June 12, 2023
Taste Sensations
Sipping on a red wine, savouring a wagyu steak and pondering over coffee may sound like a perfect meal.
FaBA works with trained sensory panellists, who consider these flavours all in a day’s work. The team’s experience has led to them being recognised as the best in the country.
For many foodies being able to taste test new food and beverage products sounds like a dream, but for the Food and Beverage Accelerator’s sensory tasting panel it is serious business.
Through the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI), in collaboration with the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Forestry, The University of Queensland is the only Australian university to maintain a sensory tasting panel of this calibre.
The panel members – many who have worked in the team for almost a decade – have been tested extensively for their taste and texture sensitivities.
Researchers have studied each panellist’s salivary flow rate and composition, oral capacity and chewing behaviour, swallow time, oral tactile sensitivity, supertaster status and personality type.
“The benefits of a permanent panel are that we know the team very well – and they know their food incredibly well,” said Associate Professor Heather Smyth, Deputy Leader of FaBA’s Premium Food and Beverage Program.
The panel has had extensive exposure to wine, coffee, beef, native foods, diary and plant-based products, and is well versed in descriptive analysis and difference testing as well as more cutting-edge sensory techniques.
Increasingly, researchers are receiving requests to taste test plant-based products in comparison to meat. Panellists are considering flavour, juiciness, colour, texture and “mouth feel”.
“The panellists are all very interested in food and passionate about what they do. They are very fussy about what they taste, which is what we want – it is an important part of their job,” said Associate Professor Smyth.
“The experience of our team means we can be more efficient, provide faster results, higher quality data and ultimately better value for money.”
Associate Professor Smyth said that the panel ranged in age from 23-60 years, included people of all genders, and was ethnically diverse.
“We can quickly pull together a targeted group of ‘ideal’ people, based on their tasting profile, to test and taste a variety of foods and answer specific research questions or profile the sensory properties of a new product.”
The panellists work in state-of-the-art tasting facilities which include 14 blind tasting booths with iPads (to collect more data than pen and paper), a discussion room for calibration and focus groups, and a generous commercial kitchen and product development space.
The facility undertakes as many as 25 sensory projects annually, ranging from one session to five weeks of tastings for a specific project, a number which is expected to increase with project investment through the Food and Beverage Accelerator.