A potentially new tool designed to identify bias in coffee evaluation could soon be in development: a tasting helmet.
Researchers in Italy say they have demonstrated the feasibility of using wearable technology, such as helmets, to measure emotional responses to coffee tasting. They said their study is the first in which wearable sensors have been employed to examine the implicit emotional responses of experienced coffee judges.
The peer-reviewed study was published in The Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture , a Wiley publication associated with the Society of Chemical Industry (SCI),
For the study, the Italian team used what is known as an electrocardiographic signal (ECG), Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) and electroencephalographic signal (EEG). The methods measured the electrical activity of the heart muscle, skin and brain.
“The findings revealed significant correlations between these biomedical signals and data obtained from conventional questionnaires across all sensory domains, confirming the feasibility of the approach to improving coffee quality assessment,” the researchers wrote.
As silly as it sounds, identifying and eliminating bias in coffee evaluation has been a major initiative by one of the coffee industry's leading advocacy organizations, the Specialty Coffee Association , for the past three years. Designed to replace the traditional way of tasting and the 100-point scale for professional tasters, the new SCA Coffee Value Assessment seeks to scientifically explain biases in coffee evaluation.
Although the SCA tool is already being used by active coffee roasters, the Italian tasting helmet may need a little more time to be officially launched. The researchers noted that more work must be done, including collaboration with professional tasters and industry, before the methods described in their study are refined for practical applications.
“This research could open a new perspective for the sensory analysis of coffee tasting,” said Lucia Billeci, researcher at the Institute of Clinical Physiology of the Italian National Research Council (IFC-CNR) and corresponding author of the study, in an announcement. from SCI. “In addition to the usual questionnaires, panelists and judges can be equipped with minimally invasive devices and can be monitored in terms of the emotions that trigger physiological responses.”
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