:04:58
Speaker
company. So Draft Lab was started about five years ago now. It was started in 2016, so a little under five years ago. And it was just collaboration between sensory scientists and like really solid process engineering folks who are very good developers and very good thinkers.
00:05:24
Speaker
And so we just kind of got together and decided to kind of make a process out of sensory analysis for all sorts of food and beverages. So now we work primarily with fermented products, but we also have a whole bunch of customers outside of that as well. So we work in chocolate, whiskey, beer,
00:05:44
Speaker
malt, hops, dairy. Anything that can be consumed and anything that is like touch, felt, viewed, anything that purchases are made based on your sensory experience can be applicable for sample ox or for draft lab. That's what we've been up to and that's how I got here.
00:06:10
Speaker
That's super cool, man. I didn't know half of that background stuff. And funnily enough, you've got a connection to literally the university where my wife is like this very second working here in New Zealand, which is kind of bizarre. What's the story there? Yeah, I'm connected to Dr. Joanne Hort. She is
00:06:30
Speaker
sensory scientist, a very good sensory scientist. So, and she should definitely check out some of her work. She does some really interesting research on emotion and purchase decisions. That's kind of what she's been working on recently. So I've kind of been following her for a little while. But she worked in the craft brewing world or in the brewing world for a while. So we knew each other through the American Society of Brewing Chemists.
00:06:55
Speaker
And that's an organization that I've been a part of for a while. I was the sensory subcommittee chair there for a little while. So we knew each other through there, and she's doing some really interesting flavor research in your backyard. So if you have the chance to go get hooked up to electrodes and be fed different flavors, I would totally do it. I would totally do it. That sounds terrifyingly awesome. All in one go.
00:07:24
Speaker
uh it my wife works at a uh in an animal behavior lab there and uh getting hooked up to electrodes are a very different experience i'm sure yeah yeah but yeah i'd be happy to get hooked up to a machine and then feed different things that sounds like great fun um i am constantly surprised by the caliber of work that's coming out of little old new zealand and then even
00:07:51
Speaker
you know, smaller than that, little old Palmerston North is by far a metropolis. So it's exciting for me to have a connection with, you know, someone like you on the other side of the planet. It's pretty cool. Let's get back to the two apps. So you mentioned you've got draft labs and sample ox. And spoiler alert, guys, we're actually going to do a little test drive of one of these apps today.
00:08:15
Speaker
And spoiler, spoiler alert, all of you at home get to play along, not today, obviously, because we're recording this now and sending it
Consumer Engagement and Feedback
00:08:25
Speaker
out. But we are going to be doing a live stream not long from now when you guys get to play with us. But before we get into that and tell everyone what's going on, do you want to describe the difference between the two apps? Because we've primarily, after discussing this a little bit, focused on sample lock.
00:08:43
Speaker
discuss draft labs and the difference between the two and where they might be used. Yeah, sure. So draft lab was kind of our first baby.
00:08:51
Speaker
And what DraftLab is really intended for is for businesses, for small businesses that are trying to use flavor information as a means for making everyday product and process decisions. So using that tasting data to kind of figure out what malt you're going to buy, what kind of mash parameters you're going to be utilizing, that kind of thing.
00:09:14
Speaker
and also to ensure quality and consistency. So it's primarily a tool used for professionals that helps them make product decisions, process decisions, also research development decisions as well. What are you going to make? So those are the bullet points of Graph Lab. And Samplox kind of helps feed into everything that happens before
00:09:39
Speaker
ensuring quality and consistency, which is research and development and just getting consumer insights. So consumer information is incredibly important, just understanding what your consumers like, why they like it so that you can build your target flavor specifications
00:09:58
Speaker
specific towards those that you're trying to sell your products toward, too. And so Sampleox is really intended on doing consumer research, but also giving companies the ability to engage their consumers in a more meaningful way. I think right now, a lot of us really want to be a part of the brands that we enjoy.
00:10:20
Speaker
And we want to be a part of the dialogue and and we can be like technology will allow consumers to do that. I know that I'm always wanting to give feedback to my favorite products to either
00:10:34
Speaker
you congratulate them for doing a great job or make them better or utilize them a little bit differently. And so a lot of consumers are enthusiastic about the products that they consume, especially in the fermentation world. So especially in the whiskey beer world, these products already kind of have very, you know, zealots that are.
00:10:55
Speaker
I guess, yeah, yeah. So, so samplox is also intended to be a way that companies can engage with their consumers and kind of have a conversation as well, while getting that really important consumer feedback. So it's fun to use, we'll kind of show everybody today, like generally what it looks like. There's a little bit of competition involved. And I mean, ultimately, it builds community around the products
00:11:24
Speaker
that you're enjoying and the platform kind of helps to bring people together even when they're at home, for example. Yeah, that's awesome. Okay, so the Draft Lab is about kind of creating a product and then creating consistency within that product. So you can try a different match bill or adding a different specialty grain or a different match temperature, one at a time, of course, and then do a sensory evaluation on it
00:11:52
Speaker
and it compiles that data and shows you, I guess, where impactful changes are coming from and where positive or negative, whether the leader is being pushed on the good side or the bad side, so you can make a decision on what you want to create and then keep creating the same thing. Sample Ox brings the customer into that process that it lets the consumer be part of the sensory team. It lets them get closer to the companies they love, but then from
00:12:22
Speaker
company's point of view, they're getting invaluable data that is all curated, I guess, in one sort of specific way. It's not, I mean, cause thinking about it as a distillery, right? You could jump, you could just get on the internet and start searching, but every time you find someone, they're going to do it in a different way. They're going to, you know, it's going to be written in your own language. It's not going to be concise. It's not going to be something you can throw into a spreadsheet very easily. That's for sure.
00:12:50
Speaker
Right. Yeah. So we really wanted the platform to be, you know, useful for the distillery or for the brewery, whoever. And so rather than just kind of giving a blank comment box where people can just type whatever, we use a base lexicon that is, you know, consumer friendly, but also like robust and has a lot of flavor terms in there for people to be able to select attributes that will be aggregated and can be utilized to help
00:13:20
Speaker
Distillers create brands that are specific towards what consumers like. And I have to say, being on the R&D side back at New Belgium, that data is, is invaluable. It's really invaluable. And it's, it's a little harder to get. So very few companies are doing regular consumer research.
00:13:40
Speaker
So sample logs, what we're trying to do is lower that barrier to entry to capturing that really important consumer feedback so that it can be just running throughout your development process. And for you consumers out there, it really is very important information. So when you're giving feedback to companies, we listen. Companies definitely listen. So it's definitely, we know that
00:14:10
Speaker
we're hoping that this information is able to kind of like shape the products that we end up tasting henceforth. So we can make products specific towards our flavor preferences. That's kind of the idea. The whole idea of this, the whole concept of it is exciting to me because a lot of these types of companies
00:14:37
Speaker
I guess fermentation in general, wine, beer, spirits, all of them. They kind of used to be a build it and they will come sort of approach. It's like I'm the master distiller and this is my art that I am bringing to the world and people will love it. And it just seems like the entire industry is moving away from that so quickly. And people that don't want to get on board with that idea of listening to consumers,
00:15:04
Speaker
literally getting the consumers to buy into your brand and contribute to the brand and become brand ambassadors and create those cult followings and interaction between the two. I feel like people that aren't getting on board with that or people that don't want to move towards that or heaven forbid if someone started a distillery now and didn't buy into that. I don't know, man. Good luck to you. Right. I think we underestimate the
00:15:32
Speaker
the importance of repeat customers. There's, there's definitely an ROI with getting consumers integrated into your brand's conversation. And, you know, there's, having those repeat customers, those are the ones that are kind of moving the needle for a lot of businesses. And the, the piece of the pie now in the distilling world and in the beer world is becoming smaller and smaller.
