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SENSORY EVALUTION TESTS FOR CARBONATED BEVERAGES

Dhwani Mistry (C0866952)

Product Development and Packaging

Prof. Parviz Yousefian

Section: 1

9 October, 2023
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Table of Content

Product Development and Packaging............................................................................................. 1

Table of Content........................................................................................................................... 2
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................ 3
WHAT ARE CARBONATED BEVERAGES?.......................................................................................... 3
WHY SENSORY EVALUATION FOR CARBONATED BEVERAGES?......................................................... 4
Human Senses in Action ............................................................................................................ 4
Types of sensory tests:.................................................................................................................. 4
Sensory Descriptive Tests: ......................................................................................................... 5
Consumer Sensory Analysis: ...................................................................................................... 5
Hedonic Scale Sensory Evaluation Form .................................................................................. 6
Questionnaire Preference Tests Sensory Evaluation Form........................................................ 8
References: .................................................................................................................................. 9
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INTRODUCTION

In the world of beverages, "soft drinks" encompass a wide variety of non -alcoholic options, ranging
from fizzy carbonated sodas to comforting fruit-flavored choices. These drinks are known for their
high sugar content and complex flavors, offering more than just a simple thirst-quenching experience.
The success of carbonated beverage products in the marketplace hinges significantly on human
perception and preference. In today's consumer-driven landscape, people are selective about the
beverages they choose, and the beverage industry must prioritize transparency and trustworthiness.
Even a minor mistake can significantly damage a brand's reputation and financial stability. Hence, the
collection of precise data becomes crucial. An essential part of this process is assessing the shelf life
of a beverage, which offers valuable insights to ensure the reliability and success of soft drink brands.
Crafting a soft drink extends beyond flavor considerations; it involves the creation of a multisensory
encounter encompassing visual, auditory, gustatory, and tactile elements. Despite the seeming
subjectivity of these aspects, they can be quantified through specialized techniques and tools. Sensory
testing serves as a powerful tool in the pursuit of outstanding soft drinks. To maximize its efficacy, a
comprehensive grasp of its principles and precise implementation are imperative in the endeavor to
produce exceptional soft drink products.

WHAT ARE CARBONATED BEVERAGES?

Carbonated beverages, or "soft drinks," are
non-alcoholic drinks with dissolved CO2 gas
that creates fizz. They contain sweeteners, like
sugar or substitutes, and often include
flavorings. Categories include colas (Coca-
Cola, Pepsi), clear sodas (Sprite, 7UP),
flavored carbonated waters (club soda), fruit-
flavored sodas (Fanta), energy drinks (Red
Bull), and artisanal sodas. They're globally
popular but linked to health issues like obesity
and dental problems, driving demand for low-calorie options. These drinks offer diverse flavors and
can be consumed alone, as mixers, or with food. Understanding their impact and seeking healthier
alternatives has become essential in recent years.

Creating a beverage involves crafting a multisensory experience for consumers, encompassing sight,
sound, taste, smell, and touch. Sensory evaluation, an objective process, quantifies these experiences,
making it a potent tool in beverage development. It enables a customer-centric approach, catering to
preferences and ensuring consistency. Sensory testing identifies flaws, guides product development,
and fosters differentiation in a competitive market. This data-driven approach leads to consumer
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satisfaction, loyalty, and product refinement. To harness its power, investing in trained panels,
rigorous protocols, and continuous analysis is key, ensuring your beverage aligns with consumer
expectations and thrives in the market.

WHY SENSORY EVALUATION FOR CARBONATED BEVERAGES?

Sensory evaluation is vital in crafting carbonated beverages that satisfy consumer preferences. This
process involves a clear product concept, recipe development, trained sensory panels, iterative
refinement, benchmarking, blind and consumer testing, final evaluation, and quality control. It ensures
consistency and appeals to consumers, ultimately leading to a successful beverage in the market.

Both carbonated and non-carbonated soft drinks are non-alcoholic beverages containing sweeteners
and flavorings. Food and drinks elicit various sensations, including taste, smell, touch, temperature,
sight, sound, and sometimes discomfort.

