Caracterização química e sensorial de cafés especiais do sul de Minas Gerais

Abstract

Nowadays, specialty coffees, with quality certifications, are winning the national and international markets, being the quality obtained by means of several parameters of physical and chemical nature of the grains. In order to reach this level, appropriate crop management techniques must be taken into account in addition to post-harvest handling. In this sense, in order to stimulate farmers to produce higher quality coffees, coffee quality contests have been realized in Minas Gerais and have been outstanding for presenting excellent samples. Therefore, the objective of this study was to correlate the coffee beans chemical composition with the sensory quality of the beverage in the finalist samples of the South of Minas coffee quality contest in 2013 and 2014. The Principal Components Analysis (PCA) shows that for the natural coffees, in 2013, the final score was not positively influenced by any fatty acid and no bioactive compound, however, it correlated inversely with the linolenic acid. For peeled cherry coffees, the final score did not correlate with any fatty acid and was influenced by the sweetness, acidity and sucrose attributes, and negatively by the caffeine content. The natural coffees of 2014 were positively influenced by oleic acid content and body, acidity, sweetness and flavor attributes, and negatively by linolenic acid. Studying the bioactive compounds, the final score was positively influenced by the sensory attributes, and negatively by the 5 -ACQ. Peeled cherries coffees were influenced positively by the presence of stearic and palmitic acid and by acidity, flavor, sweetness and body attributes, and negatively by lauric acid. In the study carried out among the bioactive compounds, the final score correlated positively with the sensory attributes and negatively with sucrose. According to Principal Components Regression (PCR), the best coffees of 2013 presented high levels of sensory attributes and linoleic or linolenic acid. The arachidic, palmitic and stearic acids correlated with coffees of lower sensorial quality. For the coffees of 2014, the highest scores were due to the sensory attributes and related to stearic acid. Palmitoleic and lauric fatty acids correlated with lower-scoring coffees. It is observed that the models proposed to explain the final coffee score were plausible, that is they were a good starting point to study the correlation between the chemical composition of the beans and the sensory quality of the coffee.