Abstract:
Reliable and accurately measurable chemical parameters that can be used to estimate
black tea quality are desirable in trade, research and breeding programmes. Using plain
Kenyan black tea from 11 cultivars, which gave some significant differences in their plain
black tea quality parameters, the individual theaflavins composition, total theaflavins,
thearubigins, theaflavin digallate equivalent, total colour and brightness were determined.
The parameters were regressed against sensory evaluation scores of two tasters A and B.
The theaflavin digallate equivalent (TDE) showed the strongest relationship (r= 0.71 (P⩽
0.01) and r= 0.80 (P⩽ 0.001)) for A and B′, respectively. The simple (non gallated)
theaflavin and thearubigins did not show significant relationships with sensory evaluation. Of
the liquor characteristics, there were significant relationships between liquor brightness …