00:15:58
Speaker
So the competition is pretty major, and I think that that's why a lot more companies are starting to look more towards focusing a little bit more attention and resources to engaging consumers and to really directly marketing and developing towards
00:16:18
Speaker
what their consumers are liking. And big companies have already figured this out. Like major companies have already figured this out. And that's why they've been around for a very long time and are dominant. And what craft companies need to do is kind of follow suit and use some of those same techniques of engaging consumers and utilizing that input to build their products. Otherwise, our share of the pie is going to become smaller and smaller.
00:16:47
Speaker
So, I mean, we fairly solidly got off sensory and into marketing there, but I think it's a really good point because people listening to this podcast, there's going to be a split between them, right? There's going to be, you know, most people that listen to my stuff are making their own products and if not, they love the beverage so much. They just want to know everything about it so they can enjoy it more. But then there's kind of a split between those and the people that are dreaming of starting their own company or have just started their own company or are trying to get in the door at a company that they already love.
00:17:17
Speaker
And I caution you people, don't underestimate the power of tools like this as a marketing tool, as opposed to just the sensory tool. Because like you were just saying, one of the biggest hurdles, one of the biggest things you can do in any form of marketing is to get interaction and engagement. So not just a billboard that you drive past and you see, and then it went to social media. So now it's a photo that they can actually comment on and share.
00:17:46
Speaker
And now that's kind of disappeared into, it's almost not enough. You want people to actually engage deeper. So if you can, let's put this into context, one like on Instagram. I mean, that took the person all of 0.5 seconds to hit like and keep scrolling and not care. But if you can get someone to download the app and spend 15 minutes, like specifically interacting with your whiskey and specifically thinking about exactly what's there,
00:18:13
Speaker
What do you think they're going to do the next day? They're going to go and talk to other people and tell other people this was kind of cool. Why don't you go do it? And this is where your kind of competition gamification sort of thing I'm sure has to play into to why you built that into the app, right? Because it's fun and it's going to create that interaction. Yeah, we really just wanted to create a platform for our users to engage with their consumers while getting
00:18:41
Speaker
really important information. And that's, I hate to use the cliche, but that's becoming more important than ever. It's becoming a lot harder for us to kind of have those one-on-one connections with our consumers. There used to be like the Tasting Room engagement that you could have on a daily basis, and those kind of opportunities have become fewer and fewer.
00:19:05
Speaker
in recent days. And it's, it's just becoming a little bit harder to kind of have that face-to-face interaction. So we wanted to create something that kind of allowed people to create an experience around tasting. And luckily, sensory is super fun.
00:19:20
Speaker
and tasting is a good time and we're not making cat food. I was in pet food up until COVID hit and then they had to let me go.
00:19:43
Speaker
If anything, I would say it is definitely more competitive than alcohol in a lot of ways, I think. It's a crazy industry. But the idea did go in the back of my head, oh, this could actually be kind of interesting to use software like that for anything. Because even when it's a product where you can't ask the cat what
00:20:05
Speaker
it thinks. Are you tasting tuna or salmon Fluffy? That doesn't quite work. But the funny thing is, I mean, a lot of the customers, especially all through Asia, the first thing they'll do is they'll open a bag and they'll eat some themselves and then decide whether or not their cat's going to like it. So yeah,
00:20:22
Speaker
But yeah, I can see how this app would work everywhere. Sorry. Anyway, I've interrupted you. But yeah, it's true that it's a fun product. Like, whiskey is a fun product anyway. So if you can just kind of create a little bit more of an experience around it, it's really not too terribly difficult to get consumers to engage with your product.
00:20:47
Speaker
So, but yeah, flavor, we all experience flavor. We all see things, smell things, taste things, feel things. And so I think we all have something that's important and valid to share. And that's, and companies generally understand that. I think that there, there is a pretty strong understanding that consumers are educated. Like they really do know what they're talking about. And we, in my experience, I've been able to get repeatable and very robust data from
00:21:17
Speaker
from consumers. And so it's, it's just a matter of using what we're already doing to making purchase decisions, and then kind of applying that in a way that's, that's a little bit more useful and, and engaging. And yeah, the gamification piece was certainly like alongside of just trying to incentivize, because a lot of the, a lot of the question comes up, the first question that comes up is like, How do you get people to do this? Like, well, first of all, it's really fun.
00:21:45
Speaker
And it's really engaging. It's interesting. And you can create an experience around it. So if you do need to incentivize it, it's possible to use the platform to be able to do that, rather than just paying consumers. Yeah, totally. I am really looking forward to getting into the nitty-gritty of the science that goes in behind the stuff with you. But I feel like first, should we pull up the app and show people? Stop teasing everyone and show how it actually works. Yeah.
00:22:14
Speaker
Yeah. While Lindsay's pulling that up, guys, here's the plan. I think this is cool. And I think it's a cool way for not only companies to interact with consumers, but it's a cool way for someone like me who's sitting down here in the center of the planet to be able to interact with people just like you who are all over the planet as well. And God knows where you are. And especially right now when we can't travel and so on and so forth.
00:22:38
Speaker
It's kind of nice to find a way to bring everyone together. So Lindsay has very, very graciously helped us set up a little platform. And what we're going to do is we have four whiskeys that we're going to put into the app, and all of us can taste it together on the live stream. Or if you can't make the live stream, we'll leave it open for a little bit longer, and then we'll do a wrap up afterwards. We'll get into more of the specifics of how that's going to work after you've seen the app, because I think that'll make things
00:23:07
Speaker
make a little bit more sense. For those of you that are out there listening to this on the podcast, I would suggest jumping over onto YouTube. Check the YouTube channel out because Lindsay's going to be sharing a screen. You'll be able to see exactly what's going on. Actually, what I might do is I'll put the whole podcast out as a video, but then I'll also cut just this little part of the app out and put that up so you don't have to go sifting through it.
00:23:33
Speaker
I mean, we've got whiskey and we've got time, so I don't know how long this is going to be. Anyway, when you're ready, Lindsay, fire away. All right, so I'll show you what the app looks like. Let's see, on the screen. All right, you should be able to see it now. All right, so go ahead and just download sample locks from Google Play or the Apple Store.
00:23:59
Speaker
it's available where all apps can be found. And Chase the Craft is up here on the front page. But if you wanted to, I know, look how fancy you guys are. You can also search as well with this little search function, just whatever tasting you're looking to engage with. So then you'll just open up the Chase the Craft event, and you'll see we're going to taste
00:24:21
Speaker
one product today together. When we do this for the live stream, we'll have three different products. And yeah, there it is. I'm not drinking that, but I am drinking a whiskey. So we'll... This is the apology that I made at the beginning of the podcast, guys. Things have been kind of hectic for me. And
00:24:42
Speaker
We didn't, well, we, I didn't organize this in time. Uh, so there was a mad rush to go and get something that we could both taste. And the only, the only common thing that we could find together was Amstel light. And I feel like that's an insult to everyone involved. And so, so what's going to happen is the professional
00:25:06
Speaker
or the experts are going to put in verified attributes on the back end, and then you are going to do your evaluation. Your evaluation is going to be compared to their evaluation, and you will get points based on your proximity to their evaluation. And we'll show you what that leaderboard and such looks like. And so I'm going to open up
00:25:28
Speaker
Yeah, just to interrupt really quickly shout out to Jared hints that sorry, dude What we've done is poach some stuff off your website. So normally in this situation is you know You'd have an expert taster or the manufacturer of the products put those verified details and just because this is for You know demonstration purposes we've done that for Jared. Thank you. And sorry, Jared Jared when we get to the live stream We've got a different plan for that. So you can check that out in the bit. Anyway, sorry Lindsay carry on. I just want to clarify
00:26:01
Speaker
It was a very robust flavor description, so thank you for that. The two things that are important is how much you like it and what are the attributes that are in it. The first thing you're going to see is this Likert scale, and you'll be able to say how much you like it, and of course, we like it extremely. This is one of my favorite whiskeys, it's delicious. Then you'll be able to assess the color and the clarity,
00:26:28
Speaker
and all of the different aromas. So this is the common terminology in the whiskey world from the whiskey flavor map. And you can select the attributes that are in the sample. And this is both ortho and retro nasal olfaction. We can talk about that a little bit more, but this is just what are the attributes that you're tasting in the sample.
