No Glass Ceiling for the Best Job in Whole World

Turns Out Women Can Often Beat Men as Beer Tasters

By DAVID KESMODEL

MILWAUKEE—Rhonda Dannenberg, a suburban mother of three, stuck her nose in six glasses of beer at the MillerCoors brewery here and swished a bit of each in her mouth. Then she delivered the kind of frank verdict that's shaking up the mens-club world of beer tasting.

"I got a strong bruised fruit," Ms. Dannenberg, 36 years old, said of one of the Miller Lite batches, drawing a few nods from the three other women and two men at the table. "Slight cardboard taste. Oxidized. Unacceptable."

At many companies, the assembled panelists would have been men, typically brew masters and other technical types. And it makes sense. To judge from TV commercials, men like beer better than women do and sometimes even seem to like beer more than they like women.

But the British company SABMiller PLC decided several years ago to reach deeper into its employee pool to find adept tasters, inviting marketers, secretaries and others to try their hand. The company concluded that women were drinking men under the table.

"We have found that females often are more sensitive about the levels of flavor in beer," says Barry Axcell, SABMiller's chief brewer. Women trained as tasters outshine their male counterparts, he says.

If practice makes perfect, men should have the clear edge in beer tasting, since they account for 72.8% of the world's beer sales, according to market-research firm Datamonitor Group. But SABMiller, which makes Pilsner Urquell, Peroni and Grolsch in addition to Miller and Coors brands, says its empirical evidence shows that females are the superior sex when it comes to detecting such undesirable chemicals as 3-methyl-2-butene-1-thiol, which makes beer "skunky."

Finding the very best tasters is crucial to the beer industry. Tasting panels ensure that the beer spilling out of the tanks each day conforms with the specific characteristics for each brand—such as the mild fruit flavor in Coors Light or the dry finish of Peroni. Tasters also help brewers decide how long their beers will stay fresh on store shelves, and what new products to introduce.

Today, 30% of SABMiller's 1,000 advanced-level tasters are female, Mr. Axcell says. The number of women tasters has roughly quadrupled in 10 years.

Ms. Dannenberg studied microbiology in college and worked at a cheese factory before landing a job here as a pilot brewer testing new styles. She's known for her colorful descriptions of beer flavors, like "fish tank." "We don't want that," she says.

"Sometimes guys will see red or brown and women will see shades in it," says Jason Pratt, 30, a yeast and fermentation scientist who serves on the panel with Ms. Dannenberg.

Last year, Mr. Pratt took home the Golden Nose, the trophy that goes each year to the top MillerCoors taster in Milwaukee. He says he has sought out female tasters as tutors, listening closely to the advice of such women as Sue Thompson, who runs the tasting panels for MillerCoors, which is co-owned by SABMiller and U.S.-Canadian Molson Coors Brewing Co.

"There's more of a camaraderie than a competition," he explains. "Let's be honest. We are getting paid to drink beer."

Still, he says, he would like the men to make a better showing in SABMiller's annual taster-of-the-year competition, in which its 2,000 panelists in blind tastings around the world identify beer types, aromas and the intensity of specific chemicals. Joanna Wasilewska, a 33-year-old former secretary at its brewery in Bialystok, Poland, has won both events held so far.

There are downsides to the job. "It's hard to be a social drinker sometimes," says Laura Dopkins, 28, a MillerCoors panelist, who has a master's degree in food science and used to taste cereal bars for Kellogg Co. "Other people don't find it fun to drink around you" when you refer to beer as "metallic."

Other brewers are reluctant to say whether women make better tasters. Carlsberg A/S, the Danish brewer, says a test of its tasting panelists this year showed its women outperforming the men. This "surprised us," says David Burgess, group quality director. Nonetheless, he says, "our view is there is no difference between men and women."

At the North American division of Belgium's Anheuser-Busch InBev, data on its beer tasters show no significant difference between the sexes, says Pete Kraemer, vice president of supply and a beer-tasting panelist himself.

Some male beer drinkers doubt that women are better, too. "It doesn't seem credible," said Carlos Lopez, 22, while sipping a glass of Leinenkugel's Summer Shandy one recent afternoon at Stocks and Blondes, a Chicago bar.

A female friend, Ashley Siapno, begged to differ. "I think we have a better sense of what tastes better in all aspects," she said. "Food, clothes, beer."

Only about one of every five people—male or female—who try out for tasting at breweries ascend to the level of corporate panelist, says Bill Simpson of Cara Technology Ltd. in the U.K., who consults companies on training and evaluating beer tasters. People with natural ability must go through at least several months of training and be able to recognize numerous flavors to qualify as an expert panelist, he adds.

Still, scientists say women may have a physiological edge. Research shows they have a better sense of smell, a critical part of identifying flavors in beer, says Marcia Pelchat, a scientist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, a research institute in Philadelphia.

Ms. Wasilewska, the Polish beer taster, was working as a secretary and assistant to the board of the Bialystok brewery several years ago when she decided to attend a screening to see whether she might have an aptitude for tasting. The company soon realized she had an unusual knack for identifying extremely low levels of troublesome chemicals.

Now Ms. Wasilewska runs tasting panels as a sensory evaluation coordinator. She says she doesn't know why she is so good at beer-tasting but thinks it may have something to do with her long love affair with perfumes. "As a young girl, I tried to learn every single perfume by heart," she says. "I never dreamed that I might use my skills."