Human Senses in Action :

Perceiving flavor involves multiple sensory systems: gustatory (taste), trigeminal (facial sensations),
oral touch (mouthfeel), olfactory (smell), and visual cues (Sensory analysis, the different methods and
how it is used).

• The gustatory sense recognizes five primary tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami.
Taste receptors in the mouth and throat detect chemicals in food, relaying signals to the brain
bridging the oral environment with the nervous system.
• The trigeminal system, associated with the fifth cranial nerve, contributes to flavo ur
perception, encompassing branches related to facial sensations.
• Mouthfeel encompasses experiences associated with a stimulus's physical or chemical
properties within the mouth.
• The sense of smell is essential for flavor identification. Olfactory cells in the nose detect
odorant substances binding to their membranes, initiating the process that shapes our overall
flavor perception.

Types of sensory tests:

Sensory analysis methods encompass difference tests, descriptive analysis, and consumer acceptance
testing. A thorough sensory profile is produced via descriptive analysis, which distinguishes and
quantifies sensory qualities (Marques et al., 2022). It seeks to comprehend product qualities rather
than evaluating product quality. Assessors rate samples according to a standardized scale for the
features that have been determined during sensory profiling. The creation of a sensory lexicon is
essential. Consumer acceptance tests, which consider variables like preference and hedonic liking,
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determine a product's acceptability among untrained consumer panels. In sensory evaluation, several
techniques are used for various objectives.

Sensory Descriptive Tests :

Descriptive sensory analysis is a method used to develop a detailed sensory profile of a product by
evaluating the intensities of specific descriptors. This approach typically involves a trained panel of
assessors, usually 10-16, who use standardized scales to rate various sensory attributes. In the context
of carbonated beverages, this method helps assess attributes related to foam, bubbles, and carbonation
(Viejo et al., 2019). Studies have explored various sensory descriptors related to carbonated
beverages. For example, researchers have assessed attributes like bite, burn, numbing, bubble size,
sound of bubbles, and gas expansion using scales ranging from 0 (absent) to 15 (extremely intense).
These studies have revealed temperature effects on sensory perceptions, with attributes like cooling,
bite, burn, and numbing being more pronounced at cooler temperatures, while bubble -related
attributes increase at higher temperatures (Carbonated water lexicon: Temperature and CO2 level
influence on ...).

Descriptive sensory analysis has found application in research on beer, specifically for assessing
characteristics related to foam and carbonation. Scholars have conducted evaluations of Brazilian and
Italian beer varieties using the QDA technique, considering descriptors related to aspects like flavor,
taste, and appearance, which encompass factors like foam longevity and the sensation of carbonation
in the mouth (Jardim et al.). Additionally, researchers have investigated how foam-related factors
influence sensory attributes such as bitterness, sweetness, and sourness. Innovative methods, like the
RoboBEER approach, combine robotics and artificial neural networks to evaluate sensory
characteristics precisely, streamlining the time and expenses traditionally associated with sensory
assessments. Importantly, this methodology is adaptable for analyzing a range of carbonated
beverages, providing insights into both physical and sensory attributes (Gonzalez Viejo C;Fuentes
S;Torrico DD;Howell K;Dunshea FR;).

Consumer Sensory Analysis:

Consumer sensory tests are critical for assessing a product's salient features and all-around
attractiveness. The nine-point hedonic scale and tests that involve ranking or selecting preferred
samples are common techniques (Sensory evaluation practices). Gonzalez Viejo and colleagues used
audible sound in the 25–75 Hz range in a recent study to modify bubble size in commercial
carbonated water (Viejo et al., 2019). They noticed that, as measured using a nine-point hedonic scale,
this adjustment increased customer acceptability. They used a similar procedure to increase foam
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creation and lower bubble size in beer, which may have improved the drink's quality. Future studies
might examine the effects of these changes in bubble size on the ability of these beverages to quench
thirst. Few studies have investigated preference tests in the context of carbonated beverage products,
frequently utilizing different scales and methodologies (Lawless & Heymann, Sensory evaluation of
food). A paired comparison test aimed to assess if participants could choose the sample with the
highest level of carbonation out of a variety of samples with varying amounts of residual CO2 and
different sized bubbles (The control of bubble size in carbonated beverages 2001).