00:26:52
Speaker
I'm just going to select a few here just to kind of demonstrate what it looks like. Well, while Lindsay's doing that, guys, I'm actually going to I've got the app pulled up on my phone too. So I'm going to go through and evaluate this whiskey as we go. Yes, let's definitely talk about the different
00:27:11
Speaker
how do you put it, the different ways that your brain can get data from something like this and why the app set up how it is. But we'll get through this example and then maybe that's something we can dive into deep afterwards. Well, Lindsay's talking through it. I'm going to go through and assess this whiskey. Yeah, you're actually going to assess it. I'm just saying random things. We're going to see if Jesse is better than my random evaluation, which is going to be fun to see if he can do better than my random evaluation.
00:27:41
Speaker
All right, then I'm going to say sweetness and sourness. I'm just seeing how much, how much sweetness and sourness and bitterness. The body, alcohol, like that alcohol, how burn, that heat, somewhere like there. How mouthwatering is it? So how much water does your mouth produce when you are drinking it? And then the astringency, so how much water gets taken away from your mouth?
00:28:05
Speaker
And then the overall spice. So I'm going to go ahead and hit this little check mark to finish. And I'm going to say, yeah, I'm going to finish my rating. I'm going to submit that. And then once Jesse's done, I can show you guys our results and check out the leaderboard. So you'll get like a little grayed out check mark to indicate that you're done with that sample.
00:28:29
Speaker
And now I will show you the results when he's done. We don't need to do it completely, but let me get a few things in here just to show what it's going to work out is. Some of that, definitely.
00:28:51
Speaker
I got to say, guys, this is organized extremely intuitively. I mean, we've talked about this with the Molt CoLab, and this is actually how we found each other. Our friend, Matt Drew, suggested that I should get in touch with you for that, and we can talk about that later on too. But as we know, guys, trying to figure out how to input all the different things that you're experiencing in one easy to do method is not
00:29:22
Speaker
a small feat. All right. So actually, that's probably good. So do I just click on the tick once I'm done? Yep, just a little checkmark just to say I'm going to submit my results. Oh, yeah. OK, so once I do that, I get a little thing. Oh, you would have seen with Lindsay saying the myth. Cool. All right. So now we get to look at the results. All right. So I'm going to check out the leaderboard and you can see. Oh, you need to put in your name. But we see we see the blank person here is Jesse.
00:29:51
Speaker
Um, and I'm laser and I actually did better than you did. Um, we, this is the palette score. So the palette score is calculated based on your proximity of your evaluation to that of the professional.
00:30:06
Speaker
When you log in, you'll see your name here and we'll be able to see who's leading and who's doing best and where you lie. Then you can also see, this is a pretty cool thing, you can see what you rated, and then you can see what other people were saying about it as well. You can see I said it was dark brown, just said it was ruby brown, and we both agreed that it was clear,
00:30:33
Speaker
That was also a verified attribute. So the professionals also agreed with us that it was clear. So you can also kind of educate yourself on what other flavors exist, what other attributes people are picking out and what you got right and maybe what you need to work on. So this is what that looks like. And then you can have a history of all of your different tasting results. So you can go into this little ribbon and you can see all of the different tastings that you've done.
00:31:03
Speaker
and revisit some of those attributes that you've experienced in the past. That's the gist. I'm going to go ahead and stop sharing my screen now so I can see your face again. The brown bars were what you had put in on any given sample, and the blue bars were an average of what everyone else had put in.
00:31:24
Speaker
It's actually just counts. Anything that's colored red is something that I said, and then the length of the bar is going to be the count. Blue is something that anybody else said, but I didn't say, and then that little green check mark indicates verified attribute. Of what the expert said. Yep, exactly. Awesome. Then the beauty of it is if you're a producer, now you've got all this data,
00:31:54
Speaker
ready to roll. Are we able to show really quickly what the company would see from the back end? Sorry, I'm putting you on the spot here. I know. That's fine. I can show you really quickly. It's not too difficult to pull up. All right, I'll pull you up.
00:32:14
Speaker
I mean, even if you're an example of something, if there's a bit more daughter in something, something that's, you know, obviously safe to be shared. Yeah. Oh yeah. I'm not going to pull up like some, some company's data. I'll show you some, an example of something that we did the other day, actually during a UC Davis tasting. So I'll show you what the results look like there. I'm pulling it up before picking out and mouth feels and that kind of thing.
00:32:42
Speaker
Yeah, so that's kind of the analytics that one gets. There's a little bit more in those two different types of modules. There's a little bit more in another module, but for just the basics, you'll get an idea of the hedonic distribution and the attributes that are coming out of that sample. That is really freaking cool. Thank you. So I hope
00:33:10
Speaker
I hope people at home can see why this is exciting from both points of view, right? It's exciting for the company that could potentially use it to improve their product. And at the end of the day, put money in the bank. That's what a company does. Get over it if you're one of those do it for the art people. The way it is, man, you've got to make a living. And it's also really, really exciting for the consumer, especially in, like you said earlier, products like this where
00:33:41
Speaker
Let's face it, we fancy ourselves to be able to actually pull a product apart and figure out what's in there and figure out why it's good or why it's bad. It's not a product where you just consume it mindlessly. The whole point of this stuff is that we enjoy it and we enjoy what it brings to the table and why it's different from something else. The fit together is absolutely beautiful. I'm very, very happy to have discovered this.
00:34:11
Speaker
Yeah, I need to use it more, but at this stage, I can thoroughly recommend it to anyone that is thinking about it. Let's talk about what we're going to do for the livestream. So now I hope people can kind of get an idea of how the app works and what it's capable of. The plan is we're going to get
00:34:31
Speaker
at this stage four different four different whiskeys that you guys can get at home now you may not be able to get all of them you may not even want to get all of them but we've picked four that are kind of representative of the craft i guess you would say in that two of them are going to be super super easy to get we say that Lindsay went looking for one today and couldn't find it but
00:34:57
Speaker
But on the cheaper side of commercial bottles and you can get them in many bottles as well. So please guys, you don't need to run out and get expensive bottles to get involved with us. So those two are going to be monkey shoulder and Johnny Walker black. So feel free to grab
00:35:16
Speaker
either one of those or both of those if you want to participate. The other two are we wanted to represent the craft scene a little bit and being a prideful Anzac Kiwi down here I wanted to have something from New Zealand so we went with Starwood Nova and the reason for that is you can get that in America so if you want to pick up a bottle of Starwood Nova which I would thoroughly recommend
00:35:39
Speaker
By all means do and lastly we're going with the Cedar Ridge Iowa bourbon to represent craft in America because Murphy's products are are available Pretty widely as well The plan is guys is that we are going to get two Whiskey tubers to evaluate the monkey shoulder and the Johnny Walker because
00:36:06
Speaker
Unfortunately, I don't think I've got enough sway to get on the phone and say, Mr. Johnny Walker, give us your flavor profiles. So one of those people is going to be Rory from Aklavite and the other is going to be Daniel Whittington from the Whiskey Tribe, which is pretty freaking exciting.
00:36:24
Speaker
And when it comes to the supernova and the Iowa bourbon, Murphy and Sam from their respective companies are going to be doing the tasting, the expert tasting notes for those. So in short, guys, here's how it works. Grab one or four of those bottles if you can. And on the live stream, we're going to sort of walk you through, hand hold you through exactly how to do that. And what it means is that you're going to be tasting products from all over the world together
00:36:53
Speaker
With a medium that lets us all see what everyone else is doing which is pretty freaking cool And you at home get to compare your palate what you're tasting to Roy Daniel Sam and Murphy, which is I know that that's pretty exciting to me. I think that's gonna be pretty awesome. I Just want to say right now guys that
00:37:15
Speaker
This stuff is subjective, so it's not all about the guys that are doing this are right. And if you don't get the same scores, you're wrong. It is interesting data and it's a bit of fun.
