Tuesday
July 11th 2 pm
Central European Time

Correct and relevant sensory analysis methods are vital for developing competencies in specialty coffee companies for product development, quality control, and marketing activities. However, the current methods for sensory evaluation are far from being aligned with scientific principles, which are often considered too difficult and time-consuming. 
In 2014 Ida Steen and Morten Münchow set out to develop training programs and sensory evaluation methods for the specialty coffee community derived from sensory science protocols and ISO standards. At WOC last year, they presented data behind their first scientific article on aroma recognition, published in February 2023. This year they introduce new data for an upcoming scientific paper focusing on rapid sensory profiling methods that provide new insights into sensory properties of coffee for different roast degrees and new insight into scientific methods of assessing individual sensory skills using rapid methods. 
Data was collected on 109 coffee professionals before and after four weeks of sensory training, and they performed significantly (p<0.001) better after four weeks of online sensory training. Our results demonstrate that this method can be implemented as a daily practice in the coffee industry and that online sensory training is a helpful tool to improve coffee professionals’ precision when describing coffee samples. 

What will attendees learn from this presentation?

• What is the difference between common business practices and scientific investigation of flavor and personal sensory skills?
• The difference between full-fledged scientific sensory methods executed at universities and rapid scientific methods that non-scientists could do in a busy environment
• What a daily sensory training program could look like that improves your skills in just four weeks.
• How CoffeeMind’s work align with SCA’s development of new sensory methods