How to keep a beer journal

The short version

The facts

These are what you'll search for later, so get them down before the bottle goes in the recycling.

• Name and brewery. Breweries often reuse a name across different beers, so you need both.
• Style, such as pale ale, stout or saison. It's usually on the label; if not, our beer styles guide helps.
• Strength (ABV), which explains a lot about how the beer tastes and feels.
• Date and place. A beer at the brewery on a summer evening can taste different from the same beer out of a supermarket can.
• How it was served: draught, can or bottle. Freshness matters most for hoppy beers, so the canning or best-before date is worth a note too.

How to write beer tasting notes

Go in the order you experience a beer, a few words each.

Look

Colour, from straw and gold through amber and brown to black. Clear or hazy. A thick, lasting head or one that's gone in seconds.

Smell

Smell it before you sip. Citrus, tropical fruit, pine, bread, caramel, chocolate, coffee, banana, clove and sour fruit are common. Write down what you smell, even if the label promised something else.

Taste

Where it starts, what comes through in the middle and how it finishes. Sweet, bitter, sour or balanced? Does the bitterness hang around?

Feel

Light or full-bodied, fizzy or soft, dry or sticky. Strong beers often feel warming.

Rate it the same way every time

A score only helps if a 4 means the same in March as it does in October. Pin down what each number means and stick to it, for example:

• 5: I'd go out of my way for this.
• 4: I'd happily buy it again.
• 3: Fine, but I'd try something else next time.
• 2: I didn't enjoy it.
• 1: I wouldn't finish another.

Judge a beer against its own style rather than your favourite one. A great pilsner deserves a 5 even if you'd normally reach for a stout.

A beer tasting notes template

Paste it into a notes app, print it, or use the labels as column headings in a spreadsheet.

Make it useful later

Once a month, skim your highest scores. Patterns show up quickly, like a brewery you always rate well or a style you keep marking down. When you're standing in a shop, the “again?” line is the one you'll look for.

Keep the journal about what you liked rather than how many beers you've logged, and make sure whatever you use can export your notes, so they outlive the app or notebook they started in.

Paper, notes app, spreadsheet or app?

Paper is pleasant at the table but hard to search. A notes app or spreadsheet is free, searchable and yours. A beer app saves typing with photos, catalogues and maps. I built BeerShelf for that last option, after the beer apps I tried felt basic next to Vivino for wine: photograph the beer, add a rating and a few flavour tags, and it lands on your own shelf and map. There's a fuller comparison in our beer tracking apps guide.

Questions people ask

Related guides

• Beer styles explainedWhat 15 common styles taste like, how strong they are and which glass to use.
• The best beer tracker apps in 2026Eight iPhone beer trackers compared on catalogue, privacy, sync and price.
• Untappd alternatives in 2026Where to go after the 5.0 redesign, depending on what you used Untappd for.