Electronic tongue as a rapid tool for the assessment of coffee flavour and chemical composition

Instrumental assessment of taste and flavor of foodstuffs has attracted significant interest as a possibility to partially replace human sensory panels in routine tasks. Biomimetic sensor systems, electronic tongues (ET), have been proposed as analytical instruments suitable for flavor and taste assessment. Several successful applications of these instruments to the assessment of food flavour were reported, though only few dealt with analysis of coffee. The present study reports on the application of the ET based on 20 potentiometric chemical sensors to the quantification of coffee flavor intensity and of chemical parameters related to some of the coffee taste aspects. ET could predict chemical parameters with MSE of 1-8% and flavor intensity with MSE of 15 %. This is the first study demonstrating the capability of potentiometric ET not only to discriminate coffee samples, but also to quantify chemical parameters and flavour characteristics in a large set of samples.