LalCafé and LalCocoa introduce fermentation solutions for cocoa and coffee at the Cocotea congress

At the end of June, Lallemand’s LalCafé and LalCocoa team participated to the Cocotea congress held in Bremen, Germany. This interdisciplinary meeting, mostly European, focuses on the science of tea, coffee, cocoa, and related products. Bremen was chosen as it is the birthplace of Jacobs coffee brand, the European leader. The 4-day meeting offered to 200 scientists the opportunity to discuss different areas of Tea, Coffee and Cocoa, and to report innovative scientific achievements. These topics include biology, chemistry, technology, metabolomics, nutrition and health, Quality & Safety Control and sustainability. As such, food chemists, food technologists, nutritionists, medical doctors and technicians from industry and academia were invited to participate.

Pierre Poirot, from the Oenology/Coffee/Cocoa Lallemand R&D team, presented to the audience the influence of specific Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeasts on cocoa beans flavor and final chocolate quality; a project developed in collaboration with CEMOI and the CIRAD (French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development), demonstrating how chocolate premiumization can be obtained with the inoculation of selected yeast.

Fatma Hadj Salem, PhD student at the CIRAD in Montpellier, demonstrated how molecules (volatiles and aroma precursors) are transferred into the coffee seeds during fermentation. The work she presented emanates from a collaboration between Lallemand and the CIRAD through a CIFRE thesis (Industrial Agreements for Training through Research).

This event was a great opportunity to the LalCafé & LalCocoa teams.