As the name implies, descriptive analysis—also sometimes called qualitative analysis—is sensory testing that is designed to quantify qualitative aspects of either a product or a group of products.
For example: If you find that a particular batch of whiskey has a slightly different aroma compared to previous batches, descriptive analysis could be used to help you identify the components of that aroma and quantify their intensities in relationship to previous batches. In turn, that information can help you determine what may have caused the difference.
Descriptive analysis is different from discriminative testing in that it seeks to determine the exact components and their intensities in a sample, rather than to simply determine whether there is a perceptible difference between samples. That makes descriptive analysis an incredibly important tool when you’re trying to better understand the interplay of flavors in your products, and how your distillery’s processes might be affecting those flavors. You can also use descriptive analysis to track flavor drift in products over time and to analyze competitors’ products in relation to your own.
In previous articles we’ve touched on evaluator recruitment, the statistics of sensory science, and both discriminative and hedonic testing. Here, we’ll learn more about descriptive-analysis testing and its uses in the beverage industry.