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Catty Flavour Standard
The Catty Flavour Standard from FlavorActiV is designed to train professional beer tasters in identifying the ‘catty’ off-flavour. The catty flavour is described as tomcat urine, Ribes, sulphurous, or blackcurrant leaves-like off-flavours that can occur in beer as defects. This taint is caused by the early oxidation of beer during storage. It can also be imparted by the contamination of raw materials, which are then introduced into beer during production.
Don’t let off-flavours affect your brewing – use the FlavorActiV Catty Flavour Standard today!
We ship globally – shipping costs may apply depending on your region
Minimum Order: £275
What Is Catty Flavour?
Catty flavour is an off-flavour in beer that is often described using sensory terms such as:
– Tomcat urine
– Blackcurrant leaves
– Ribes
– Sulphurous notes
This flavour is caused by specific chemical compounds, primarily p-mentha-8-thiol-3-one (PMT), which imparts the distinct aroma of tomcat urine and blackcurrant leaves.
What Causes Catty Flavour?
The cause of catty flavour in beer is primarily linked to:
– Early oxidation during storage.
– Contaminated raw materials are introduced during brewing.
– The compound p-mentha-8-thiol-3-one (PMT), responsible for the distinct aroma similar to tomcat urine or blackcurrant leaves.
Catty flavour belongs to the group of sulphur off-flavours, which can significantly impact beer quality if left unchecked. Understanding these causes is essential for breweries to prevent the occurrence of catty flavour in their products.
Using the Catty Flavour Standard for Sensory Training
The Catty Flavour Standard for sensory training provides a reliable reference point for breweries and sensory panels. By training with this standard, tasters can:
– Accurately detect catty notes in beer.
– Distinguish it from other sulphur-related off-flavours.
– Improve consistency in flavour assessment across teams.
FlavorActiV’s standard is recognised by global brewing organisations, including the American Society of Brewing Chemists (ASBC) and the European Brewing Chemists (EBC), making it a trusted tool for quality control.
How to Recognise Catty Flavour: Sensory Terms
When evaluating beer, sensory panellists may use the following descriptors to identify catty flavour:
– Tomcat urine
– Blackcurrant leaves / Ribes
– Sulphurous notes
– Herbal or vegetal aromas
Because of its strong association with animal-like aromas, some tasters may find the catty flavour particularly challenging to detect without structured training.
What are the Professional Applications of the Catty Flavour Standard?
The Catty Flavour Standard is widely used in:
– Breweries – to train quality control teams and ensure flavour consistency.
–Sensory labs – to help panellists distinguish catty flavour from other defects.
–Brewing education programs – to teach students about beer faults and sensory science.
–Product development – ensuring new brews remain free from undesirable sulphur off-flavours.
Other Information
Beer Flavour Wheel Number: 0810
Flavour levels: TBD
Some sensory panellists may find the catty flavour challenging due to its sensory similarity to tomcat urine.
Recommended flavour standard / sensory reference standard of: American Society of Brewing Chemists (ASBC) and the European Brewing Chemists (EBC)
By incorporating the Catty Flavour Standard into sensory training programs, breweries can maintain high-quality production standards and minimise flavour defects in their final products.
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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