A New Approach to Sensory Evaluation

Abstract

Flavour is the significant criterion of evaluation in beer tasting, which depends on many primary and secondary causes. This includes desirable and un-desirable aromatic compounds, but also haptic and physical issues like viscosity, the CO₂-level and colour. A beverage for example with a nontypical colour presented in a wrong drinking vessel is always evaluated differently to the "correct" form without any modifications. Next to these problems taste in general is a subjective matter and is valued individually quite different. Furthermore the influences of process changes on taste are difficult to evaluate. In order to get representative and fast results in the brewing and beverage technology, a sensory test developed by Sommer was used [1]. The test consists of a dual testing, therefore one sample is the product with the original taste and the second one is the product with a changed aromatic profile. The proband has to detect the changed sample. For the case he is not able to determine it, he has to guess. This test is repeated several times with a changing taste difference of both samples. New about this procedural is the interpretation of the testing results by using a probabilistic evaluation form. Thereby an intensity curve is given which indicates the relation between rising taste difference and consumer taste perception.