Machines mimicking a human’s sense of taste are going on a beer-tasting binge. Despite being called electronic tongues, these devices aren’t party robots, pouring beer onto wagging, mechanical tongues.
“It’s just a bunch of wires and buttons and computers,” said María Luz Rodríguez-Méndez, a professor of inorganic chemistry at University of Valladolid in Spain. “It’s an ugly thing full of cables.”
However it looks, Méndez and colleagues developed an electronic tongue that accurately distinguished between four styles of lager beer 100 percent of the time. A variety of screen-printed sensors “taste” electrochemical compounds in the beer to predict the brews’ color index and alcoholic strength 76 percent and 86 percent of the time. The new robot taster contributes to a growing field of electronic tongue and nose development meant to improve quality control in the food industry.
