1. Hold the glass at a 45 degree angle to reduce the head. The bottle has to be several centimetres above the middle of the glass. The pouring should not be done too slowly, letting the head to settle.
Judge the colour, head, clarity. 2. After we pour our beer, we first give it a visual check-up. Lift the glass to an eye-level and take a close look at the beer as you hold it against a light source. Judge the colour of the beer (is it very light, dark, or even black-amber-coloured?), its head (how firm it is, or if it is there at all), and clarity/cloudiness (to see if the beer is filtered or not).
Smell it. 3. Another task is for the nose. Usually, breath tends to be shallow and brief. Then we take the deeper one. What do we smell? Citrus or other fruit, bread, coffee, caramel... To highlight the aroma, you may want to swirl the glass around a couple of times.
Have a taste: sip and swallow. 4. The last in line to judge is the palate. We taste it gradually: first we moisten our tongue with beer, then take a sip, follow it with one that is bigger, and so on. The human tongue is teeming with receptors: we taste saltiness, bitterness, sweetness, sourness... The bitterness receptors are located at the back of the tongue and therefore, unlike wine, beer needs to be swallowed.
5. Once the above 4 steps are completed, we can form an all-round impression about the beer we are tasting. After we swallow a mouthful, part of the aroma of the beer rises back up our throat and a ‘second’ smell hits our pharynx. The first impression of taste is followed by the next. By the way, we can experience more smells and fragrances in one sip of beer than any other beverage.