Effect of adding hop aroma in beer analysed by temporal dominance of sensations and emotions coupled with temporal liking

Individual sensory properties of food and beverages are not perceived independently during consumption and their interaction will determine what consumers perceive and prefer. Many dynamic processes are involved in flavour release during the consumption experience and therefore its perception should be measured dynamically. To investigate how dynamic sensory and emotion profiles interact and how this relates to temporal liking, this study used a multi-sip approach with temporal dominance of sensations (TDS), temporal dominance of emotions (TDE) and temporal liking (TL), to compare three beers with small sensory differences in hop aroma: control beer (0% hop aroma), low_c beer (0.08% hop aroma) and high_c beer (0.16% hop aroma). Seventy-one beer consumers consumed a glass of each beer while performing TDE + TL and TDS + TL, on consecutive days in a sensory lab. Adding different concentrations of hop aroma in beer resulted in different dynamic sensory profiles without a difference in liking. The attribute floral was dominant in the high_c beer and in the last stage of consumption. TDE revealed an improvement of the emotional profile of the high_c beer at the beginning of consumption: three positive emotions, relaxed, pleased and happy were dominant, whereas for the other beers, one positive and one negative emotion were dominant, relaxed or pleased and disappointed. Overall differences between beers based on total duration of dominance were clear when looking at sensations rather than emotions while the combination of dynamic profiles of sensations and emotions showed a slight discrimination between the beers. It can be concluded that the subtle changes in the aroma resulted in differences in temporal dominance of sensations, did not affect liking and only slightly changed the emotion profile. The method used in this study remains to be proven further for use in food-related research and new product development, especially in the case of subtle changes.