Perfil sensorial de café arábica comercial – avaliação por consumidores pelo método CATA home use test

Abstract

Historically, Brazil has occupied a prominent position in the production and export of coffee on the international market. Today, the coffee market in Brazil is considered to be in transformation, with consumers expanding their experimentation and valuing better quality products. This scenario highlights the importance of understanding consumer preferences and evaluating the quality of Brazilian coffees. The quality of coffee is due to the agronomic handling, drying, roasting, grinding and preparation of the drink, enhancing visual, aromatic and taste characteristics, with a direct impact on the sensory quality of the drink. In this context, the present work aims to use consumers to sensorially describe the beverage obtained from coffee beans (Coffea arabica Typica) from two coffee producing regions in Pernambuco, through residential tests. Two samples of arabica coffee cultivar Typica, from Triunfo and Taquaritinga do Norte in the form of green beans with roasting and grinding with controlled parameters to obtain medium roast and fine average grinding, and a commercial sample were evaluated for visual, aromatic and tastes, through the Check-All-That-Apply (CATA) test were carried out at home through the online google forms platform using the Melitta® strainer for coffee preparation, with the test location being a necessity due to the new reality promoted by the Covid-19 pandemic. The results showed that the consumer is able to distinguish the specialty coffees but had difficulty in attributing flavor and aroma characteristics to the traditional coffee, probably due to the excessive roasting and the low quality of the beans. Just opposite to the results of specialty coffees, which demonstrated greater ease of characterization as a clear, orange and less bitter drink compared to the traditional coffee evaluated. Brazil has excellent varieties of coffee that, with proper agronomic management and processing can be categorized as superior quality coffees, as well as the coffees evaluated during this study, and thus satisfy the increasingly demanding national and international consumer marke