How to Screen a Flavor: A Step-by-Step Guide

How To Screen a Flavor: A Step-By-Step Guide

 

Are you a food scientist, R&D member, or food industry professional looking for a simple, accurate guide on how to screen an industrial flavor? You've come to the right place.

 

Brisan collaborated with our network of flavor experts to put together a cohesive step-by-step guide on "How to Screen a Flavor". Just 5 simple steps and you're on your way to screening industrial flavors like a pro. 

 

Why is it important to follow this guide?

 
 

Following this guide can help ensure that your lab is screening flavors correctly. It can also show customers that your lab follows sophisticated SOP's.

 
 

Simple, easy to follow guide

 

This "How to Screen a Flavor" guide highlights:

  1. An industry standard process; 
  2. Industry standard "simple tasting solutions";
  3. An overall industry standard evaluation method.
 
 

Where did we get our information?

 

We interviewed expert flavorists from our diverse network of flavor specialists in a variety of flavor markets across the nation. Our information is:

  1. Well-rounded;
  2. Unbiased;
  3. Accurate.
 
 

Best Practices

 
  • Use distilled water.
  • Only taste in milk if end product / application is dairy-based.
  • Taste warm if end application is warm.
  • You can use canola oil or any non-flavored oil.
  • Stir very well to reduce risk of "hot spots".
  • We suggest a "middle of the line" milk, such as a 2% milk.
  • After a flavor is screened in simple tasting solutions, it is always recommended to also screen in application. Flavors manifest differently in the end application with other flavor nuances coming into play, temperature plays an enormous role in the flavor's final profile, and more. See below case study: 
 
 

Case Study

 
How to Screen a Butter Flavor

Summary: A cookie company is looking for a natural butter flavor in a cookie application.

Customer Objective: Increase butter flavor intensity in the baked cookie system, while maintaining a "clean label" using a bake-stable natural flavor.

Brisan's Approach: Be mindful of the customer's application, label restrictions, and processing. 

The First Choice Ingredients Lab 

The First Choice Ingredients Lab 

Solution: Send the customer a First Choice Ingredients "Natural Butter Flavor WONF" that is intentionally heightened with heat-sensitive, fragile flavor components, understanding that a majority of them will be "flashed-off" or lost in the heating process.

In a simple tasting solution, this "Natural Butter Flavor WONF" will taste unbalanced with peaky "off-notes", but post bake, the butter flavor "off-notes" become suppressed, resulting in an authentic, balanced butter flavor. 

Outcome: The exaggerated flavor nuances in the "Natural Butter Flavor WONF" solved the customer’s bake-stable flavor problem. The cookie formula has been fully scaled-up, and is now in retail.

 

Pretty legit, huh? 

 
 
 
Want more info about industrial flavors? Need help sourcing quality flavors? We're the experts with the answers.

Call us at (773) 492-1085 or click here to send us a message.
Brian Vogt