Thesis (BS Food Technology) -- University of the Philippines Mindanao, 2010

Civet coffee is the most expensive coffee in the world today. It is said that the process of fermentation in Civet's stomach makes the taste of the coffee unique.to determine what attributes are behind the taste of this coffee, this thesis study aimed primarily at establishing the sensory profile of civet coffee as well as characterizing the dominant compounds present in it. The roasting condition used was City style which is the recommended roasting style for drip coffee, the method that was used in brewing the coffee samples. With the use of the techniques in quantitative descriptive analysis, ten people were trained to master and generate descriptors for civet coffee. To make a comparison, the trained panelist also evaluated another sample called non-civet which was processed in the same way as the civet coffee, except for the fermentation in the civet's stomach. Scoring of the attributes was done for both coffee samples to quantify the descriptors generated using the six-inch graphic line scale. The output of the scoring was illustrated using a cobweb plot and it showed that the attributes that are perceptibly dominant in civet coffee are its ashy and burnt/smokey fragrance, bitter taste and strong body. This might have been the caused by the dominant compound 2-furanmethanol based on the chromatographic run of the coffee of previous studies. Comparing the sensory profiles as well as the chromatographic runs of the two coffee samples, data have shown that the perceived difference in terms of fragrance taste and body of civet coffee are not significantly different with the non-civet coffee at 0.05 level significance.