00:37:28
Speaker
When you aggregate enough people together, then the data itself becomes meaningful. So we're not, you know, we're not here to tell you your shit. That's what I'm saying. It's all in good fun. There will be more details for this going out in the comments down below this video. So by all means, guys, get down there and check that out. I'll also put something up on Facebook. So if you're not a member of the Chase the Craft Facebook page, go ahead and do that now. It's Chases of the Craft.
00:37:55
Speaker
And I will be, obviously, the Patreons will get plenty of information about it, and it'll go out on the mailing list too, guys. So if you're interested in that, check those places out to find the details. We have yet to set an exact date, but it's probably going to be sometime in around about the next 10 days, is my guess, just to get the, quote unquote, expert judging details. And have you got anything else to add to that? But if I missed anything that's important about that,
00:38:22
Speaker
You represented that perfect, purposely. Yes, thank you. Well done. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I think it'll be a good time. I'm curious to see how my palate stacks up. And yeah, it's good to, it's good to say too, like, yeah, this is all subjective. But it's, it's kind of fun to just like all, I'll be tasting together and seeing what everybody else is picking out.
00:38:46
Speaker
Yeah, totally. I think that's actually, I mean, that's a great place to kick off the more nerdy talk, right? And anyone that knows me know that when I say nerdy geeky, that is 100% a compliment, not an insult. Oh yeah, I'm into it. Yeah. So sensory science and subjectivity. Yeah.
00:39:10
Speaker
I can just go from there if you'd like. Yeah, so I think that that's actually, that's a good question, Jesse. Sensory science. It's actually, it's one of the, it's one of the first questions that I end up getting when I say that I'm a sensory scientist. It's, oh, well, isn't taste subjective? Isn't our flavor
00:39:35
Speaker
you know, preferences and perceptions subjective. And so how can you actually verify and validate that your people are giving you repeatable information? And I think that it's a very good first step into having a conversation about flavor of perception. Yes, taste is absolutely subjective. And a lot of sensory scientists will just try to diminish that subjectivity as much as they possibly can.
00:40:05
Speaker
And my preference is to embrace the subjectivity. Like we really need both the subjective and objective evaluations. Because if you think about it, objective evaluations from like a trained and highly calibrated panel really doesn't mean anything unless we know the liking information, unless we know hedonic subjective information. Just being able to highly like to very specifically
00:40:32
Speaker
describe a product does not really help us if we can't end up drawing it back to liking. And again, going back to our previous conversation, how are we going to sell this? People need to buy this. So you really have to marry those two things. Additionally, if you only have liking information, but you can't actually describe why,
00:40:52
Speaker
it's liked, then you don't have the ability to create flavor specifications and targets for the products that you're making. So you really kind of need both. And when you're training yourself to be a calibrated sensory instrument, I think you need to start with how much you like it. A lot of, a lot of what we, a lot of what we do is just the first knee-jerk reaction we're going to make is, is why do we like it? The thing is, is if we don't like something, then we need to get curious about why.
00:41:23
Speaker
and start thinking about the attributes that maybe drive that disliking along with our liking. I always thought that some of our best sensory panelists were the people who really didn't like beer because they could be fully effective about it. They're like, this is not fun for me, but I'm just being an instrument and telling you what's in it. So, you know, when moving from the subjective to the objective, it takes some training, it takes some like mindfulness and really just like picking apart the attributes
00:41:52
Speaker
from the product. And you've noticed with sample locks, we start with how much do you like it, and then we move into the nitty gritty, kind of more objective evaluation. And that's on purpose. We want people to first make a knee-jerk reaction about how much they like a product. That's going to be the most accurate representation of real liking. And then we want them to kind of move their brain into, OK, now what's actually in it?
00:42:16
Speaker
And tools like lexicons that are specific towards a product and created by producers is helpful to kind of get people off and running with describing their flavor experience. It's very difficult for people to describe their flavor experience. If you think about the brain, it's easy for us to make an emotional connection to flavor, liking, disliking.
00:42:42
Speaker
Sadness, happiness, and that's what Joanne Hort is doing. That emotional connection is rapid. It's fast. It's easy to make. And it'll even put you in a place where you'll smell something and go, that's Grandma's house. And for the next 45 minutes, you'll be trying to figure out, what the hell is it? Is it cookie? Is it mothball? Is it, you know? That's what the emotional connection is, just instant.
00:43:03
Speaker
And I think we need to embrace that emotional connection and then draw out, that's part of training, like drawing out, OK, well, what is it that what is it about your grandmother's house? Is it the potpourri or whatever? And then you can kind of figure out, all right, you mean, you mean rose and rose, you mean maybe geranial if you wanted to get really specific. But our brain doesn't function in a way that it's easy for us to tie language to flavor experiences.
00:43:31
Speaker
And so that those connections kind of need to happen over time. And what's cool about, you know, having a community of tasters is you can have these conversations together. And that's partially just training. And using a lexicon that's already built is really helpful for people to draw the connection from, OK, I'm smelling something fruity.
00:43:50
Speaker
fruity. Okay, oh, it's kind of citrusy. It's not really tropical. What kind of citrus is it? It's not really grapefruit, it's more orange. And so you can kind of follow your experience with that, with that lexicon to help people really hone in on what it is they're experiencing. So yes, it's subjective, but you can also marry in the objective. Yeah, yeah. And I think the lexicon is really important too, because there's certain things that you just can't, you can't describe without it. And it's kind of a case of,
00:44:18
Speaker
Because I think what people talk about when they talk about subjectivity, right, is the whole idea of your blue is different than my blue. But we can both look at something and say that's blue. And in some ways, it almost doesn't matter what we're seeing. And so going back to the lexicon idea, something like dank in the beer world is how do you describe the
00:44:41
Speaker
The smell of dank hops without using the word dank. It's tricky, man. And I think if we back up to something a little bit less, let's take something totally hot sauce, chili. Yes, it's subjective. So you can give me a chili, and now I'm living down in New Zealand, and I'm a wuss. So I could taste it and say, it's crazy hot.
00:45:08
Speaker
And I could give exactly the same stuff to you. And you'd say, it's mild. What are you talking about? There's almost nothing here. But then you could give us a second brand and put it next to it. And we could both agree that, yes, this one is hotter or not as hot as the first one. And we could both agree. We could both make a statement saying whether or not I like it. Yes, I like it because the chili is medium hot and I like medium hot.
00:45:36
Speaker
Now we're starting to get to data that is meaningful for a company, right? It doesn't matter whether it's 15 or 72 on a scale. It's what is the stick in the sand and is that good, bad, too much, too little. I guess the trick is then moving that into a super complex thing where there's literally hundreds and hundreds of different flavors that add up to yum or yuck.
00:46:00
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I, there's so much there. So I mean, what you basically described just then was calibration. So how do you calibrate your panelists? And it's, it's creating different experiences. So if you think about flavor training, I can't assume that you've experienced a banana before. Like you probably have, but maybe you haven't. And so
00:46:22
Speaker
The idea that, like, I have this experience of bananas in my life, and you may not have experiences of bananas in my life puts us at two different places. And so when you know what kind of flavor attributes are kind of present in your, in your products, it's, it's important for professionals to train their panelists to be able to kind of get on the same page with what that means. And that could be as simple as, like,
00:46:46
Speaker
giving you a banana and telling you that's a banana. And so now we're both calibrated on what we mean by a banana. And so that kind of thing can happen pretty easily. It doesn't have to be overly complicated. But then you kind of talked a little bit too about like, well, I mean, there are so many complex aromas and features and whiskey and beer and these fermented products. And that's absolutely true. And I embrace that variability. I think that
00:47:16
Speaker
For any product, there's a range of variability, of allowable variability. And it could be anywhere from, you know, like moderate to heavy sweetness, and that could be okay. Or maybe sometimes it's nutty and other times it's, it's more grassy, and that could be okay as well. So it's really kind of up to the company to decide what is the acceptable level of variation in our product.
