Belgian beer study acquires taste for machine learning Joining the list of things that probably don't need improving by machine learning but people are going to try anyway is Belgian beer. The ale family has long been a favorite of connoisseurs worldwide, yet one group of scientists decided it could be brewed better with the assistance of machine learning. In a study led by …
Creating alcohol-free beer would be good in today's environment - kiddies could drink it with Belgian chocolate!
So no legal issues these days although when I was a little kid I had a bottle of Guinness every Sunday lunch with my grandparents after I was four years old. That was back in the 50's when Guinness was the only major source of vitamins and minerals too - as a kid I loved drinking it every weekend and these days I'm still drinking it frequently.
The positive result of starting to drink as a four year old kid is that I have never had any drinking problems although after so many lovely Belgian visits, later in life at work, I'm still eating chocolate every day!
As a kid we didn't drink Guinness (allthough it was said to be good for you), I still don't, but we had - still have - a table-beer Piedboeuf. I prefer it ten times to any coke. It tastes as sweet as the real Coca Cola, but it contains 1/150 the amount of sugar, and I kid you not. It just shows how stupid parents are, when they let the children drink that poison. Anybody complaining about rising obesity?
"Corresponding author Kevin Verstrepen, professor at Belgian university KU Leuven, said one of the biggest goals is now to help make better alcohol-free beer."
In Belgium??? What a waste of a good idea.
"Schreurs admitted that the team did celebrate finishing the paper with the alcohol-containing variety. With some Belgian beers touching 15 percent alcohol by volume, he didn't say how bad the hangover was."
I've just come back from a week, with friends, of sampling the liquid delights of Brussels and Ghent. We got through an extensive range and there was not a single hangover. Nor in similar previous visits. There's something in their brewing that filters out whatever crud causes it everywhere else. TBF we rarely went above 9% but the 15% beers are equally rare - generally the strongest on a regular menu is around 12%.
"According to a paper published in Nature Communications today, the machine learning model achieved higher overall appreciation among trained panelists in blind tastings."
Higher appreciation than what? Did the panelists prefer machine-learned beers to uneducated ones? Did the model appreciate beer more than the panelists? (Were I one of the panelists, I might still appreciate beer after having been blinded, but I think I'd be a bit resentful.)
I'd be curious to know what they were rating the beers on. For me and my mates (drinking mostly British beers, but I'm sure it's transferrable to Belgium) there are lots of differing requirements depending on occasion, mood, time of night, and so on. There are the session beers that you can drink all night and still cycle home without falling off. Then there's the strong but quaffable one for that last pint of the evening when the session beer hasn't quite done enough. There are the novelties that you get at a beer fest, many of which you'll never drink again, either cos they're not-from-round-here or just plain horrible (to me, not absolutely). Finally, the canned beer that's been stuffed in with the tent in the garage for a year since last August bank holiday, is 6 months past its sell-by date and still tastes OK just after you've finished putting the tent up.
Having grown up in Belgium where I started drinking at 14, I can honestly say that I think that they are wasting their time. All that AI and similar research might produce will be better "mass market" beers.
Your classic Belgian bottled beer is anything but that. It is all about variety and different tastes and the experience which is why each brewery has their own glasses and woe betide anyone who serves a beer in the wrong glass!. Hardly any Belgians drink just one bottled beer, unlike their tap beers where pretty much everyone has their favourites (Stella, Jupiler, Maes, Primus, Palm, etc.). But then even their tap beers are better than their "brewed under licence" equivalents elsewhere. Stella in Belgium is quite drinkable, but here in the UK it is unmitigated gnats piss.
On a typical night out in my "yoof" I would start with a nice complex beer like a Rochefort 8 or a Chimay Bleu, then a variety of Leffe Tripel, Grimbergen Dubbel, Duvel, Westmalle Tripel, with the occasional dash of a fruity Bellevue or Mort Subite Kriek, or on a heavy night a Bush Ambrée, and to finish the night off a nice crisp Hoegaarden or for me a (SHOCK!!) Danish beer like Tuborg Fine Festival or Carlsberg Elephant.
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