Effect of Sugar Addition on Temporal Dominance Profiles of Coffee-Related Sensory Attributes and Emotions

Coffee is a popular beverage, not only due to its stimulating nature but rather because of the unique sensory properties. It is often enjoyed with various add-ins, such as sugar, which leads to the changes in the flavor profile of the product.
Therefore, the objective of the present study was to investigate the effect of sugar addition to the coffee beverages, prepared from Arabica and Robusta beans, on the temporal aspects of sensory attributes and coffee evoked emotions, selected by using the check-all-that-apply method (CATA). The samples were evaluated by 42 untrained individuals in multiple sip approach over 60 seconds.
The temporal dominance profiles of the sensory attributes and emotions were investigated by Temporal Dominance of Sensations (TDS) and Temporal Dominance of Emotions (TDE) methods, respectively.
When evaluating Arabica and Robusta coffee without sugar, the most dominant attributes during the entire testing time were "bitterness" and "astringency", both reaching the level of significance (5%). Addition of sugar showed an increase above the significance level of the dominance rate of "sweetness”, shortly after each sip in both kinds of coffee. Independent of the coffee species, the samples without sugar were associated with emotions like "disappointed" and "active". The addition of sugar resulted in a distinct decrease of the negative emotion "disappointed" and the panelists associated the samples rather with the emotion "calm" then "active". The emotion "satisfied" did not reach the level of significance at any time during the evaluation. However, it increased after every sip and correlated with the enhancement of "sweetness".
The results showed that the addition of sugar has a potential to change the perception of sensory attributes and emotions during coffee consumption.