TALKING
SENSE
The growing importance of sensory, Finlays approach, and what the future of sensory might hold.
Words: Aaron Oakes
SENSORY EVALUATION IS 'A SCIENTIFIC METHOD USED TO EVOKE, MEASURE, ANALYZE, AND INTERPRET THOSE RESPONSES TO PRODUCTS AS PERCEIVED THROUGH THE SENSES OF SIGHT, SMELL, TOUCH, TASTE AND HEARING' (STONE AND SIDEL 2004).
It is a multidisciplinary field that includes food science, statistics, psychology/psychophysics, consumer science, and more. At Finlays we focus this array of disciplines on delighting our customers by providing beverage solutions rooted in technical truths.
Consumers are increasingly aware of specific flavour notes in their coffees and teas thanks in part to the social media-fueled trend called 'connoisseurship'. Coffee, for example, was once described with generic terms like 'bold' and is now instead granted specific flavour notes like 'prune', 'nutty', and 'caramel'. The role of sensory science is increasingly important to deliver specific flavour descriptions of our beverages to gratify our connoisseur customers.
At Finlays, we use a technique called descriptive analysis to generate detailed descriptions of each product. The descriptions include the intensities of key flavours. Finlays has panels of trained tasters in the US, UK, Chile, and Kenya capable of assessing coffee, tea, and tea aroma. These trained panels work like a well-calibrated machine detecting and measuring the intensity of more than two dozen key flavours in coffee and tea.
We also conduct discrimination tests which rely on large numbers of untrained tasters. Using statistics, their responses are converted to a measure of sensory difference (called d') which is independent of the test method used. With d' we can quantify the size of a difference between two samples - even when the nature of the difference is unspecified or unknown.
At Finlays, we focus this array of disciplines on delighting our customers by providing beverage solutions rooted in technical truths
Our customers can benefit from both approaches. Descriptive analysis helps us to rapidly achieve flavour targets and to provide specific feedback to partners and customers. It also enables us to demonstrate the value added, for example adding tea aroma to tea extract increases the perception of desirable flavour attributes, making the resulting beverage more complex and authentic. Discrimination testing is used to validate flavour matches providing a quantifiable verification of proposed matches or differences.
Looking to the future of sensory, I expect we will see increased personalisation. Individual variability in responses to flavour stimulus exists in both the physical (e.g. number of taste buds) and cognitive (e.g. different expectations) aspects of perception. As sensory science borrows insights from the cutting edge of genetics and neuroscience, we will have better tools to segment consumers and a deeper understanding of flavour perception. This improved understanding of individual differences will bring more personalised choices and tailored solutions.
Aaron Oakes is Principal Scientist-Sensory at Finlays Americas
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