Hedonic Scale Sensory Evaluation Form

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Representation of sensory acceptability methods, encompassing both conventional and cutting-edge

approaches including non-invasive biometrics, robotics, and machine learning methods. displaying the
model diagrams to evaluate (a) low and high levels of liking of carbonation mouthfeel, flavour, and
overall liking using biometrics as inputs; (b) low and high levels of liking of foam using biometrics
and colour and foam-related parameters as inputs; and (c) rating of carbonation mouthfeel, bitter taste,
flavour, and overall liking using colour and foam-related parameters.

.
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Questionnaire Preference Tests Sensory Evaluation Form

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References:

Author links open overlay panelG.S Barker, AbstractThe effects on bubble growth dynamics of
physically altering the substrate surface on which gas bubbles are nucleated following
depressurisation of a saturated solution have been studied. Seven different modified surfaces
have been investigated, Scriven, L. E., Wilt, P. M., & Bankoff, S. G. (2001, November 28). The
control of bubble size in carbonated beverages. Chemical Engineering Science.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0009250901003918

Author links open overlay panelN.J.N. Yau, & noncarbonated, A. and. (2010, April 12). Sensory
evaluation of sweetened flavored carbonated milk beverages. Journal of Dairy Science.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022030289791189

Carbonated water lexicon: Temperature and CO2 level influence on ... (n.d.-a).
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Carbonated-Water-Lexicon%3A-Temperature-and-
CO2-Level-Harper-McDaniel/b0ef6fffc21dbc18ef4385b31f6d44944904aa2e

The effect of sonication on bubble size and sensory perception of ... (n.d. -c).
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sigfredo-
Fuentes/publication/335599085_The_Effect_of_Sonication_on_Bubble_Size_and_Sensory_Pe
rception_of_Carbonated_Water_to_Improve_Quality_and_Consumer_Acceptability/links/5d7
a1ebc4585151ee4afafa0/The-Effect-of-Sonication-on-Bubble-Size-and-Sensory-Perception-of-
Carbonated-Water-to-Improve-Quality-and-Consumer-
Acceptability.pdf?origin=publication_detail

Gonzalez Viejo C;Fuentes S;Torrico DD;Howell K;Dunshea FR; (n.d.). Assessment of beer quality based
on a robotic pourer, computer vision, and machine learning algorithms using commercial
beers. Journal of food science. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29603223/

Jardim, C. D. C., Souza, D. D., Machado, I. C. K., Pinto, L. M. N., Ramos, R. C. D. S., & Garavaglia, J.
(n.d.). Sensory profile, consumer preference and chemical composition of craft beers from
Brazil. Beverages | Free Full-Text. https://www.mdpi.com/2306-5710/4/4/106/review_report
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Lawless, H. T., & Heymann, H. (n.d.). Sensory evaluation of food. SpringerLink.

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4419-6488-5

Image link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6963625/bin/foods-08-00596-g001.jpg

Marques, C., Correia, E., Dinis, L.-T., & Vilela, A. (2022, January 18). An overview of sensory
characterization techniques: From classical descriptive analysis to the emergence of novel
profiling methods. Foods (Basel, Switzerland).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8834440/

Sensory analysis, the different methods and how it is used. (n.d.-b).

https://d298t4b8zukb44.cloudfront.net/media/bic/knowledge_base/documents/FDST1.pdf

Sensory evaluation practices. ScienceDirect. (n.d.).

https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780126726909/sensory-evaluation-practices

Viejo, C. G., Torrico, D. D., Dunshea, F. R., & Fuentes, S. (2019a, September 12). The effect of
sonication on bubble size and sensory perception of carbonated water to improve quality and
consumer acceptability. MDPI. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/beverages5030058

Viejo, C. G., Torrico, D. D., Dunshea, F. R., & Fuentes, S. (2019b, November 20). Bubbles, foam
formation, stability and consumer perception of carbonated drinks: A review of current, new
and emerging technologies for Rapid Assessment and control. Foods (Basel, Switzerland).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6963625/