Combining technology, knowledge and insight to understand aroma loss

GEA Aroma Management

Experts at our GEA Soeborg site in Denmark have combined the latest gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) technology with decades of in house expertise in every aspect of coffee production, to offer analytical services that can help you to understand both where in your coffee manufacturing process aromatic compounds are lost, and potentially how to minimize that loss.

Aroma mapping
Aroma compound analysis
It’s perhaps inevitable that some aroma will be lost from coffee beans during instant coffee manufacture, but the overall process may result in a final product that contains only 30-40% of that original raw bean aroma. Understanding where aroma is being lost has traditionally been a matter of trial and error – by taste.

Here at GEA, our experts have married decades of experience in coffee processing with GC-MS technology to develop a suite of highly accurate analytical services that can provide you with detailed evaluation and quantification of dozens of aroma compounds, and/or aroma balance, at multiple stages of your instant coffee process. 

Quantifying and mapping aroma flow

Our different service packages can be tailored to identify and measure up to 50 of the most important aroma components in coffee, and map aroma flow to identify at which of up to 13 points in the process aroma is being lost. We can also make mass balances of aroma in and out of specific process equipment, to provide you with key data for fine-tuning running parameters.

Sniffograms

The GC-MS system is equipped with an olfactory port so that human testers can smell the individual aroma components as they pass through the equipment. You might arrange to come to Soeborg and undertake a GC-sniff analysis of your coffee, from which we then generate detailed sniffograms (olfactograms).

The overall results can help you to understand where and why aroma components might be lost or destroyed, perhaps due to high temperatures. And this richness of data may point to ways of optimizing processes so that you can get the most out of your valuable beans and technology investment.

Aroma GS sniffing

NIRO® Aroma management at a glance

  • Detailed aroma compound analytical services that combine years of GEA experience with the latest GC-MS technology
  • Identification and quantification of up to 50 key coffee aroma components 
  • Mapping of aroma flow at multiple points along the whole process
  • Mass balances of aroma flow into and out of equipment 
  • Multiple service packages available

Benefits

  • Identify exactly where and why key aroma compounds might be lost
  • Gain insights into how to modify processes to reduce loss and improve final product quality and consumer experience 
  • Keep a human perspective via sniffograms

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