Principles of sensory shelf-life evaluation and its application to alcoholic beverages

As this book is principally concerned with sensory aspects of alcoholic beverages, the sensory and the instrumental methods which can be used as sensory measurement indices will be primarily presented in this chapter. In addition, accelerated shelf-life testing will be presented, including the discussion of limitations of these methods. Microbiological shelf life is discussed because of its importance for beer shelf-life evaluation. However, this is less important for other alcoholic beverages with higher alcohol levels due to the antimicrobial nature of ethanol and where sensory quality is the primary means of defining shelf life.