How to judge whether the latte is good or not? Japan launches milk coffee flavor wheel!

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The coffee flavor wheel of the boutique coffee association (SCA) can be said to be one of the most iconic members of the coffee industry. You can see it in almost every boutique coffee shop.

The emergence of coffee flavor wheel, on the one hand, acts as a guide to coffee sensory experience, guiding people to associate coffee flavor; on the other hand, it allows tasters to compare and judge the positive and negative flavor of coffee. But today's coffee flavor wheel only aims at the flavor of coffee beans, so that we can have a reference to judge whether black coffee is good or not. But not everyone likes black coffee, and more consumers prefer milk coffee. Many people will think that when milk is added to coffee, there is basically no need to worry about whether it tastes good or not, because lactose will cover a lot of bad taste in coffee.

But some people think that nowadays boutique coffee pays so much attention to the quality and taste of a cup of coffee, so even if milk is added, it should have quality judgment and characteristic taste, so there should be a taste wheel about milk coffee. It provides a reference for coffee practitioners and consumers. So recently, Japan's Mori Yong Milk Company published a "Milk Coffee Flavor Wheel" specifically for coffee with good milk in the scientific journal Food Science and Technology Research.

According to the developers, flavor wheel is a term used to express the round arrangement of food flavor characteristics, which is widely used in the wine and coffee industry. However, the existing coffee flavor wheel is relatively simple, because in addition to the flavor differences caused by the origin and roasting degree of coffee beans, milk and sugar are often added to drink, while the flavor of milk coffee varies greatly because of the balance between the two. At the same time, it is said that the description of the existing coffee flavor wheel is very professional, including a lot of flavor terms that mass consumers can not effectively relate to. Therefore, this time, the object of providing descriptive flavor is public consumption, hoping to make a milk coffee flavor wheel that ordinary people can refer to from the point of view of mass consumers.

The 60 test samples of the Milk Coffee Flavor Wheel are made from the following combinations. Roasting degree of coffee beans in 5 producing areas (Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Costa Rica) (moderate roasting, deep roasting) balance of milk and coffee (milky, multi-coffee) sugar content (yes or no) milk fat content (full fat, low fat milk)

The flavor description depends on what 203 untrained consumers feel after drinking it, and then through discussion by 12 beverage developers, delete fuzzy terms, redundant terms, and terms that are considered unnecessary to describe the flavor characteristics of milk coffee (qualitative screening). Finally, among the 456 flavor characteristics of milk coffee collected, 53 features were selected as the production of milk coffee flavor wheel.

Then six kinds of milk coffee products were evaluated by CATA (a rapid sensory analysis with consumer evaluators instead of professional sensory evaluators). Among the 53 terms 42 of them had significant differences in the frequency of term selection among samples. Therefore, the description on the flavor wheel can express the differences in flavor characteristics between samples, and these terms can only be used to evaluate a cup of milk coffee.

The developer said that the development of the milk coffee flavor wheel is more in the hope that everyone knows that milk is not added to the coffee to hide the bad flavor of the coffee, but that the milk can provide a more balanced taste for the coffee. at the same time, it can give coffee other more unique and representative flavors.