Sensory Profile of Kombucha Brewed with New Zealand Ingredients by Focus Group and Word Clouds
, Hinal Suresh Gala, Natalia Rutendo Mazive, Yuzheng Chen, Yuwei Zhang, Shichang Wang and Luca Serventi *Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Review for the manuscript entitled “Sensory profile of Kombucha brewed with New Zealand ingredients by focus group and word clouds” (fermentation-1274970).
This manuscript presents a study about the sensory profile of kombucha fermented drink flavored with black pepper, hops and Kawakawa. The introduction clearly presents the gap of knowledge about the sensory profile of Kombucha. The Materials and Methods section can be improved with some additional data on the sensory section. The results and discussion are detailed, clearly presented, and authors really put a deep thought to get the most of the data they obtained. A big minus of the manuscript is that the authors present no statistical data interpretation. However, authors indicate new research topics which could be useful hallmarks for other researchers. Generally, the manuscript is well written. In my opinion, after some minor revisions it can be published in the Fermentation.
Here are some comments and questions to the Authors:
1. English expression: the clarity of the manuscript could be improved. A few examples include:
L176-178: Please edit hops with lowercase.
L307: Please correct “were” instead of “was”.
L310: Please correct “samples” instead of “tables”.
L341: Please correct “this” instead of “his”.
L161: Please rephrase “for each sample.code.”
2. Abstract: Please provide the latin name for Kawakawa. Authors should keep in mind that not everywhere in the world is Kawakawa known.
3. Keywords: Please remove the keywords which are already used in the title.
4. Introduction:
L51, 57 Please edit with italic characters the latin names of the plants.
5. Materials and Methods:
Sensory evaluation: On what basis were the panellists selected? What ages were the sensory panellists? How many female and male?
About the sensory training: How many sessions of training were performed? How many hours lasted each session?
Sensory evaluation of the samples: How many samples per session? Were samples codified? If so, how? What was the order of the presentation of the samples? How long was each session? How did the organisers address the potential for sensory fatigue? Did panellists have breaks between the samples? Were panellists provided with water or something else as a palate cleanser?
Statistical analysis: please add a dot before com from the provided link (www.wordclouds.com).
No statistical test was applied to interpret the sensory data.
6. Results:
L187: I think the authors meant “table” instead of graph.
L204: “data from another conjoining project” Please provide reference.
L325: What is the level of significance? What statistical test was used to determine that it was actually a “significant change in perception of the overall quality”?
Word clouds are pretty far from a proper sensory profile. Please reconsider and rephrase it as sensory description or something similar.
7. Tables:
Sour and bitter are basic tastes, not flavors.
8. Conclusions:
L377-379 unclear, please rephrase.
9. Bibliography:
L407: please look for an official statistical data base.
L 445-446: please reedit the title according to journal’s guide for authors.
Author Response
Thank you for your insightful feedback.
Every comment has been addressed accordingly.
Kind regards
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This research on sensory profile of Kombucha brewed with New Zealand ingredients by focus group and word clouds by Alderson et al. is a timely research topic. The manuscript is well written, and the scientific findings will contribute to the scientific advancement in this field. Kombucha is gaining high interest among the health-conscious consumers around the world and sufficient amount of research on quality characteristics of kombucha products, especially on sensory evaluations are not available in the scientific literature. Some comments to further improve this manuscript are given below;
- Abstract – Line 15: Kawakawa – please give scientific name of Kawakawa in here (as Kawakawa is not well-known plant ingredient around the world).
- When you mention “highest” could you please give the actual values within brackets ? For example, lines 20-21 highest titratable acidity; line 21: highest alcohol percentage; line 21: highest pH, line 22: lowest titratable acidity – This will help the readers to have a better understanding of your findings.
- Introduction – Line 31: Better to mention as “potentially probiotic beverage”
- Introduction: could you please provide some example yeast and bacterial cultures in Kombucha SCOBY culture (better to provide after the sentence in line 35.
- Scientific names should be in Italic throughout the manuscript. Please check and correct (For example in line 51).
- Lines 72-76: Meaning is not very clear. Could you please revise?
- Lines 77-84: Your two major objectives are very clear, However I cannot see the relationship between these sensory and instrumental parameters. Could you please explain why you measured both these sensory and instrumental parameters such as pH and how these are interrelated in very brief here.
