A Novel Flavor-Pairing Tool to Create New Craft Brews in the Beverage Industry

Grade Level at Time of Presentation

Freshmen

Major

Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence in Data Science)

Institution

Eastern Kentucky University

KY House District #

81

KY Senate District #

34

Department

Chemistry

Abstract

Food and beverages are the necessity of life and consumer goods companies dedicate significant resources to develop innovative concepts that consumers prefer. n a category space where the consumer only has few choices, it’s easy to understand why they prefer one brand over the other. However, as the category options expand it becomes more challenging. This is the case in the craft brew industry. In 2018, beer sales decline 1% while the craft brew sales volume grew 4% reaching 13% of the total beer market by volume1. Craft brews are sold at a higher premium and accounted for $27.6 billion in 2018, 24% of the $114.2 billion US beer market1. Craft breweries, by definition, are small independent brewers using innovation mixed with historical approaches to deliver new taste experiences to local communities2. Furthermore, successful craft breweries tend to have strong relationships with local communities. One of the biggest challenges for these craft breweries is the ability to continue developing new taste perceptions.

The goal of our project is to utilize science to develop an algorithm and blending tool enabling the user to create new and interesting flavor concepts for the craft brew industry. We leveraged the science of linking important flavor compounds from craft brews with similar flavor compounds in other food products. The uniqueness of our approach is two-fold: (1) we placed weighing factors (multipliers and rankings) on the flavor compounds in the food products, (2) we have created a flavor wheel description to aid in the user-friendliness of the tool. Additionally, we adapted the tool to work in Excel, which simplifies the approach, making the program available to many users at low-cost. In essence, our tool provides a relatively simple and cost effective prototyping device for creation of new flavors for the brewing industry.

1 https://www.brewersassociation.org/statistics-and-data/national-beer-stats/

2 https://www.brewersassociation.org/statistics-and-data/craft-brewer-definition/#targetText=Craft%20brewers%20are%20small%20brewers&targetText=Craft%20brewers%20interpret%20historic%20styles,are%20often%20added%20for%20distinctiveness

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A Novel Flavor-Pairing Tool to Create New Craft Brews in the Beverage Industry

Food and beverages are the necessity of life and consumer goods companies dedicate significant resources to develop innovative concepts that consumers prefer. n a category space where the consumer only has few choices, it’s easy to understand why they prefer one brand over the other. However, as the category options expand it becomes more challenging. This is the case in the craft brew industry. In 2018, beer sales decline 1% while the craft brew sales volume grew 4% reaching 13% of the total beer market by volume1. Craft brews are sold at a higher premium and accounted for $27.6 billion in 2018, 24% of the $114.2 billion US beer market1. Craft breweries, by definition, are small independent brewers using innovation mixed with historical approaches to deliver new taste experiences to local communities2. Furthermore, successful craft breweries tend to have strong relationships with local communities. One of the biggest challenges for these craft breweries is the ability to continue developing new taste perceptions.

The goal of our project is to utilize science to develop an algorithm and blending tool enabling the user to create new and interesting flavor concepts for the craft brew industry. We leveraged the science of linking important flavor compounds from craft brews with similar flavor compounds in other food products. The uniqueness of our approach is two-fold: (1) we placed weighing factors (multipliers and rankings) on the flavor compounds in the food products, (2) we have created a flavor wheel description to aid in the user-friendliness of the tool. Additionally, we adapted the tool to work in Excel, which simplifies the approach, making the program available to many users at low-cost. In essence, our tool provides a relatively simple and cost effective prototyping device for creation of new flavors for the brewing industry.

1 https://www.brewersassociation.org/statistics-and-data/national-beer-stats/

2 https://www.brewersassociation.org/statistics-and-data/craft-brewer-definition/#targetText=Craft%20brewers%20are%20small%20brewers&targetText=Craft%20brewers%20interpret%20historic%20styles,are%20often%20added%20for%20distinctiveness