A food-tech start-up claims to have developed a way of analysing coffee bean taste using artificial intelligence (AI) and data cloud technology.
Headquartered in Columbia with R&D capabilities in Israel Demetria says it has developed a first for assessing quality and taste at any stage of the coffee production and distribution process – saving time and money compared to traditional coffee ‘cupping’.
According to Demetria, conventional coffee tasting can also often be inaccessible to many coffee farms.
“Farmers’ inability to guarantee a consistent level of quality of bean means that a significant number of them receive just a base commodity price for their produce.
“Only later in the process, when beans pass through an extensive and complex supply chain that incorporates traders, processors and exporters, is quality determined.”
Demetria’s solution is leveraging near infra-red (NIR) sensors to analyse and ‘fingerprint’ green coffee beans for biochemical markers. Each bean profile is then matched by the company’s AI -based platform, ‘e-Palate’, according to the industry standard coffee flavour wheel.
“The ability to discover the quality of green coffee beans is a game changer for an entire industry that’s relied on a primitive supply chain and artisanal process for 300 years,” says Demetria’s co-founder and CEO, Felipe Ayerbe.
“Our technology delivers vital intelligence to ensure crop consistency and quality control, resulting in readdressing the economics of the coffee value chain to benefit every key player.”
