A customer-oriented approach to the development of a visual and statistical foam analysis

Most of the standard methods for foam stability evaluation are based on mea surements of the weight or volume of the liquid collapsed from the foam. Ho wever, these drainage methods are insufficient for the evaluation of practi cal foam stability. Accordingly, we decided to develop a new system for foa m stability evaluation. We have refined an automatic pouring machine that r eproducibly pours beer into a glass in a consumer-use situation. A multiple regression analysis is applied to estimate our new foam stability value, n amed FCT (foam collapse time). Using several statistical analyses, we have confirmed that the visual impression of foam stability is consistent with t he FCT value. In contrast, conventional values do not have a close statisti cal significance to the visual foam stability.