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Mouldy/Damp Flavour Standard
The Mouldy/Damp Flavour Standard by FlavorActiV is designed to help sensory professionals accurately identify, understand, and quantify mouldy or musty off-flavours in beverages. This off-flavour is most commonly associated with 2,4,6-Trichloroanisole (TCA)—the compound widely known for causing cork taint in wine, but it can affect all beverage categories, including beer, spirits, and soft drinks.
Enhance your sensory training and defect detection capabilities with the FlavorActiV Mouldy/Damp Flavour Standard—an essential reference for recognising and managing one of the most challenging off-flavours in beverage production.
We ship globally – shipping costs may apply depending on your region
Minimum Order: £275
WHAT IS MOULDY/DAMP FLAVOUR?
Mouldy/damp flavour is an off-flavour characterised by musty, earthy, cellar-like aromas often associated with moist, enclosed, or poorly ventilated spaces.
In sensory science, this defect is most commonly linked to TCA (2,4,6-Trichloroanisole), a compound with a very low detection threshold, meaning even trace levels can significantly impact product quality.
WHAT CAUSES MOULDY/DAMP FLAVOUR?
Understanding what causes mouldy/damp flavour is essential for prevention and quality control.
Primary Cause: Trichloroanisole (TCA)
Mouldy/damp off-flavour is primarily caused when moulds metabolise chlorophenols, producing TCA as a by-product. This process is promoted in dark, damp environments.
Common Sources of Contamination
– Poor storage of raw materials
– Poor storage of finished products
– Contaminated packaging materials
– Pipework contamination
– Transportation materials such as:
- – Wooden pallets
- – Cardboard boxes
Environmental Risk Factors
– Cold storage facilities
– Cellars and basements
– Refrigeration units with incorrect thermostat or timing settings
(leading to prolonged condensation)
USING THE MOULDY/DAMP FLAVOUR STANDARD FOR SENSORY TRAINING
The mouldy/damp flavour standard is an essential tool for structured sensory training programmes. It helps panels:
– Learn to recognise TCA-related defects
– Accurately scale intensity
– Build confidence in identifying early contamination
– Improve panel alignment and repeatability
This is especially valuable for new panel members and refresher training for experienced tasters.
HOW TO RECOGNISE MOULDY/DAMP FLAVOUR: SENSORY TERMS
WCR Sensory Lexicon Remarks
– Aromatic associated with damp, closed spaces or basements
– May be musty, sharp, and slightly green
FlavorActiV Sensory Terms
– 2,4,6-Trichloroanisole
– Musty
– Damp
– Cellar
– Cork taint / corked wine
– Old books
WHAT ARE THE PROFESSIONAL APPLICATIONS OF THE MOULDY/DAMP FLAVOUR STANDARD?
Professionals across the beverage industry widely use this standard for:
– Sensory panel training and calibration
– Quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC)
– Supplier and packaging audits
– Root cause analysis of off-flavours
– Shelf-life and storage condition studies
– New product development (NPD)
OTHER INFORMATION
TCA is such a problem due to two main reasons:
Very low sensory detection threshold
Easy migration through porous surfaces. TCA can move through plastic, cardboard, waxed or other surfaces- easily contaminating many different.
FlavorActiV refers to Mouldy/Damp as Musty.
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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