For brewers, taste is the test of a good beer

I get the feeling these guys could teach a thing or two to the guy in the previous article.

For Todd Hansen and a half-dozen others here, drinking beer in the afternoon is a vital part of the job.



But it's way more involved than simply kicking back each day and popping open some cold ones.



Call it hands-on quality control.



Hansen and a select group of Anheuser-Busch employees taste each ingredient that goes into making the beer, plus whatever else might sway quality. They do it daily.



"Absolutely everything that touches the brewing process will get tasted," said Hansen, resident brewmaster at the Anheuser- Busch Inc. brewery here.



The members of the "taste panel" sip "teas" brewed from rice and beechwood chips to make sure the ingredients are up to snuff. They chew on grains of barley malt.

Read the whole story at Rocky Mountain News. It's a good overview of how brewers gauge the quality of their beers, regardless of the size of their breweries.