Dados do Trabalho

Título

SENSORY CHARACTERIZATION OF MEAD WITH BUTIÁ (Butia catharinensis) USING HEDONIC SCALE AND CHECK-ALL-THAT-APPLY

Introdução

Mead is an alcoholic beverage traditionally produced with honey, water, and yeast, which can vary through the addition of fruits and spices. Brazil is one of the world's largest honey producers, producing honey of excellent quality, in addition to having a wide diversity of flavorful and underutilized native fruits. The combination of these raw materials in a product, such as mead, adds value to Brazilian products and can promote the regional economy and sociobiodiversity. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the potential production of mead with the addition of butiá (Butia catharinensis), a Brazilian native fruit, assessing the sensory characteristics of the beverage.

Material e Métodos

The musts were prepared by diluting wildflower honey in water until 22°Brix. Fermentation was conducted at 22°C for 14 days. Three mead formulations were developed using different concentrations of butiá during the maturation stage (30 days at 4°C), named traditional mead (TM, without the addition of the fruit), mead with 15% butiá (BM15), and mead with 30% butiá (BM30). Sensory analyses were conducted through an acceptability test (9-point hedonic scale) and check-all-that-apply (CATA) with 102 consumers.

Resultados e Discussão

The global acceptability test revealed that the BM15 sample was significantly more accepted than TM. Despite this, all samples presented a global acceptability index ranging from 81.11% to 86.11%, indicating high acceptance of the products. The CATA results showed that the TM sample was associated with clear appearance, floral aroma, honey aroma, and honey flavor. The mead with a higher concentration of butiá (BM30) was correlated with the attributes cloudy, fruity aroma, butiá aroma, fruity flavors, butiá flavor, and butiá cachaça flavor. The BM15 sample exhibited intermediate characteristics between the two samples, with the presence of fruity, floral, butiá and honey aromas, and floral, honey, butiá, and butiá cachaça flavors.

Conclusão

This work highlights the significant influence of butiá addition on the sensory characteristics of mead, being the first report of using the CATA test for the description of fruit mead. The production of mead with butiá proved to be promising, exhibiting unique qualities and high acceptability by consumers, demonstrating the beverage's great versatility when combined with Brazilian native fruits.