Food and Beverage Testing and Descriptive Analysis
Testing and Analyzing Food and Beverage Products
Much of the work we do at 21st Sensory involves food and beverage testing. Clients come to us with questions about their food or beverage product and we work with them to find answers.
Which energy drink best matches the conceptual space of the mapping study?
Does our ranch dressing match the industry leader? If not, what needs to be "tweaked"?
How much hops flavor is in our signature microbrew beer?
Which prototype biscuit is most like "home made"?
Are the different production sites consistent?
We get asked a multitude of questions every week. Every project begins with questions. Sometimes there are lots and LOTS of questions. Our first job is to talk to you at length to find out what your objectives are.
As an Example…
We might hear you say "Which chocolate has less bitter aftertaste?" That's easy!
Or, we might hear you say "We have two flavors of refrigerated puddings with three different levels of sucrose and non sucrose sweeteners. We are including three different packaging containers in the study. We want them tested at different time intervals. Oh, and we want consumer difference testing at the 3 week test point. If that shows a difference, we will need a preference test. We need flavor and texture analysis and reports with analysis of variance (ANOVA) and means separation analysis at the different test points. How much sample do you need?"
Yes, it's complicated.
But it's what we do. And we enjoy the challenge.
We did pass once on a project request. A caller from Canada called and asked: "The company that makes my cat's canned food is going out of business, can you analyze what she is getting now and help me identify a matching cat food?"