What does it actually take to make a functional beverage taste good? The answer is more nuanced — and more scientific — than most people expect.
Imbibe Senior Manager of Applications and Taste Modulation Lauren Senne recently joined the My Food Job Rocks podcast to pull back the curtain on the craft of beverage flavor development. The conversation covers the kind of working knowledge that only comes from years on the bench: how flavorists evaluate hundreds of options quickly, why customers and formulators often don’t share the same flavor vocabulary, and what separates a good brief from a frustrating one.
Three things worth knowing before you hit play:
Taste modulation is its own discipline. Maskers and bitter blockers aren’t the same thing — bitter blockers work at the receptor level, physically blocking the signal, while maskers shift the overall flavor system. Knowing which tool to reach for is half the battle.
Smell gets you 80–90% there. Experienced flavorists start with smell, not taste — it’s faster, it’s diagnostic, and it narrows the field before a single beaker is filled.
Shared vocabulary matters more than you’d think. If a customer calls something “metallic” and a flavorist hears “astringent,” you can iterate for weeks in the wrong direction. Tasting together closes that gap faster than any brief.
Listen to the full episode below or check out Adam Yee’s My Food Job Rocks podcast for more episodes.
Work with Imbibe to formulate beverages that actually taste as good as they perform.
