A new Coffee Brewing Control Chart relating sensory properties and consumer liking to brew strength, extraction yield, and brew ratio

Abstract

The classic Coffee Brewing Control Chart (BCC) was originally developed in the 1950s. It relates coffee quality to brew strength and extraction yield, and it is still widely used today by coffee industry professionals around the world to provide guidance on the brewing of coffee. Despite its popularity, recent experimental studies have revealed that sensory attributes and consumer preferences actually follow much more complicated trends than those indicated by the classic BCC. Here, we present a methodology to synthesize the results of these recent studies on drip-brewed coffee to generate new versions of the BCC: a new Sensory BCC that displays a broad array of statistically significant sensory attributes across typical total dissolved solids and percent extraction ranges, a new Consumer BCC that highlights the existence of two preference clusters with different likes and dislikes across those ranges, a new Sensory and Consumer BCC that combines both sensory descriptive and consumer preferences on the same chart, and a more streamlined BCC that omits consumer preferences and focuses on the overarching sensory descriptive trends. The new BCCs provide more accurate insight on how best to brew coffee to achieve desired sensory profiles. PRACTICAL APPLICATION: Through the manipulation of yield and extraction parameters, the new Sensory and Consumer Coffee Brewing Control Chart presented here can be used by brewers of drip coffee to design coffees with specific sensory profiles and match the preferences of different consumer types.