At the end of March we had the pleasure of having Ida Steen and Morten Munchow from CoffeeMind here at the roastery, two of the most curious scientific minds in coffee today! They presented on their Sensory Performance courses which we will host here over the summer. Morten and I have known each other since 2005 when I helped create the first blend for the roastery where he was just employed as roast master, so I am very excited that his new company CoffeeMind and ourselves are now working together on the forthcoming series of courses. If you missed their talk, you can read more about what they spoke about on their blog.
Ida has a masters degree in sensory science from the Department of Food Science in Copenhagen. Other than performing laboratory sensory profiling at the university and for industrial companies, she has developed a method to map individual sensory skills. This map gives a very detailed picture of a persons sensory strengths and weaknesses, and becomes a great starting point for an educational process designed to put the weaker sensory skill areas through a steep learning curve.
Morten has a masters degree in biology and philosophy and has worked as a roaster, teacher and coffee consultant since 2005. He also teaches research design and statistics for students of medicine at the University of Copenhagen, and is currently an external lecturer at the Food Science department of the University of Copenhagen, sponsored by SCAE to incubate and support research on specialty coffee.
Sensory science is heavily based on statistics, Ida and Morten were able to develop new approaches to a methodology that speaks directly into the needs for evidence based practices in the coffee business, or any other business where sensory skills are of importance.
This course is the perfect step for those who wish to improve their sensory skills and their expertise as a coffee taster. The Sensory Scientist at CoffeeMind, Ida Steen, has taken the best from her education in Sensory and Consumer Science from the University of Copenhagen, and merged it with the needs of the speciality coffee industry to design this innovative course in order to improve the precision within which quality is controlled by people within the organisation.
You might find this course useful if you want to:
– Gain a unique and in-depth insight into your personal sensory skills.
– Increase your confidence in your chosen coffee profession.
– Be able to develop better roast profiles and improve your products and services.
– Calibrate your personal perception and descriptions of coffee with your colleagues, customers and other professional coffee tasters.
– Gain an overview of your strengths and weaknesses ”“ in order to train your weaknesses.
– Be better prepared for taking the SCAE sensory certifications as well as significantly increase the probability of passing a Q grader exam.
You will be engaged in a training process that charts your sensory skills and how they develop throughout the course. After two days of assessing your sensory skills and training, you will know exactly where your strengths and weaknesses lie when it comes to coffee tasting. This will provide you with the best opportunity to optimize your skills as a coffee taster.
To to sign up, please follow this link. We hope to see you here!
Course dates:
11th-12th of May 2016, 14.00-20.00
7th-8th of June, 14.00-20.00
Location: Square Mile Coffee Roasters, 8 Pritchard’s Rd, London E2 9AP
