Formulação de cerveja New England India Pale Ale utilizando lupulina em pó e análise preliminar de receptividade do consumidor

Abstract

The craft beer market is in growing expansion in Brazil and all around the world, bringing to the customers new varieties, flavors and scents, providing new and exquisite experiences. Such expansion in the Brazilian market comes with the arrival of new technologies from the international market, developed to ease the process, lower the costs or produce new flavors and aromas. An example of those new technologies is Cryo Hops™ - a method developed by Yakima Chief – Hopunion (YchHop) to separate the lupulin powder from the leafs from the hop fruit, which eases the manipulation and saves money in the process of hoping without any loss of bitterness or aroma. In Ceará, the use of Cryo Hops is being made for the very first time by 5Elementos Craft Beer Factory, which used its New England India Pale Ale (NEIPA) Juice for the addition of Mosaic hop lupulin powder for smell intensification, which created their new beer CryoJuice. To get to know the reaction from the Brazilian costumers to this new ingredient, a consumer receptivity evaluation was performed in the Laboratory of Sensorial Evaluations in the Department of Food Engineering from the Federal University of Ceará. The analysis verified if the participants were able to notice the sensorial differences between Juice and CryoJuice in matter of bitterness and aroma – the beer aspects were the hop method takes place -, as well as the acceptance of CryoJuice. It was offered to each participant 50ml of each beer at around 7ºC, with a glass of water between them. The total of 43 answers were analyzed and obtained through a form composed by questions with structured hedonic scale for each sample. It was concluded that, even though Juice had a good public acceptance, with a scent described as “fruity” and with a bitterness described as medium to strong, CryoJuice didn’t get as much consensus about the nature of its smell, and was more disapproved for having a bitterness described as medium to very strong. Such acceptance just stimulates the adaptation of the beer recipe, which only aimed an aroma fortification. Besides, it doesn’t appear to be an obstacle for the usage of Cryo Hops in Brazil, since the technology brings with it a lot of advantages.