How Does Learning Coffee Tasting Work in Three Steps?
Learning coffee tasting comes down to three steps: smell the dry and wet grounds, taste across the whole palate, and track the aftertaste as the cup cools. One cup can be described as peach by one person and plum by another, depending on diet, region, and taste memory, so the goal is not a fixed answer. Communication with others matters more than matching a flavor label.
The SCAA flavor wheel helps here. A single aroma such as chocolate can appear as milk chocolate, dark chocolate, or white chocolate through the Maillard reaction, and separating these takes practice. A Yirgacheffe shows the shift from bitter while hot toward sour coffee and then sweetness as the temperature drops, so taste at several points rather than once.
Many coffee enthusiasts, upon getting a bag of beans labeled with citrus and peach flavors, often can't taste the flavors described on the packaging, and then doubt whether it's the bean quality, brewing method, or their own sensory perception that's the problem. In fact, the same cup of coffee can be described differently by different people, which is closely related to individual dietary culture, regional background, and taste memory. The most important thing in coffee tasting is not pursuing a standard answer, but communication and sharing. This article starts from the three steps of smelling, tasting, and aftertaste, combined with elements such as the SCAA flavor wheel, taste experience, temperature changes, and concentration adjustments, to help enthusiasts gradually build a tasting approach. The article also uses Yirgacheffe as an example to show the flavor development process of coffee from hot to cold, from bitter to sour and then to sweet, and retains the recommended content of the Front Street brand, suitable for coffee enthusiasts who wish to improve their sensory recognition abilities.
I believe many coffee enthusiasts have had this confusion: buying a bag of beans labeled with citrus and peach flavors, but they just can't taste it themselves, and then start to wonder if there's something wrong with the beans, the brewing method is incorrect, or their senses aren't sensitive enough?
Coffee flavor recognition indeed troubles many people. With so many flavors densely packed on the flavor wheel, how come they can't taste them? After all, not everyone has received professional sensory training, and even if they do taste it, some say it's peach flavor, while others think it's more like plum flavor. This difference actually stems from each person's cultural life and dietary region, so naturally, they will describe the same cup of coffee differently. Therefore, the most important thing in coffee tasting is communication—sharing your feelings about this bean. Different experiences inevitably lead to different descriptions, but such communication can bring a lot of fun, right?
Take a small example from the SCAA flavor wheel: the chocolate aroma manifested in the Maillard reaction, like milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate. Without specialized training or a high level of tasting ability, which enthusiast can really distinguish the differences between these three chocolate flavors? (Now even chocolate has a flavor wheel, haha)
To understand coffee, three conditions are needed:
First: Have you experienced similar taste and olfactory experiences? Assuming you've never eaten a peach, then of course you can't taste the peach flavor. Coffee Tasting | The Importance of Tasting Coffee Sensory Training—Olfactory Edition
Second: It is recommended to wait until the coffee has cooled completely before tasting, because usually the fruity notes of coffee are only recognized after it cools, and the coffee flavors unfold as the temperature decreases. Coffee Tasting | How to Identify Lemon, Grapefruit, and Honey Flavors in Coffee?
Third: The strength of the coffee also affects the tonality of a cup. If it's a light-roast floral coffee, it's recommended to brew it weaker to spread out the flavor spectrum, making it easier to find the taste notes within (this nicely explains why the coffee-to-water ratio for cupping is 1:18.18). Coffee Tasting | Can You Distinguish the Floral Aromas in Coffee?
For example, to taste a good cup of Yirgacheffe coffee, the steps are:
Drink coffee in small sips, slowly, and you can even swish it a bit, holding it in your mouth and gently stirring the coffee liquid.
Each sip reveals layers as the temperature changes. The first two sips will be bitter at the back of the tongue. As the coffee cools, it gradually turns from bitter to sour, with a subtle citrus acidity.
By the time you're halfway through, the coffee turns from sour to sweet, from bitter to sweet, starting to have a returning sweetness, with a sweet sensation on the tongue surface, and finally an aftertaste of caramel sweetness that lingers between mouth and nose, tasting the coffee's finish through retronasal olfaction.
After finishing, don't rush to wash the cup; smell the sweet fragrance at the bottom of the cup.
The brain receives information -> compares -> analyzes -> remembers (the whole process)
We can smell an odor and taste a flavor, but perhaps we cannot describe it very accurately. The flavor wheel can concretely categorize all human-perceived taste systems, and corresponding to the olfactory system is the aroma wheel. By practicing with both, one can clearly perceive the most subtle differences among all odors.
Smell, Taste, Aftertaste: Three Steps to Teach You Coffee Tasting
Step One: Smell the Aroma
｜Start by smelling the aroma
Before taking a sip, use your nose to appreciate the coffee's aroma. Here you can unhesitatingly borrow wine-tasting vocabulary. First, smell to see if your coffee has aromas, such as floral, fruity, or wine-like, and whether there are abnormal musty, moldy, volatile acidic, or spicy smells—these are odors produced by poor bean quality or improper storage. If the coffee is in healthy condition, then the aroma alone can give you great enjoyment. You can unhesitatingly borrow the wine-tasting system to evaluate a coffee, looking for fruity, floral, vegetative, roasted, and spicy aromas. Since the heat of the coffee helps diffuse the aroma, you can effortlessly capture the rich and complex fragrance of the coffee.