00:47:40
Speaker
and kind of set that target description as the basis for which you're measuring quality and consistency. And so I think where a lot of sensory scientists get into trouble is by trying to force very specific measurements with human subjects that are inherently variable and with a product that is inherently variable as well. So we really have to be pragmatic about our approach with what it is we can achieve
00:48:07
Speaker
with consistency, otherwise we're just going to be spinning our wheels and maybe dumping products that was totally suitable to sell. That's my take on it. Those are the things that keep me up at night. I've had a question that I've always wanted to ask a sensory scientist, and I've had this experience multiple times where the banana is perfect. You carry an idea of what banana tastes like in your head,
00:48:36
Speaker
And then blueberries are the one that really hit me. Like I've got this idea of blueberry in my head of what blueberry tastes like. Then I put blueberry in my mouth and eat it and it doesn't taste anything like blueberry to me. There's this weird disconnect and it's kind of, I don't know man, I assume that I've got some anchor in my
00:48:58
Speaker
like there's a there's an anchor to flavor that i've got that was probably like i don't know blueberry ice cream or like a weird blueberry confectionery or something that never actually tasted like blueberry but that's what my mind thinks blueberry tastes like it's like yeah what's going on there yeah yeah i get it i think a lot of like if you think about i was thinking about this the other day if you think about like purple like what comes to mind what flavor comes to mind grape
00:49:25
Speaker
grape. Yeah, like almost everybody says grape. Like when it tastes like purple, it tastes like grape. And what you mean by grape is like Concord grape. And like the Concord grape is going to be from like candy, for the most part. Like it's going to be from like jellies or jams or that kind of thing, kind of candy. And so we make these like subconscious associations really quickly.
00:49:47
Speaker
I mean, I just mentioned a whole bunch of different things like visual bias and that sort of thing. But I think we draw those, a lot of those associations are from maybe like synthetic versions of what the actual thing is. And that's fine as long as that's what we mean when we're talking about it. That's kind of what I'm getting at, right? Two different people can say blueberry and mean very different things. I had a buddy when we were in Cairns,
00:50:16
Speaker
The guy refused to eat any fruit or vegetables at all. And he jumped into a car and went, oh, it smells like banana milkshake in here. And we all turned around and looked at him and the girl in the front seat was eating a banana. I'm like, dude, really? That's like...
00:50:40
Speaker
Yeah. But yeah, it's a good illustration to go back to what you said, right, is you cannot assume that someone has had the exact flavor you're describing. And on top of that, it's like when I think banana, I think of, I don't know the name of the ester, but the ester that shows up in like Belgian beers, for example, it's like a very one dimensional, it's what, sorry?
00:51:05
Speaker
I saw him loss a tape. Thank you very much. That's why we have you. But when you actually smell a real banana or eat a real banana, there's so much more going on than just that one thing, right? Right. And I think going back to the idea of training yourself to be able to taste whiskey, one of Daniel Whittington's lines is just stop and smell the roses, man. Anywhere you are in life, just
00:51:33
Speaker
actually go and smell the freaking rose because chances are it doesn't smell exactly like you remembered it and the act of doing it specifically and purposefully it gives you another trigger in your brain it's just like another little roadmap that that says you know if you hit something that's vaguely floral maybe it reminds you of rose or geranium or whatever it is or you know when you're in the supermarket stop and pick up a pick up a pawpaw or a mango or a
00:52:01
Speaker
you know, a banana and actually smell it. Yeah, that's fascinating to me. I don't. Yeah, sorry. Carry on. I mean, those are some of the my favorite trainings are just literally going and grabbing a whole bunch of citrus fruits and having people smell them.
00:52:19
Speaker
and try to describe an orange without saying the word orange, which is like super hard and kind of fun. But it is, you think that you can tell the difference between an orange and a lemon and a lime and a grapefruit, but like sometimes you just can't. And so, and then it,
00:52:37
Speaker
We kind of like, a lot of times in beer specifically, spin our wheels by trying to train panelists to use this fairly specific language, like saying isoamylacetate instead of banana. And that can be very time consuming and really, you know, expensive and whatnot. And a lot of times for, I mean, for beer, I think that that's, it's unique to beer. We've worked with a whole bunch of different
00:53:05
Speaker
categories now. And they're all kind of a little bit perplexed at, at brewery's obsession with doing this really nitty gritty chemical based analysis and defect based trainings. And so what a lot of people really should be kind of focusing on first is what are the attributes that make up your product, rather than focusing so heavily on defect, there's a time and place to focus on defects and for getting really nitty gritty with your language.
00:53:35
Speaker
that's part of quality control. But I think one of the first thing that a producer should really be doing is understanding the flavors that make their product their product. So what is
00:53:46
Speaker
What are the attributes that are supposed to be there? And luckily, a lot of us do have similar flavor experiences, so we generally kind of know what we mean by citrus fruits. And sometimes it's not really that important for a producer to define that, oh, this aroma that's in this whiskey is not just
00:54:07
Speaker
orange, or it's not just citrus, it's like orange peel. Like that's, that's almost like a little too focused, because like, are you, are you really going to dump a product? Because it's more orange pithy than orange peel. So you kind of have to just be really pragmatic about it. It might be good enough to just say citrus. We just agree that it's citrusy. And we know what that means. And we have experience with our product. And really, nothing can substitute for experience with the product.
00:54:37
Speaker
You can describe something really perfectly and really pinpointedly and get an idea of what it's supposed to taste like. But if you don't have pretty consistent experience with it, then it's difficult to understand if something's out or in a variability within that product category. That's a lot of words. I think there's a lot of people at home right now that
00:55:02
Speaker
that are enjoying the theory of this but have no idea how to put it into practice especially if they're a tiny little distillery and there's only you know three of them on board and they'll try to do sensory with you know just then or you know someone like me who's I'm sitting at home making it by myself and I can get my wife's opinion on it. Do you kind of have like a beer bones approach or like
00:55:26
Speaker
I know this is asking you to condense your entire life's work into 10 minutes. So if I wanted to figure out whether or not a variable that I've changed has made an impact on a product, or I wanted to work out for myself, do I really like this better than that? Or is it all just in my head and I'm telling myself lies, all that sort of stuff? Have you got a process that we can go through
00:55:56
Speaker
you know, without having to have a huge budget to start to peek behind the curtain a little bit. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And what you just asked is, is exactly, that was exactly the question that we kind of asked ourselves when forming DraftLab. It was like, OK, well, why are we all doing this so differently? Like, sensory shouldn't be this kind of like one-off thing. There should be a process that anybody could use to be able to define their products.
00:56:23
Speaker
um, analyze for consistency and then being able to, to troubleshoot problems. Um, and so what, what we did, like the first thing that we did was just try to synthesize down. Okay. Well, what is the, the sensory process, um, that any producer can do? And, um, there's really a difference between like,
00:56:44
Speaker
statistically valid and actionable information. And we really want to focus, well, with DraftLab, there are three different feature tiers. There's a basic feature tier, quality control, and then enterprise feature tier. And the basic feature tier is really created for those panels that you just described. So it's maybe three or four producers. And
00:57:04
Speaker
don't have a lot of time, don't have a really big budget to be doing sensory analysis on a regular basis, but we just need the ability to describe our products, be able to identify when maybe they're in our outer specifications so it can inform process parameters, and then give us an ability to troubleshoot what's happening in our process if we find something that's a little awry. And so the basic process that anybody can do is first
00:57:31
Speaker
take some time to understand your product, so to define the attributes that make your product your product. And that can look as simple as what we just did with sample locks, which is using a common lexicon to define the flavor characteristics that make up that product. And then from that evaluation, you can
00:57:53
Speaker
result, that will result in a target description that is really easy to understand. So just what are the visual attributes, what are the aromas, what are the tastes and what are the mouth feels that define this and that becomes your target specification, which is really similar to like an analytical target specification. We might be shooting for a certain alcohol level and you know what that alcohol level is and the range of variability that's acceptable for sale. It's the same thing with, with sensory.
00:58:22
Speaker
We know that our flavor target is this, and we know that there's a range of acceptability within that. So it's kind of treated the same way. So once you have that target description, you can use that for a whole bunch of different tests. So the next test that we would use for quality control is what we call the true to target test. And so now we have our target definition, and now you're going to be evaluating another sample of the same brand.
