Sindy Parker wanted something she could fit around the school run and ended up with a dream job
Alison Currie possesses a casket of scent bottles unequalled by the wealthiest fashionistas. From one small glass phial you can inhale basmati rice. Another wafts pipe tobacco and its companions contain the aromas of straw, earth, rubber and a full menu of garden vegetables. The 36 scents teach novice palates to identify subtle strands of flavour and, unnervingly, any of these flavours are liable to crop up in our morning coffee.
Currie, 45, is a senior scientist at the UK headquarters of Mondelez International, formerly Kraft Foods, which is the world's second largest coffee company. It's her job to collate national preferences in coffee flavours and to liaise with product developers to produce blends that will appeal to Europe's different markets. Crucial to the process is a team of coffee tasters who sample the latest product and analyse the strength, textures and flavours. It's Currie, armed with her scents, who teaches them to articulate what they are tasting. "I might give them coffee that has been brewed with elastic bands in their training sessions so they can learn to identify rubbery flavours," she says.
Sindy Parker, who joined the tasting team 16 years ago, is now accustomed to odd experiences in the tasting booth. "When I applied for the job I didn't know what to expect and was surprised to find green beans in the coffee sample I was given," she says. "Until then coffee was just coffee and I had no idea how many different flavours and textures were involved."
Parker, 48, and her colleagues are near the end of a lengthy production line which starts with tasters who decide whether the raw coffee beans should be classed as Arabica or Robusta, and passes through the product developers who tinker with the blending, grinding and roasting time and temperature to arrive at required flavour and texture. "Tasters like Sindy validate what they produce then we take it to consumer panels in the different countries and if they dislike it it goes back to the developer," says Currie. "Eventually the finished product is tested by quality assurance tasters before it hits the shelves which is usually around two years after work started on it."
Parker, who trained in childcare before finding a job in a jigsaw factory, spotted an advertisement for coffee tasters while searching for work that would accommodate the school run. "They screened us first to test our sense of taste and smell and whether we could describe what we were experiencing," she says. "We were given water with citric acid in so we could identify a sour taste and coffee that had had cornflakes in to help us distinguish between smooth and grainy textures." Over a dozen or so two-hour sessions candidates sipped their way through the entire coffee portfolio and learned the vocabulary to describe the attributes of each blend.
Now she spends four hours a day in one of a row of booths sipping coffee samples delivered by a member of kitchen staff and scoring them on a list of attributes that the team will have discussed and decided on beforehand. "They try to replicate what the average consumer likes in the country being targeted," she says. "If the product is aimed at France, where they like their coffee darker and smokier, we test it black, Germans prefer it with UHT milk and the British prefer it milky and weaker. When I started I was simply testing instant, roast and ground coffee, but now with the launch of Tassimo products I do lattes, cappuccino, hot chocolates and flavoured coffees and that involves lots more attributes like the texture and how peakable the foam is."
A discerning palate is the only qualification necessary to become a coffee taster – and a fondness for the beverage, although Parker admits she now rarely touches the stuff outside work. "I find I don't just drink it any more; once you know how to pick out the different notes you analyse it." According to Currie, the less background expertise the tasters have in the science and manufacture of it the better because they need to approach each sample without preconceptions. "We like to keep them innocent so that their tastebuds do the talking," she says.
However, despite the relatively short hours, the work is more demanding than it sounds and a strong mind as well as a strong stomach are advantages. "It's not a job for everyone because you are very isolated in your booth, except when you meet for discussions, and some find it claustrophobic," says Parker. Plus there is the requirement to swallow occasionally unpalatable flavours with an open mind – "soya milk coffee was my worst moment," she says.
After 16 years she finds her daily sensory adventure as stimulating as ever; indeed tasters are tested every three months to check that their senses remained undimmed, but those who imagine it is like being paid to drink through the menu at Starbucks are in for a shock: "Some people think my job is like one long coffee morning," she says, chasing the residue of an assertive Rustica with a water biscuit. "Believe me, it's not!"
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