An Investigation of the Ability of Young Male and Female Social Drinkers to Discriminate Between Regular, Calorie Reduced and Low Alcohol Beer

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Abstract
Summary: Nine female and nine male social beer drinkers aged 21–28 years participated in a beer discrimination study. Each participant consumed nine glasses of beer. All participants received three glasses of each of Swan Lager (5.0% V/V), Swan Gold (3.7% V/V) and Swan Special Light (0.9% V/V) in counterbalanced order. Participants were required to identify each glass of beer by brand name—first after one mouthful and again after consuming the whole glass. Results indicated that participants were identifying the beers at chance levels only on the first taste measure. On the second taste measure performance exceeded chance expectation but this was due to the respondents having a response bias towards Lager. There were no sex differences in performance, nor did amount of beer usually consumed have any effect on number of correct identifications. Rising blood alcohol levels/satiation did not have any significant effects on identification performance over the nine trials, nor were there any significant differences in number of correct identifications for each of the three different types of beer over the first and second taste measures.