00:58:49
Speaker
And you're basically comparing it to that target description. And the question is, is this sample in front of you true to target or not? And if not, then why? And then you can, you know, if you have three out of your four panelists saying that something is not true to target because it's too oaky, then that's meaningful information. And you can go back and look at maybe your maturation parameters and modify that to be a little bit more consistent and in line. And
00:59:16
Speaker
Distilled products I think are interesting because there's a decent amount of flexibility with, you know, it's not as flexible as like vintages with wine or whatnot. There's still kind of an expected consistency with the products, but there's a little bit of variability that's going to be expected from the consumer. And so you can have an idea of what that is. And it's also a very shelf stable product as well. So you, you might be able to even,
00:59:45
Speaker
remember what a good version tastes like by kind of helping yourself on that too. Unlike with beer, you kind of can't do that with beer.
00:59:54
Speaker
So the idea is define that target, then measure against that target, and then you can utilize that information to troubleshoot. So that's, that's, that's kind of it. Like, what is the thing you're making? And then can you measure against what you're making? And you can even do this in the concept phase, in the R&D phase. So what, I want to make something that's really oaky, smoky, nutty, and floral, and write those things down.
01:00:20
Speaker
Then as you go into prototyping or as you go into distilling, you can compare what your target specifications were next to what you're actually experiencing flavor-wise. It really doesn't have to be more complicated than that and you're off to the races. That's what you're going to be doing 80 percent of the time regardless of the size of your business. The largest companies mostly do quality control analysis like I just described.
01:00:49
Speaker
What are your thoughts on the idea of trying to remove personal or emotional bias from a process like this? Home brewing, home distilling is ripe with it. You've all had that guy come up. If you're in the hobby at all, you've all had that person come up to you and go, try this, it's delicious.
01:01:13
Speaker
You try not to make a funny face right in his face And we've all had it the other way too, right? You've all made something and you've been so invested in it and Then you try it a week later or something and go. Oh man. What was I thinking or you try it? You know, you've got an idea of what the last one you made was you made a change Oh, this is so much better and then you sit down and try it next to the you know You a be the next to each other and you go. Oh, actually I can't even tell the difference. I mean I how do you like what are your thoughts on?
01:01:43
Speaker
how deep down that rabbit hole you go of trying to remove that human element from it. Because I know you've kind of touched on this before, right? Like in some ways you're saying, just get on with it. Like just do it. But it's also a real thing. So I'm really interested to see what your advice for someone like us is on these sort of things.
01:02:03
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that samplox kind of plays an important role in that because it's not just a distiller handing something to a patron on the other side of the bar saying, how much do you like it? I made it. Don't hurt my feelings. And so it allows consumers to be a little bit more honest. And it's, you know, anonymous and that kind of thing. So you can be pretty honest about
01:02:29
Speaker
what you're experiencing, but it doesn't give you so much leeway to where you can just be like bashing a brand or whatever. Um, which I don't understand why that would be a thing anyway. Um, but a couple of things on bias bias is a really, it's a really big factor in the sensory world and chapters and chapters have been written in the sensory books about bias and it's, it's kind of a constant consideration. Um, and it's all with the intent of trying to again, make panelists consistent.
01:02:59
Speaker
and, and taking away all those extraneous factors that could potentially contribute to a false read on what they're experiencing. And so that could be anything from taking away any noises from where they're evaluating or any external aromas.
01:03:19
Speaker
It could mean blinding the cup so that you don't see purple and think grape. So you might want to completely do your evaluation under red light or something like that. So it depends on kind of what you're trying to do and what kind of bias you're trying to diminish. But essentially what we just need to acknowledge the fact that humans are going to be a little bit variable. And so it's up to the
01:03:48
Speaker
sensory scientists to try to diminish those factors. And for example, if I know that somebody's having kind of a bad day before they come into panel to evaluate something, I have a good idea that that could potentially influence their evaluation. And so I generally try to give people like a little bit of time before they actually start doing their evaluations.
01:04:14
Speaker
so that they can just kind of like be and ground themselves and not have to be worrying about what they're doing next. It's, it is all of, the first thing is just to really kind of be present with what's going on with what you're evaluating so that you can actually focus on the product itself. But it can also be, you can also do things like not change the test type that you do every single time you run a sensory test.
01:04:41
Speaker
Um, you know, one, if one day you're asking your panelists to scale attributes and the next day you're asking them to just describe something on a blank piece of paper. And the next day you're trying to, you get the picture that can be a bit of a cognitive load. And so in quality control, you know, QC kind of gets a bad rap for being somewhat boring. And that's like, that's by design. We need to be using the same methods. So the build databases of information.
01:05:07
Speaker
and also not put a huge cognitive load on our panelists when we're really just trying to measure the stimulus, so the product. So there are a whole bunch of things that you can do to try to diminish that bias. And, you know, not talking to people is one of them, not talking to the people during your tasting, not kind of like making yummy yucky phases, not kind of. That can take so much.
01:05:33
Speaker
I just judged, just helped out with a beer competition. And that, just that one thing, right? Like you're sitting there and you're like, oh man, my knee jig reaction is this is probably going to be about a 25. And then you look over and see one of your fellow judges who happens to be VJ certified and I'm not. And he's sitting there digging on it and like, oh yeah, yum. Like, oh crap, oh crap. Oh, it's not a 25. It's more like a, you know, it's just so easy to, it's crazy. And I mean, I've talked to people
01:06:02
Speaker
like this guy, right? Like Jared, he takes it to an extreme. He won't eat before blending. So even if that's, you know, five o'clock at night, he won't eat until dinner time. He won't use deodorant. He won't use toothpaste. He won't, you know, like just everything from the everything that is not the product is standardized. And it's always the same. And it just sort of feels like there's always just one more thing that
01:06:30
Speaker
You're never going to get them all, right? Like you're never going to be able to. Right. How many hours sleep did you have last night? When was the last time you drank coffee? That's tricky, man. Like, I don't know how deep you got down that rabbit hole. Well, that's, that's also why I'm a big proponent of panels. And I know that a lot of times if you're like blending, that's kind of a one person show, maybe two people.
01:06:57
Speaker
And so it is important for that person to be consistent.
01:07:01
Speaker
Um, but I mean, what you just described is all, you know, kind of standard, like brush, you might want to brush your teeth. Um, but like not wearing, um, uh, any perfumes or lotions or, or, or shampoos. Now that I don't work consistently in a sensory lab, I'm like, perfumes, bring it on. Like, I get excited because like 10 years I've not been able to like any, wear anything smelly.
01:07:27
Speaker
And it's, and it's a really big deal. Like it can absolutely influence your evaluation and the evaluation of those around you. And so you really kind of do have to be conscious about what your other aromas that you're bringing in are all about. But we are all going to be, have off days, or maybe I just went on a really big run, and that's going to change your senses. Like,
01:07:51
Speaker
You know, we have some variability within our own human selves. And that's why I think we really need a group of people who are acting as that instrument rather than one person. It's really very risky for a business to put it all on one person. So, you know, back at New Belgium, we had about 20 panelists who were quite consistent. But you can get away with four or five, six people who are consistent.
01:08:20
Speaker
As long as one person can have an off day, then that's fine. As long as they didn't just smoke and then came into panel, everything's going to smell smoky. Yeah. I guess a big part of that too is it's easy when it's, how do I put it? It's almost like the bigger the company and the more people you have involved, potentially it is easier on the data side of things to create an aggregate score.
