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Perceptual Qualities of Ethanol Depend on Concentration, and Variation in These Percepts Associates with Drinking Frequency

  • Published:
Chemosensory Perception

Abstract

Introduction

Ethanol, the pharmaceutically active ingredient in all alcoholic beverages, elicits multiple percepts including sweet, bitter, drying, and burning. However, quality-specific perceptual dose-response functions have not been previously reported. Also, individual differences in ethanol perception may associate with differences in alcoholic beverage use. Here, we describe the chemosensory profile of ethanol across concentrations in a convenience sample of mixed-age adults; secondarily, we explore whether individual differences in various qualities from ethanol associate with alcohol use behaviors.

Methods

Participants (n = 100, 33 men) aged 21 to 55 (mean 33 years) tasted ethanol in water (4, 8, 16, 32, and 48 % v/v) and rated sweetness, bitterness, drying, and burning/tingling on four general Labeled Magnitude Scales. Demographic question and alcohol use measures (years drinking and reported frequency of drinking occasions) were also collected.

Results

Intensity of most qualities increased as a function of ethanol concentration, although the dominant sensation differed with concentration. The dominant sensation for 8 and 16 % ethanol was bitterness (7.4 ± 1.0; 13.5 ± 1.4), whereas for 32 and 48 % ethanol, burning/tingling was the dominant sensation (29.7 ± 2.1; 44.7 ± 2.4). Variation in quality-specific intensities of sampled ethanol explained variability in the reported intake frequency for beer, wine, straight spirits, and number of drinking occasions. The number of years reported drinking (grand mean 10.5 ± 0.8) was not significantly associated with perceptual ratings for sampled ethanol.

Conclusions

In a convenience sample of mixed-aged adults, the sensations from suprathreshold ethanol varied by concentration: bitterness dominated at lower concentrations, while burn dominated at higher concentrations. Exploratory analyses also suggest that differences in chemosensory responses across participants may associate with measures of alcohol use.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Rachel Primrose for assistance with data collection, and all of our participants for their time and involvement in the study.

Funding

This work was supported by a National Institutes of Health grant from the National Institute of Deafness and Communication Disorders [DC010904] to JEH, as well as US Department of Agriculture Hatch Project [PEN04332] funds, and funds from the Pennsylvania State University. AAN received additional support from the National Institutes of Health via an institutional Clinical and Translational Sciences TL1 Predoctoral Fellowship from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences [TR000125], and a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Individual Predoctoral Fellowship (F31) from the National Institute of Deafness and Communication Disorders [F31DC01465].

Compliance with Ethics Requirements

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Conflict of Interest

The lead author declares no conflict of interest. The corresponding author has received consulting fees from various industrial clients in the food industry. These organizations have no involvement with in this work and were not involved in study conception, design or interpretation, or the decision to publish these data.

Ethics Declaration

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008. Informed consent was obtained from all participants included in the study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sensory Evaluation Center, Department of Food Science, College of Agricultural Sciences, The Pennsylvania State University, 220 Food Science Building, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Alissa A. Nolden & John E. Hayes

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  1. Alissa A. Nolden
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  2. John E. Hayes
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Correspondence to John E. Hayes.

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Nolden, A.A., Hayes, J.E. Perceptual Qualities of Ethanol Depend on Concentration, and Variation in These Percepts Associates with Drinking Frequency. Chem. Percept. 8, 149–157 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12078-015-9196-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12078-015-9196-5

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