Cold brew coffee is defined by its brewing process, which involves slowly passing cold water through fresh, roasted, ground coffee beans. The cold brew process allows for a smoother, less acidic coffee profile. This process also maintains and captures more of the volatile aroma compounds that would otherwise be driven off with traditional brewing processes.
One of the main challenges of current cold brew processes is that they often require the product to be brewed ad hoc, increasing production time. Alternatively, there are a number of cold brew extracts which are brewed off-site and shipped in via refrigerated or frozen trucks. They require refrigeration or frozen storage and generally have a limited shelf life. These factors add complexity to the supply chain and require additional production planning in order to accommodate the refrigerated and frozen material, which may need to be delivered days in advance in order to thaw out frozen product.
Prova evaluated many cold brew market products in order to identify the most popular profiles with the intention of building a wider profile of top notes.
Sensory Analysis Applied
By using this type of sensory evaluation, Prova is able to show that multiple unique profiles can be created by experimenting with the ratios of cold and hot brew extracts. The goal of the following sensory analysis is to be able to expertly analyze the profiles and determine the discriminative descriptors.
The study took place in two parts. The first part was a comparison between a new cold brew extract and a hot brew extract. The second part was a comparison of several blends of the new cold brew extract and different hot brew extracts.