01:08:48
Speaker
But I mean for small companies too, it's got to be pretty hard just to get the hell out of your own way in terms of like just checking your ego at the door. You know, if you're the head taster and you're the one that's having a bad day, I mean, we've all had those situations where we've worked at places where you don't feel like you can speak your mind, right? And trying to put it in a way that
01:09:13
Speaker
means that if I'm the person that's quote unquote in charge, that I've got my ego in cheek enough to just be like, right, I'm saying one thing, but all of you are saying another thing. I'm wrong. And creating an environment where those people feel comfortable dissenting, essentially. Yeah. I mean, what you just described as creating a culture of quality and
01:09:41
Speaker
or just really a culture of excellence. And so good distillers or really good brewers, they're going to want to hear feedback. And it's not personal. And we're very conscious too with Draft Lab to, we understand that that's not the company culture of a lot of places. And it might be a little bit scary to say some things off or whatnot.
01:10:05
Speaker
And so we don't make it easy for comments to become available, and they're all blinded as well. And so individual panelists, as far as like reports go for, for
01:10:17
Speaker
like anything that's just easily PDFable and sendable to management and whatnot. It's, we blind to those comments. We blind the, the person. And we kind of do that to like protect against that bias and that weird company culture that can persist. But it really is up to the business themselves to like make it safe to, to just give tasting notes. Like,
01:10:41
Speaker
And it can be. This is really where the objective evaluation can truly just purely be objective. Like, it doesn't have to be, you know, I said butter and therefore it's bad. Like, it doesn't have to be that way. It can just be like, here's really my objective evaluation. Or, yeah, like I said that this wasn't true to target. And that doesn't mean that I'm telling you to dump it. Like, panelists shouldn't have to feel the burden of decision making.
01:11:07
Speaker
they should just be free to give their objective evaluation. And then the decision-making should come from the data, and that should come after the fact, but not on the panelists' shoulder. So there really needs to be kind of a separation there. If there's ever like a roundtable discussion or that kind of thing, I've always asked
01:11:27
Speaker
those who are like in charge or the maker to either not sit on that panel or to speak last, because it will completely skew the outcome of that conversation. In fact, it's funny, this is a timely conversation. I recently started writing a blog post that basically says,
01:11:46
Speaker
why sensory scientists shouldn't sit on panel. And it ultimately is because we know way too much about the product. We know where it came from. We know if it had anomalies associated with it or whatnot.
01:12:00
Speaker
We're essentially just too close to it. And so we hold a lot of bias. And so tasters in my experience that are sometimes the best are those who are not in production, like those who are maybe in HR or people who are kind of out on the outskirts of production because they don't really know what's going on. They don't have any kind of associations with certain attributes, negative or positive.
01:12:29
Speaker
And they can just be very objective. I mean, I once had, we've, we've all kind of had, well, do I tell the story? I'll be big about the story. I mean, I once had a panelist who had, had an agenda to just like get beer out the door. And they were a very good panelist and could detect certain off-flavors.
01:12:53
Speaker
But when I gave that person off flavors in a panel setting where it was like, you know, trying to get beer out the door, go, go, go. Everything was a go. And I'm like, as a sensory scientist, you should be able to see that kind of stuff and show, show panelists, like, I can see your bias. This is what it looks like. Please modify yourself a little bit. And that all goes into the, um,
01:13:19
Speaker
The kind of like analysis and interpretation part of sensory data, which is can't be diminished sensory data is unique because it comes from human beings. And so you need
01:13:29
Speaker
You need somebody who is analyzing it. They don't have to be a sensory professional by any means, but somebody who looks at the data on a regular basis, who knows their panelists really well, and can kind of pick out those nuances. If we know that Jesse always says nutty, then it's not going to be shocking when he says nutty again the next day. But that only comes with time. That only comes with really knowing your panelists.
01:13:54
Speaker
So this data needs to be interpreted as well as just kind of analyzed on a base level. And I mean, all of this stuff can be quite subtle too, right? I mean, that guy that you talked about, it may have been a conscious decision to, I'm going to personally attempt to skew the data so we make more money. Like, it could have been that. Or it could have been a subconscious
01:14:23
Speaker
he's stressing about money and almost doesn't even know he's doing it. Which in that, in that certain situation, I get the funny feeling it was probably more the former rather than the latter, but who knows, right? And, and it's so common for people, well, I'm not biased. Yeah, you are dude. We all are. We're all, every single one of us is biased in some way, shape or form. And we don't know,
01:14:47
Speaker
We're kind of blind to our own bias, I think, in a lot of ways. And there's a lot of things that people do. Broolosophy, I'm sure you know, broolosophy. Yeah, you pointed them the right way up. Yeah, I bring them up because the extremely famous in this sort of niche within fermented beverage category, right?
01:15:11
Speaker
And their whole thing is they want to test methods, not necessarily flavors. So they're not saying they don't want to find out whether or not this is more yummy than this. They want to know, I made two different beers in two different ways. Does it make a freaking difference? Or was that whole, you have to boil for 60 minutes. Is that an old lifestyle? So their method is to do a triangle test on everything. Now, I know that you think that it tends to be overused.
01:15:41
Speaker
I think that was you, wasn't it? But in that situation, I think it makes sense, right? The whole idea is to completely blind everyone that's involved in it from knowing what the hell they're tasting. They've got no idea what they're tasting. It's just, here's two beers. Is one different? Can you tell me one's different? And if you can tell me one's different, prove it and pick the one that's different out of the three.
01:16:12
Speaker
Feel free to state your case on that situation and whether you think that the triangle test is ideal for that or not. But is there any other little tricks like that that you think you could use, especially when you're tasting your own product? There's not, like you said, you don't necessarily have numbers to create data from. Is there any other little physical tricks that we can use to help ourselves out? Yeah. The triangle test, like you mentioned,
01:16:40
Speaker
I do think that it's overused and when it's used for quality control, that's just not appropriate. What you just described to me is a very specific question. If I change this one parameter, am I going to notice a difference? And that is a appropriate use for the triangle test because the triangle test will show you if there is a significant difference. Now,
01:17:08
Speaker
Of course, to find a significant difference, you need a decent amount of panelists. You need to have, you know, 20, 30 people doing that same evaluation to see if there really is statistically a significant difference. And so when the question is purely, I was able to hold all this, I was able to control this study. And I just want to know, if I change this parameter, is it going to be different or not? Then, sure, triangle test works. Is it discrimination test? And so, or difference test?
01:17:36
Speaker
And that's what they're made to answer. But in quality control, when it comes to is this product suitable for sale, I think a triangle test is actually too specific a method. It will probably find differences, but it may not matter. And so for the example with your friend, changing a MASH parameter or not boiling for 60 minutes,
01:18:04
Speaker
you might find a difference, but it might not have an impact on the overall acceptability. And it might still fall within the range of acceptable variability for that product. And so if the question was, can I get away with doing this for 30 minutes instead of 60 minutes and still sell it as that product, then the true to target test is actually the method that you would probably want to use. You know, according to this target description,
01:18:31
Speaker
is the sample in or out the 60 minute and 30 minute. You can kind of see if it's a big enough impact to where it's no longer suitable, where it's no longer within the normal range variability. And that question more frequently is more useful for people who are in the production setting. It also allows you to only taste one beer or one whiskey instead of three to answer a question about one. And so it's way less fatiguing.
01:19:00
Speaker
It requires less setup and a whole bunch of different reasons. But the triangle test is fine. It's just misused for quality control. Because like you say, at the end of the day, all it says is, are these two things different? Yeah, which sometimes doesn't matter. You can say, yeah, sure, it's different. But when we were commissioning a different brewery when I worked for New Belgium, we didn't use triangle tests. We knew that those beers were going to be different.
01:19:25
Speaker
And that was something that we were okay with, but what we wanted to know was, is it within the range of variability that we have already seen in our products anyway? And if not, then we'll have to go back to the drawing board. But you'll be spinning your wheels if you're doing tons of tracking.
01:19:46
Speaker
Now in saying that, would you ever slip, like do you blind the people from it? So you mentioned earlier on it's quite often nice to have people that aren't part of the production, right? So if you're part of production team and we're talking whiskey and we just made a product and we've all been saying, oh man, this thing's just trending a little bit too spicy. I'm not sure if we can blend it to not be spicy enough, for example. And now we go in to do this, the test to find out whether or not it's in.
