What is the validity of the sorting task for describing beers? A study using trained and untrained assessors

In the sensory evaluation literature, it has been suggested that sorting tasks followed by a description of the groups of products can be used by consumers to describe products, but a closer look at this literature suggests that this claim needs to be evaluated. In this paper, we proposed to examine the validity of the sorting task to describe products by trained and untrained assessors. The experiment reported here consisted in two parts. In a first part, participants sorted nine commercial beers and then described each group with their own words or with a list of terms. In a second part, participants were asked to match each beer with one of their own sets of descriptors. The matching task was used to evaluate the validity of the sorting task to describe products. Results showed that (1) the categories of trained and untrained assessors were comparable, (2) trained and untrained assessors did not describe groups of beers similarly, (3) for both groups, the results of matching task were not very good and presented a high inter-variability, and (4) providing a list of terms did not seem to help the assessors. Overall, the results suggest that the sorting task followed by a description does not seem to be adapted for a precise and reliable description of complex products such as beers but may be an interesting tool to probe assessors’ perception.