Sour Flavour Standard
The sour flavour is one of the basic tastes in all beverages. It is commonly found in some form in low-pH beverages, such as beer and carbonated soft drinks, as it is a vital component of their flavour. Beer tastes sour due to its acidity, and a change in the level of sourness will alter the product’s brand profile.
At FlavorActiv, we take sensory training to the next level with our exceptional Citric Acid Flavour Standard for Sensory Training. This specially crafted sour flavour standard has been meticulously designed to enhance your palate’s sensitivity to citric acid, a fundamental component in various food and beverage products.
Our Citric Acid Flavour Standard is used to help professional tasters identify the level of sour aroma in beverages. It illustrates the flavour of citric acid, acidic, or citrus bite-like flavour in beverages. With our Sour Flavour Flavour Standard kit, you can train your palate to recognise these defects like an expert!
We ship globally – shipping costs may apply depending on your region
Minimum Order: £275
What is a Sour Flavour?
A sour flavour is one of the five basic tastes that creates an acidic, tart, or citrus-like sensation on the palate. In beverages, sour flavour is characterised by its sharp, acidic quality that stimulates specific taste receptors on the tongue. This fundamental taste component is essential for achieving proper flavour balance in various drinks, particularly low-pH beverages such as beer, wine, and carbonated soft drinks.
The sour flavour standard serves as a professional reference tool that helps trained tasters identify and measure the intensity of acidic notes in beverages, ensuring consistent quality control and maintaining a brand profile.
What Causes Sour Flavour in Beverages?
Sourness is one of the basic tastes in all beverages. It is commonly found in some form in low-pH beverages, such as beer and carbonated soft drinks, as it is a vital component of their flavour. Alteration in the level of sour aroma will push the product out of its brand profile.
It occurs in alcoholic beverages from fermentation and in non-alcoholic beverages from flavourings. However, it can also be imparted by bacterial contamination, indicating poor hygiene within the production and storage areas.
Using the Sour Flavour Standard for Sensory Training
The FlavorActiv Citric Acid Flavour Standard is specifically designed and scientifically formulated to enhance professional tasters’ ability to detect and quantify sour notes in beverages with exceptional accuracy. This specialised training tool helps develop four key sensory capabilities :
– Palate Sensitivity Development
– Threshold Recognition Training
– Intensity Scaling Calibration
– Defect Identification Skills
How to Recognise Sour Flavour: Sensory Terms
Professional tasters use specific terminology to describe sour flavour characteristics :
– Citric acid
– Citric
– Acidic
– Citrus bite
These standardised terms ensure consistent communication among quality control professionals, brewers, and flavour specialists across different facilities and regions.
What are the Professional Applications of the Sour Flavour Standard?
This flavour standard has particular value in these professional applications :
– Brewmasters and beer tasters use it to identify and assess specific acidity levels in their products, ensuring proper pH balance and preventing deviations from brand profiles.
– Quality control professionals in the beverage industry rely on it to maintain consistent sourness levels across production batches and detect potential contamination issues that could alter acidity.
– Sensory analysts utilise it for flavour evaluation of carbonated soft drinks, fruit juices, and other acidulated beverages to ensure optimal tartness and flavour balance.
– Product development teams employ it as a reference point when creating new formulations, ensuring appropriate acid balance in innovative beverage products.
Other Information
Beer Flavour Wheel Number : 0920
Flavour level seen : 90 – 300 mg / l
Recommended flavour standard / sensory reference standard of the American Society of Brewing Chemists (ASBC) and the European Brewing Chemists (EBC)
FlavorActiV GMP Flavour Standards
Only Pharmaceutical Quality GMP Flavour Standards provide sufficient quality for professional sensory panels to train and validate with.
We produce encapsulated GMP (Pharmaceutical Good Manufacturing Practice) Flavour Standards that are safe to both smell and drink. The compounds within our capsules impart the aroma, taste and mouthfeel of a specific defect or positive flavour into a beverage for the purposes of taster training, calibration and quality control.
Our individual flavour GMP Flavour Standards are sold by flavour, each flavour pack contains 5 capsules, each separately blister packaged. Our sensory kits contain a mixture of flavours, each separately blister packaged, read the product description for flavour details.
We ship globally, and have over 20 years of experience at it. Our GMP Pharmaceutical Flavour Standards are produced to the highest standards, and as such, their shelf-life is strong and their quality consistent.
FlavorActiV’s flavour centre is the world’s only pharmaceutically run facility dedicated to the production of flavour reference standards. The Flavour Centre is a state-of-the-art facility housed within the campus of world-renowned Quay Pharma near Liverpool in the U.K.
The Flavour Centre was designed by FlavorActiV from the ground up at the direct request of global customers as they looked to move away from inferior food grade ‘certified flavour standards’ to GMP Pharma, a standard that ensures safe, stable, traceable, consistent and long shelf-life products.
All FlavorActiV’s industry-leading encapsulated flavour standards are manufactured following GMP at our Flavour Centre. All aspects of manufacture are overseen by Quay Pharma who are audited by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.K. Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory agency (MHRA). We also welcome customer audits.
Only FlavorActiV GMP flavour standard capsules bear our mark of authenticity.
We brand each of our capsules so that our customers know they’re getting the Pharmaceutical GMP Quality that only FlavorActiV provide.
Industry leading packaging and shelf-life
FlavorActiV flavour standards are blister packaged, which extends shelf-life and protects capsules from potential contamination. The average shelf-life of FlavorActiV flavour standards is 18 months to 4 years, depending on the flavour compounds.
We will never ship in pots or plastic packaging, here’s why…
Blister packaging protects capsules from the environment until they are ready for use. Blister packaging greatly reduces the amount of headspace for possible flavour escape. As each capsule individually blister packaged, making use of one capsule still leaves all others protected. FlavorActiV Flavour Standard packaging is 100% recyclable, as opposed to polypropylene which is not widely recycled.
Pots are semi-porous, they allow molecules to pass through and flavour to be lost, their significant headspace also adds to substantial flavour escape as a gas, even when using just one capsule all those remaining in the pot are exposed.
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