I have ranted at length in previous posts on the fact that “predictive” patterns discovered by machine learning cannot add up to, cannot imitate and cannot constitute good taste, but the beer barons at KU Leuven (Louvain) may have arrived at the first counterargument by correlating the chemical signatures of good taste with potentially representative assessments of the same beers by people ostensibly possessed with good taste in matters of beer. Thus, this is the first attempt at correlating the chemistry of the taste of beer with the perceived taste and quality of beer. Sadly, even this attempt seems to have fallen short because the machine learning algorithms failed to identify unique chemical signatures that identified each beer type’s flavor and quality profile.
For now, one should continue to trust human experts more than “expert” algorithms.
Algorithm correlates online reviews with chemical profiles of hundreds of beers, providing a roadmap to enhance taste