Can a Coffee Robot Make Your Palette Obsolete?

Researchers and chemical engineers at Nestle in Switzerland have invented a machine that analyzes the gas espresso gives off when heated, “translating” the ion compositions into taste notes like “roasted, flowery, woody, toffee and acidity.” It’s imaginatively called an “electronic taster,” and was originally conceived as a quality control device for the major players in the coffee industry.

I found it interesting that adding a mere 5% Robusta to the espresso blends threatened the model, since the better Robustas can have radically divergent flavor profiles:

The espresso coffees selected for this study were blended mainly from different Arabica varieties with some Robusta (5% Robusta in average). Blending Arabica with Robusta varieties has shown to add complexity to the model and adds some uncertainty in the prediction of the sensory profiles, but the model still shows reliable results. Models obtained with pure Robusta and Arabica samples separately (data not shown here) show results which are more accurate. Nevertheless, predicting the sensory profile of a new coffee depends very much on the diversity of samples used for constructing the model. The broader the sensory and analytical space of the samples included in developing the model, the more robust the model.

Read more about this amazing machine in Analytical Chemistry, which recently published an article detailing the workings of the machine (and from which the quote above is taken). For my own part, my own palette and I don’t feel particularly threatened, and don’t anticpate a day where I walk in and see RoboCop manning my San Franciscan.