Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/491371
STiR tea & coffee industry international 47 ter Lingle's book became required reading for spe- cialty coffee buyers. Fernandez said, "I witnessed the transition from primitive traditional cupping to the modern cupping we have nowadays." About buying coffee using traditional means, he said, "It was a complete chaos because each country had its own grading systems, and you can still see that." He went on to add that before the Coffee Cuppers' Handbook, "There was not a way to compare two coffees once they reached their high- est grade." The late 1990s were an exciting time for spe- cialty coffee. New tools became available and in- dustry institutions organized themselves around understanding better how to tie quality to flavor and market demand. Founded in 1996, the Spe- cialty Coffee Institute, now known as the Coffee Quality Institute, began the work of establishing training and certification programs based on what have become the de facto international standard for specialty coffee. The first Coffee Taster's Fla- vor Wheel posters were produced and became available in 1997. Le Nez du Café kits, a "book-object" that in- cluded aroma references, was launched the same year as part of the 70th anniversary of the National Federation of Colombian Coffee Growers. Fernandez said, of combining SCAA cupping protocols with Le Nez du Café as a study refer- ence, "It's really [a] robust system but actually the best advantage of it is that it's used everywhere and any person can get a reference for those organic acids or for those olfactory terms very easily." Empaneled to describe flavor During the period following World War II, large companies began to increasingly apply scientific methodologies to how they developed new flavors for consumer goods. New techniques using experts and consumers to identify and validate consumer goods meant to be ingested as a snack, meal, or beverage matured. Members recruited to tasting panels today can vary in what level of product naiveté or experience they pos- By Nestlé Nespresso SA The scent of coffee that humans sense through smell consists of volatile mol- ecules, i.e. the ones that easily escape into air. The many constituents of green coffee beans, such as sugars, proteins, amino acids, chlorogenic acids, and lipids transform into aroma and taste molecules through the roasting process to bring out the flavor of the final product. For many decades, scientists have been intrigued at how the biochemical make-up of the green coffee bean relates to the flavor potential of the roasted coffee. While some reaction mechanisms have been described and many fla- vor compounds discovered, a lot remains to be done to reveal the full mystery of coffee roasting. In the early 1960s, researchers had identified approximately 100 volatile compounds in roasted coffee. By the 1990s, this number had increased to 800, and today the estimate is more than 1,000. Of course, it is not the coffee that was changing; this increase in estimates of aroma molecules is due to im- proved analytical methods now used to isolate, separate, and identify unstable and trace compounds. The number of compounds, however, is not the most relevant detail for understanding the flavor of food products. Werner Grosch from the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Lebensmittel- chemie Garching, and Peter Schieberle, Technical University of Munich (TUM) pioneered the identification of aroma compounds and their role in the aroma of coffee. They agree that there are only around 25 key aroma compounds responsible for what humans smell above a cup of coffee. Scientists identified the importance of these impact odorants because humans can perceive them and laboratory tests show they occur in large enough quantities to contribute to the scent of coffee. So, in reality, the remaining 975 or so compounds play a minor role or no role at all in the perception of the smell of coffee. Continued pg. 49 The figure illustrates the difference in the onset of aroma formation in a drum roaster (Neptune 500, Probat) and a tangential roaster (Jupiter 500 Hybrid, Probat). The aroma intensity differs due to differences in airflow (presented by Alexia Glöss at ASIC 2014) Revealing the Mystery of Coffee Roasting Advancing flavor chemistry through science Photo courtesy Counter Culture Coffee