Local microbrewery ales are featuring on equal terms with the larger nationals in a new real ale website where you can compare flavours to see which beers taste the most similar to your preferred tipple. The system, called PintPicker, has been developed by a team of Cambridge scientists and information technologists who also happen to be beer lovers.
At the heart of the PintPicker system are six flavour attributes that allow the overall tastes of different beers to be compared. There are six primary flavours – sweet, bitter, burnt, hoppy, citrus and winey plus three secondary attributes - colour, ABV and body, and together these provide a “footprint” of the beer, its taste signature. Here's an example:
Although very simple and easy to use, a powerful “difference analysis” algorithm, working behind the scenes when you hit “similar”, returns a list of beers in order of their taste proximity to each other. So, for example, if you have a favourite beer PintPicker can tell you which other beers it knows about that are very similar to yours in flavour.
The team have conducted extensive research to determine which are the essential attributes to distinguish sufficiently between beers without making the system overcomplicated and cumbersome. They think six does the trick. And individual flavours can actually be weighted to optimize the system – so, for example, if sweet and bitter are considered the most important factors, then they can be multiplied by a number, say two, which will make them twice as important as the other attributes. In this way, the system can be tweaked “under the bonnet” until it performs optimally. But the regular beer-drinker doesn’t have to worry about that. If you can use a web browser, then you can use PintPicker.
The ethos behind PintPicker is what is known as “the wisdom of the crowd”. It relies on user input and through harnessing collective knowledge, can re-present that information back to the user community. There are a couple of key features, more philosophical than technical: firstly, there’s no such thing as right or wrong and everyone is entitled to their viewpoint – PintPicker’s strapline is “It’s a matter of taste”. Secondly, it doesn’t claim to be 100% accurate and it’s not fixed – real ale isn’t a homogeneous product like lager, so there’s bound to be some variability in the results and the system itself is flexible and dynamic and changes every time a new review is added. So don’t expect a beer that ranked as identical to another yesterday to be exactly the same today – it may not be, because this is the nature of the world of probabilities.
But what the system will do however, and with amazing consistency, is return a range of beers based on the best comparisons it makes between the ones it knows about and your chosen beer. If it returns ones that you haven’t already tried, then you have an opportunity to discover new favourites. And, intriguigingly, a beer with a different style or colour to what you expect may occasionally pop up. In any event, it’s all good fun.
Why not give it a try? It’s free and very easy to register and you can print out score cards to take with you to pub or beer festival. Log-in to add your reviews and compare real ales. And do send your comments, feedback and suggestions – we’re very keen to hear from you.
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- 2008-10-17 @ 10:01:05
Pintpicker is an excellent system. I use it extensively and am continuously amazed as to how realistic the comparisons are. Why not try it yourself!