- Materials and methods – line 88- Do you know what was in this SCOBY culture ? what yeast and what bacteria ? Can you name at least major groups if possible?
- Line 103: How much mother liquid and SCOBY were added in here ? Please provide the amounts ?
- Line 107: The Kombucha was then kept in the fridge ….etc. Could you please provide the exact temperature in the cold storage in here perhaps within brackets. Please check throughout the manuscript and correct.
- Line 121: Manufacturer of the refractometer used in this study ?
- Line 135 – MRS agar manufacturer ?
- Lines 133-137: Have you used serial dilution and spread plating in here? If so please mention it clearly.
- Section on sensory evaluation (2.8) – your semi trained sensory evaluation panel seems small (only 8 participants). Is this sufficient for this type of study ? Please justify ? Also, please prove more information about your panel (for example, gender, age range… etc.)
- Have you received ethics clearance for this study from a relevant body. If so please mention it and it will help to improve the quality of this work.
- Section 2.9: Have you repeated this experiment at least twice ?
- Results and Discussion: Table -1 Can you present your data with Standard errors or standard deviations ?
- Conclusions: Line 380 – in here you have mentioned “What the focus group could not detect was the extent of differences”. Is this because of small panel size? May be better to give at least one possible reason here.
- List of references – even the scientific names in the list of references should be in Italic. For example, please check lines 419-420. Please correct throughout the list of references as well.
- Line 439: Please pay attention to journal names and write correctly. For example, in here you have written the journal name as “International journal of food science & technology”. It should be “International Journal of Food Science & Technology”. Please check and correct throughout the list of references.
- Lines 445-446: No need to use all caps in here. Please correct.
- Please correct minor typos and other errors in the manuscript.
Author Response
Thank you for your feedback.
Each comment has been addressed accordingly.
Kind regards
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Authors
The paper describes the results of the study investigating the sensory profile of Kombucha beverages with a range of different ingredients, particularly of a novel Kombucha made with only Kawakawa leaves.
The topic of the study is interesting and study has scientific value. The results of the original research work are presented. The novelty of this manuscript is investigated product with modified recipe and also applied research methods.
However, there are some minor flaws in manuscript what need to be fixed. Specific comments on the manuscript are as follows:
The English syntax/style needs to be improved.
Line 38: change the cite way to “…Ivanisova et al.
Line 158: Please complete information about used statistical program, in subsection 2.0 Statistical analysis.
Line 192: What kind of bacteria? It should be more specific.
Line 210: what does “-“ mean, it comes before 2.18…
Line 213: the CFU is a unit ,not determined factor. So you can’t say: “…the CFU count for….”
The colony counts should be calculated by converting to log CFU/mL.
Line 369: the results of instrumental analysis need to be improved by statistical tests. It should show a difference between samples on the ground of investigated factors (pH, the number of LAB etc.) It is necessary to express obtained results as mean values ± standard deviation, in the form of table or figure.
The section no.4 Conclusions needs to be improved after the substantial, statistical treatment of results obtained in this study.
In my opinion, this manuscript is appropriate for publication in Journal – Fermentation, given the above aspects, after major revision.
Author Response
Thank you for your feedback.
Each comment has been addressed accordingly.
Kind regards
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Authors
The revised version of the manuscript describes the results of the study investigating the sensory profile of Kombucha beverages with a range of different ingredients, particularly of a novel Kombucha made with only Kawakawa (Piper excelsum) leaves.
All previous comments have been taken into account, except one. New revised version of manuscript still doesn’t include statistical analysis of obtained results. Please complete it, in accordance with the comments from an earlier, first review:
“…Line 369: the results of instrumental analysis need to be improved by statistical tests. It should show a difference between samples on the ground of investigated factors (pH, the number of LAB etc.) It is necessary to express obtained results as mean values ± standard deviation, in the form of table or figure.
The section no.4 Conclusions needs to be improved after the substantial, statistical treatment of results obtained in this study.”
According to my point of view, submitted new version of manuscript is appropriate for publication in Journal – Fermentation, after minor revision.
Author Response
On behalf of all co-authors, I would like to thank Reviewer 3 for the insightful comments and feedback.
All the points have now been addressed. The addition of statistical analysis has strengthened the discussion and enhanced the scientific quality of this manuscript.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
