Análise sensorial descritiva de cachaça: proposta de um protocolo preliminar para avaliação da qualidade da bebida

• Ano de defesa: 2010
• Autor(a) principal: Araújo, Leandro Dias
• Orientador(a): Chaves, José Benício Paes
• Banca de defesa: Fontes, Edimar Aparecida Filomeno , Carneiro, Joel Camilo Souza
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade Federal de Viçosa
• Programa de Pós-Graduação: Mestrado em Ciência e Tecnologia de Alimentos
• Departamento: Ciência de Alimentos; Tecnologia de Alimentos; Engenharia de Alimentos
• País: BR
• Palavras-chave em Português: Cachaça; Sensorial; Bebida destilada
• Palavras-chave em Inglês: Cachaça; Sensory; Distilled beverage
• Área do conhecimento CNPq: CNPQ::CIENCIAS AGRARIAS::CIENCIA E TECNOLOGIA DE ALIMENTOS::CIENCIA DE ALIMENTOS
• Link de acesso: http://locus.ufv.br/handle/123456789/2877

Cachaça is a traditional Brazilian sugar cane distilled beverage. It has gained great importance and value in the last years, both nationally and internationally. Together with this valorization, it has also grown the requirement for quality and standardization, and, consequently, leading to the need for a sensory profiling methodology of cachaça that could be used for the quality control departments. Therefore, this work had as objective to propose a sensory quality assessment protocol for cachaça, defining the most relevant sensory descriptors of sugar cane spirits, aged or not, determining the minimum number of panelists to assure a reliable descriptive evaluation of the beverage and to make a reduction on the number of descriptors. Chemical determinations were performed to attest the conformation to the legal standards of the samples and to realize a correlation analysis between the chemical and sensory evaluations. The majority of the samples were in accordance with Brazilian legal standards or had minor deviations that did not affected the consumer safety. One sample was discarded because it had high levels of some compounds. There were defined 15 sensory descriptors through the evaluation of 21 different brands: yellow color, oiliness, alcoholic aroma, sugar cane aroma, vanilla aroma, chemical compounds aroma, wood aroma, caramel aroma, sweet taste, acid taste, bitter taste, alcoholic flavor, wood flavor, astringency and pungency. Four spirit brands were evaluated by ten panelists for the determination of the minimal panel size. Panels with different sizes (8, 6, 4, 3 and 2 panelists/panel) were formed and the sensory evaluation data for each one compared. In general, the descriptors that contributed the most for the differentiation of the brands were yellow color, wood aroma, chemical compounds aroma and wood flavor, forming equivalent brand groups on the reduced panels. The data’s principal components analysis indicated a higher relationship between the first component and descriptors related to aged products, such as yellow color, wood aroma and flavor, vanilla aroma and caramel aroma. The second principal component was mostly related to the descriptor linked to not aged products, such as alcoholic aroma and sugar cane aroma. There was a spatial configuration loss of the brands dispersion related to the two firsts principal components when the panel reducing level was higher than 70%. The panels with 8 panelists could retain, in average, 74,3% of the descriptors having significant treatment effects; the panels with 6 retained 65,7%; the panels with 4 retained 65,7%; the panels with 3 retained 51,4%; and the panels with 2 retained with 42,9%. Only the panels with 4, 3 and 2 panelists were able to retain more information than could be predicted. The results suggest that panels with 4 panelists could be used on the sensory evaluation of sugar cane spirits without a critical loss of information. Eighteen brands of sugar cane spirits were analyzed in order to determine the most relevant descriptors on the characterization of the aged and not aged products. For the aged product, the less important descriptors, according to the canonical variable analysis, were alcoholic aroma, wood aroma, bitter taste and astringency. For the not aged products, the descriptors indicated as the less important were alcoholic aroma, wood aroma, vanilla aroma, astringency and pungency. It was not observed many correlations between the chemical and sensory determinations. A protocol for the sensory evaluation of cachaça was proposed. The presented methodology for the recruitment and selection of assessors was used. According to the results of this work, the evaluation should be done by at least four assessors and, depending on the kind of product, using the most relevant sensory attributes.