Contains sensory data and analysis code for new hop variety registration. NLP analysis of tasting panel comments characterizes aroma and flavor in dried hops and finished beer.
File: Vera Sensory Comments.csv
268 sensory comments from professional tasting events:
- Dried Hops: 181 comments
- Beer: 87 comments
- Hopsource 2022-2024 (Washington and Idaho)
- Craft Brewers Conference (CBC) 2022, 2024
- Hop Research Council (HRC) Winter Meeting 2024 (multiple breweries)
- Arbeiter Brewing Company Experimental Hop Rub 2023
Event,Sample,Comments
Hopsource 2022 - Washington,Dried Hops,Complex and clean
Hopsource 2022 - Washington,Dried Hops,Vinous grape
...
Preprocess raw sensory comments for text analysis
Steps:
- Acronym expansion (GO/O/G/ONG → "onion garlic", DMTS → "dimethyl trisulfide", etc.)
- Text standardization and cleaning
- Data reshaping to JSON format
- Summary statistics on comment length distribution
Extract and analyze key sensory descriptors and linguistic patterns
Steps:
- N-gram analysis: Most frequent words, word pairs, and three-word phrases
- Part-of-speech tagging: Extraction of adjectives and adverbs
- Categorical analysis: Prevalence of different flavor categories
- Off-flavor analysis: Quantification of onion/garlic descriptors
Most frequent words, bigrams, and trigrams across comments. Numbers in parentheses are raw counts.
| Dried Hops | Beer | |
|---|---|---|
| Top word | fruit (29) | fruit (23) |
| High‑frequency words | tropical (27), citrus (25), peach (16), garlic (15), onion (15), mango (14), pineapple (13), fruity (11), bright (11) | hop (15), citrus (11), sweet (10), pleasant (10), bitterness (10), tropical (9) |
| High-frequency bigrams | onion garlic (11), stone fruit (7), passion fruit (4) | stone fruit (5), hop flavor (5), sweet fruit (4) |
| High-frequency trigrams | tropical stone fruit (3), slight onion garlic (3) | |
| Top adjectives | tropical (25), bright (11), sweet (9) | sweet (10), tropical (9) clean (8) |
Prevalence of flavor expressions based on grouped keyword patterns (e.g., "tropical" captures tropical, pineapple, mango, passion, etc.).
| Term | Dried hops n | Dried hops % | Beer n | Beer % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tropical fruits | 48 | 27% | 21 | 24% |
| Citrus fruits | 45 | 25% | 18 | 22% |
| Fruit | 39 | 22% | 21 | 24% |
| Stone fruits | 23 | 13% | 9 | 10% |
| Onion garlic | 18 | 10% | 5 | 6% |
| Melons | 8 | 4% | 5 | 6% |
| Berries | 7 | 4% | 0 | 0% |
Title
Journal of Plant Registrations, 2025
Analysis supports new hop variety registration by profiling sensory attributes and demonstrating distinct flavor profile and market potential.