Higher sensory acceptability of Gitumon herbal drinks and comparable shelf life to a commercial herbal drink

Gitumon is a new Indonesian herbal drink developed for potential market acceptance. The common challenge for every new food product is the customer perceptions on several factors, such as taste, aroma, appearance, or presentation, such as color, solid or liquid, and the oral texture. Hence, the shelf life also becomes one of the important factors to be considered by the customers. Thus, to evaluate the sensory acceptability, to predict its acceptance, and to investigate the predicted shelf life are important. A total of 28 consumer panelists participated voluntarily in organoleptic scoring for three Gitumon variants as well as a commercial herbal drink using a five-point hedonic scale for color, aroma, taste, and oral texture. Shelf-life prediction was conducted using the Arrhenius model in the accelerated shelf-life test method for the predicted shelf life, and pH was measured. Descriptive analysis was employed for sensory acceptability data, shelf life, and pH. Further, to clarify the differences among samples, one-way ANOVA and Tukey's HSD test were run with p < 0.05. Organoleptic testing showed that all Gitumon variants achieved high acceptance, particularly in color, aroma, and taste, with significantly better results compared to commercial health drink (CHD) (p < 0.05). No significant difference was found in oral texture. Shelf-life tests indicated Gitumon remained stable for 11 days at 5°C, while stability decreased at higher temperatures. The pH remained stable around 3.5 throughout storage. It was concluded that Gitumon variants demonstrated higher sensory acceptability than the commercial herbal drink, with acceptable shelf life under refrigerated storage compared to CHD.