Description of Coffee Aroma with the Electronic Nose which Learned Wine Aromas, "Le Nez du Vin"

Abstract

Coffee aroma is considered to be one of the most complicated food aromas which have more than 600 components. For the analyses of total aromas objectively, some electronic noses have been applied and succeed in distinguishing coffees. However, the feature of coffee aroma (what kind of smell) was not clear, because the results from electronic noses showed generally the values in resistance/current, or distinguish the samples using principal component analyses. Here we present FF-2A electronic nose (Shimadzu Corporation, Japan) can distinguish and describe coffee aromas like wine experts, comparing with the smells of wine aromas kit, "Le Nez du Vin." Our results showed the electronic nose distinguished and described aromas from 2 types of Colombia coffees, instant coffee solution with 90˚C water and brewed coffee in a coffee shop (Fujioka K et al., Jpn J Taste Smell Res, 2013). The analysis data comparison with 51 aromas suggested the aroma from the brewed coffee was similar to Champignon, Pine, Coffee flavour, Honey, Strawberry, Musk, and Caramel. On the other hand, the aroma from the instant coffee was similar to Coffee flavour only. In conclusion, the electronic nose which learned "Le Nez du Vin" wine aroma kit distinguished and described the aroma from the coffees. As novel data, we also present aroma analyses of canned coffees. Since our method is applicable to other electronic noses, it will expand utilization of electronic noses.