01:20:14
Speaker
If everyone sitting at the table has already got the idea in their head, is it too spicy? I think it's too spicy. Surely that's going to skew the entire, you know, that everyone's going to be fixated on that. They're more likely to say yes, they're more likely to say no, perhaps depending on their personality. But perhaps the acidity is right off. And do you know what I mean? Like it's just, if you're too close to the production, like you said, I can just see it completely throwing the test out the window.
01:20:41
Speaker
so will you ever slip something in where you sit down and say radio guys we've got a we've got a panel today we're doing three different batches we're testing them but actually there's only two or you throw in you know the last production bottle and no one knows that that's what you know we do things like that just to try and get a read on understanding your panel more
01:21:02
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. If we knew that something was up and we only had one sample, I would probably put two or three other samples around it and have that be blind. So like in draft lab, you can blind the entire sample and just use three digit codes or you can blind the batch number. So you can kind of keep
01:21:23
Speaker
keep that kind of bias at bay by not showing what, what barrel it came from or what batch number it was all about. So more often than not, I would suggest to, to hold that from your panel.
01:21:36
Speaker
If you're doing a true-to-target test, you have to know what brand it is because you're really asking the question, is it true to that brand or not? But you should probably hold the batch back. If everybody knows that there's a problem going on, add some other samples in there just to take care of that bias.
01:21:58
Speaker
But that, again, goes to just trying to hold everything consistent, as consistent as possible, and understanding that panelists want to be right more than they want to be accurate. Yeah, so they're going to go look for the thing that they think is, is potentially a problem. And so, you know,
01:22:20
Speaker
those little tricks like putting samples around it would work really well. And then just trying to keep everything else as consistent as possible. If you always run panel at 10 a.m., if you run it at 3 p.m. the next day, it's going to put people, it's going to kind of like pique their interest and they're going to wonder why you're doing a panel at that time.
01:22:45
Speaker
You can also, you know, keep panels on their toes by maybe spiking samples here and there, like putting a little bit of food coloring or something and just making sure that they're not completely asleep at the wheel. So there, there are little tricks that you can kind of get your, your panelists to be a little bit more on their toes. Of course, you wouldn't really want to like spike a sample when you're doing a really high risk evaluation, because that could kind of get people a little bit
01:23:13
Speaker
discouraged and maybe distracted. But yeah. When like the businesses is relying on us getting, you know, we've got this big order and we needed to get it out the door and oh my God, it's like a diacetyl bomb. Right. Yeah. No, not cool. They run suddenly by distressing. Yeah. I didn't even think about that.
Sensory Testing Best Practices
01:23:31
Speaker
That's a great. Yeah, a great point. How so it almost seems like what you're saying is you want to everything that's external from the actual product itself needs to be as
01:23:43
Speaker
completely consistent as possible. So the time of day, the amount of people, the setting, the noises around us, the don't go serving like sushi for lunch and then doing testing one day and then have like insanely spicy Mexican the next day. Yeah. Like everything that isn't the sample is completely consistent. And then the sample itself, it's almost like you want to do the opposite. You want to randomize it. You don't want to serve
01:24:14
Speaker
the same how do I put it you want to keep them on their toes right you don't want it to be a pattern where we know that oh every time Lindsay comes in she gives us the last production batch first and then the one that we're actually testing comes second and we all know it and you know like you want to keep them on their toes with the actual product itself does that kind of make is that correct
01:24:40
Speaker
Yeah. And that's kind of, you know, yes and all within reason. We don't have the ability to do it completely perfectly. Like our image of what like a good sensory panel looks like is, you know, that booth setting with these whitewashed walls and, you know, red lights and that kind of thing. And like that's probably one, 2% of the users that we work with.
01:25:10
Speaker
have that kind of facility. And you don't have to have that to be able to kind of take into account some best practices you could be doing panel
01:25:20
Speaker
in your production on the floor. Like if there's a quiet area on the production floor, then you could be doing panel there. I mean, if all you have the bandwidth to do is to occasionally pull a couple bottles off and taste them just to make sure that they're kind of in line with your expectations, that's, that's fine. Like that's better than doing nothing. And, and it's useful information. You're just tasting your products and
01:25:47
Speaker
that's really where one should start. It's just, you know, we don't want people to get overwhelmed with this image of what's perfect. We're going to be making concessions with what's practical. And you're still going to be getting good information, even if you can't completely blind everything and randomize everything and whatnot. But it's it's you're still getting useful, useful tasting data. And then as you grow, and as you develop, then you can kind of make those steps to maybe put in a booth setting and
01:26:17
Speaker
and whatnot. But a lot of times, it's just enough to start and have to be a big, huge to-do. I think it is kind of... Well, there's two types of people when it comes to this sort of thing, right? There's the sort of person that's like, I have to bullshit, dude. I tasted the yesterday and it's fine. They just don't buy into any of this. It's like, dude, I can taste my own whiskey and I know it's fine.
How Draft Lab Supports Tasting Programs
01:26:44
Speaker
And that's literally as far as they go. And then there's the other people that tend, like me, I'm firmly in the camp of overthinking it, you know, like I'm always the idea of just sitting down and tasting something to see if it's better, worse, different, sideways, whatever is kind of, I'm like, but that doesn't work, you know? And I guess, I guess it really is your job, especially if you're, I mean, do you ever just straight contract to companies and get them set up and help them out?
01:27:11
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that's part of it. Yeah, so a lot of what we do too is just kind of give people the bones to get going and get to kind of know their organization and how a tasting program could integrate into their organization in a more kind of targeted space. But a lot of times like
01:27:36
Speaker
these conversations can kind of happen relatively quickly. And we just like hop on calls. We're always happy to hop on calls with people. So it doesn't have to be big time, like consultation contracts, like if we have a question about like, Hey, this is a thing that my panelists are doing, it's a little bit weird, like help. We're happy to hop on calls and just like talk people through it. But a lot of
01:28:00
Speaker
You know, we do help people get their programs off the ground. And what's really great about Draft Lab is what we've tried to do is just make it simple enough to where you can just get going. And the process is really clear to use in the app. And so a lot of people will just kind of get going with the basic model, with the basic version.
01:28:25
Speaker
Um, which by the way, it's like 50 bucks a month. Like we tried to make it as cheap as possible as well. Um, and so most people kind of get going and then a lot of questions will start coming up and then we start kind of having those conversations. And if we're like, if you want us to spend a day with you, we'll do that. But you know, we're happy to give some free advice here and there too. Yeah, there's like a quick 15 minute call might fix the problem. Speaking of which, if people do want to get in touch, if they do want to,
01:28:52
Speaker
check the the software out or see just what it is that you guys do in more depth. Where would they where do they go to find you? So our for draft lab it's draft lab D R A U G H T L A B dot com and sample ox is S A M P L E ox as in the animal ox
01:29:12
Speaker
um, dot com as well. And, um, there's info at email addresses for both of those. So you can email me at info at draft lab.com or info at samplex
Contact Information and Future Interaction
01:29:22
Speaker
.com. You can also just email me directly. Um, but yeah, check out our websites and most of that information is all there. And if you have questions, you can just email me or email info at sweet.
01:29:35
Speaker
All right, we've been at this for an hour and a half, which is crazy. Now, if you're at home, guys, and you have some more specific questions, remember, we're going to have this live stream coming up. And like I said, we haven't nailed down the perfect time yet. So get on the mailing list, get on the Facebook group, and check the details down below the video or in your podcasting software to get those details. Or just get in touch with me.
01:30:05
Speaker
Before we go, when we do get off the podcast, I got a couple of quick questions for you from the Patreons. But for everyone else out there, if you have a specific question, feel free to bottle it up and join us with the livestream, because I'm sure we're going to have some downtime in between tastings to throw questions at Lindsay as well. So I have to say a huge thank you, Lindsay. This has been absolutely awesome. I can't wait to see what happens with the live tasting. That's going to be a whole lot of fun.
01:30:33
Speaker
Yeah, totally. Yeah. So thanks, Heaps. We appreciate it. And we look forward to the live stream. Yeah, thank you.