The sensory assessment of the thirst-quenching characteristics of drinks

A list of seven sensory attributes was derived from focus groups, which consumers felt were important in influencing the thirst-quenching properties of drinks: acid, astringent, carbonation,fruity, strength of flavour, sweetness and thickness. Eight drink products mere chosen from the groups to undertake further sensory and consumer research. A trained panel ranked the drinks according to increasing intensity of seven attributes. Thurstonian scaling and correspondence analysis were used to derive an interval scale for each of the attributes, thus allowing the degree of difference between the Products to be quantified. A staff 'consumer' panel ranked the Products according to perception of thirst-quenching, and provided acceptability judgements. Information from the two panels was related using correlations, partial least squares regression and correspondence analysis. Acid was most associated with thirst-quenching, whilst sweetness and thickness were least associated. Thirst-quenching and acceptability were closely related for the group of products investigated. The we of correspondence analysis war shown to be a very useful technique for the data collected. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.