Date: 16/02/210 /1
Title: A taste testing experiment to identify unlabelled brands of cola. /5
Authors: Mr Kerr and Mrs Milton /2
Aim: To conduct an experiment to see if people can identify unlabelled brands of cola through taste testing and see if the results can improve with repeated tasting. /5
Hypothesis: I predict that I will not be able to identify any brands of cola initially but I will improve my number I can identify by the third taste, mostly through chance./4
Materials:
· Five brands of cola (Coke, Diet Coke, Pepsi, L.A. Ice, Home Brand)
· Five 300 mL plastic cups
· Cup placemat /3
Methods: The taster was seated in a room and the cup placemat was positioned on the table in front of him/her. In a separate room from the taster, the scribe pours approximately 50 mL of one brand of cola into a plastic cup. This brand is written down as “Cola Number 1” by the scribe and is then taken to the taster and placed on cup position 1 on the placement. This process is repeated for the remaining four brands, each cola brand being taken out one by one. When the five cups have been placed on the mat the taster may begin tasting the cola in any order he/she prefers, making qualitative notes on the cola. When the taster then writes down what they believe which brand of cola each cup contains. The scribe then tells the taster how many he/she got correct, not which brands. The scribe notes how many brands the taster got correct. The taster then has another round of tasting and tries to improve his/her accuracy, again writing down the results. The scribe again informs the taster how many he/she got correct, noting the result. The taster then has a final third tasting to see if they can improve their accuracy, the scribe again notes how many were tasted correctly. The answers can be revealed to the taster after the third attempt.
The experiment is then repeated with the scribe and taster swapping roles. /15
Safety: The only likely safety issue with this taste test is allergic reaction. /2
Results: Quantitative Results: In the first tasting I tasted two brands of cola correctly. On the second tasting I correctly guessed three brands of cola correctly. On the third tasting I correctly guessed all five brands of cola. As shown in figure 1 below./3
Qualitative Results: Cup number 1 was weak and not that sweet; cup number 2 was very sweet and had lots of bubbles; cup 3 had lots of flavour, but was really flat; cup number 4 was very chemically and tasted artificial; cup number 5 had a very strong cola flavour. /3
Figure 1: Number of brands of cola correctly identified over three successive tastings./5
Table 1: Number of brands of cola correctly identified over three successive tastings./5
Test 1 / Test 2 / Test 3Number of cola brands correctly identified / 2 / 3 / 5
Discussion: The results show that I could identify only two brands of cola on my first taste, but I improved my tasting ability with each tasting after that. The results confirmed my first hypothesis that I would not identify them all correctly on the first try because I don’t drink cola that often and am not familiar with the flavours. The results also agreed with the second component of my hypothesis that I would improve how many brands I correctly identified with each tasting. This is not surprising because with even only a limited knowledge of the cola brands and what characteristics to expect, one could deduce which bands were identified correctly.
My results were very similar to the class average of 1.73, 2.34, 4.1 for tasting 1, 2 and 3 respectively. As the class average is comprised of eight groups, we would expect an increase in correct guesses with each tasting, as I assume that many class members has drunken these brands before./7
Limitations: One possible limitation may be that we could have guessed all brands by chance alone. In order to overcome this problem we could increase the number of cups being tasted in the experiment to 10, with each brand being in two cups. This would decrease the likeliness that someone would guess all cola brands by chance alone. Another limitation may be that these results only apply to cola tasting and may not apply to other soft drinks such as lemon squash./3
Conclusion: Through a cola taste test experiment we were able to show that people can identify different some brands of unlabelled cola. This is expected because most people are familiar with at least one brand of cola on offer in the experiment. We also showed that people can increase their tasting accuracy of cola brands with repeated taste tests. This is also expected because we may have a pre-conceived idea of what these brands taste like./5
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