Bring it close to your nose and mouth, and you will perceive the dry aroma of different coffees from different origins. For example, in Latin American coffees, you will smell nutty, dark chocolate-like notes; while African coffees often have floral and fruity flavors. Close your eyes and slowly smell its wet aroma.
Step Two: Taste the Flavor
｜Start by smelling the aroma
When the coffee enters your mouth, you can feel its flavor. In this regard, many enthusiasts, especially those just beginning to explore coffee tasting, always think that coffee tastes worse than it smells. Indeed, sensory discrimination of coffee liquid in the mouth requires some practice, but over time, the flavors within can be perceived. Good coffee has no off-flavors, pure and transparent. Cleanliness refers to the absence of unpleasant off-flavors and mouthfeel from the first sip to the final aftertaste.
Body is what we usually call "boby," referring to the round, mellow, and rich taste expressed by the coffee liquid. The difference between a cup of water and a cup of coffee is that water has no taste and is not viscous, while espresso is rich in oils and thus has good body. A cup of coffee with good body will make the aroma linger longer in the mouth, with a more prolonged finish.
｜Another major point in coffee tasting is how to distinguish the sweetness, saltiness, sourness, and bitterness of coffee.
Where does the sweetness come from?
There has actually been a big misunderstanding for a long time: people who like black coffee don't mean they like bitterness, and bitterness is not the main flavor that normal black coffee should exhibit. If the coffee cherries are fully ripe, properly roasted, and kept fresh, the coffee itself will have a certain sweetness, especially in the aroma showing caramel, honey, or even sugarcane sweetness. At the same time, many coffees themselves have a good round texture. These exquisite characteristics worth appreciating can all be drowned out by just a small spoon of sugar and milk. Of course, if it's just mediocre quality or coffee stored too long, then not adding milk and sugar is simply being hard on yourself.
Where does the saltiness come from?
Many people can taste the sourness, sweetness, and bitterness in coffee, but there is another flavor—saltiness—that is often overlooked. These four flavors influence and suppress each other, and saltiness is good at hiding under the cover of the other three.
The saltiness in coffee mainly comes from water-soluble minerals, such as potassium oxide and sodium oxide, as well as the coffee bean's growing environment, roast level, freshness, processing method (e.g., Indian Monsoon), and brewing techniques, all of which affect the degree of saltiness.
Also, the concentration, or the acidity/alkalinity of the water, can make a cup of coffee taste salty.
Where does the sourness come from?
Friends who often drink single-origin coffee, when mentioning sour coffee, mostly associate it with Front Street Yirgacheffe. Indeed, Front Street Yirgacheffe is a representative of acidic coffee. Beginners who haven't been exposed to single-origin coffee might wonder, how can coffee be sour? If coffee is sour, is it expired or poor-quality coffee? Actually, this sourness is not that sourness; coffee contains hundreds of acidic compounds.
Coffee is the seed of a fruit, so of course it has certain fruit acid components, like citric acid and malic acid. Citric acid is an important organic acid. During roasting, citric acid peaks in light roasts and is continuously decomposed and destroyed as roasting progresses. Typically, domestic roasters lightly roast Yirgacheffe, Geisha, and Kenya, so they taste sour.
The fruit acid in high-quality coffee carries a unique aroma, giving coffee its soul; conversely, the acid in cheap coffee lacks aroma and may even have off-flavors, so roasters naturally remove the acidity. Properly balanced acidity can increase coffee's liveliness, brightness, and fruity flavor.
Where does the bitterness come from?
Take a gentle sip. If there is a bitter and astringent taste, it affects the layers of the entire cup. Negative astringency exposes flaws in coffee quality. However, if bitterness can return sweetness and astringency can generate saliva, high-quality bitter and astringent tastes can sometimes be a symbol of coffee quality.
Step Three: Perceive the Aftertaste
The last point in tasting is the returning sweetness. The so-called returning sweetness refers to the lingering aftertaste that coffee brings in the mouth and throat. After drinking coffee, there is always a flavor that returns from the throat. Some aftertastes are very lasting and clear, while others are very brief and vague. We say that a more lasting and clear aftertaste is good, and such coffee is of higher quality.
｜Throat feel is generally divided into sweet, moist, dry, and cool.
Sweet, i.e., the sensation of returning sweetness in the throat;
Moist is the opposite of dry. Moist means the throat feels comfortable and smooth, while dryness makes the throat uncomfortable, producing a dry and parched feeling. In severe cases, it can even cause difficulty swallowing. Besides extreme throat discomfort, dryness also makes the taster anxious and restless;
A cool throat feel is the easiest to perceive, like the slight coolness brought by drinking mint water.
Next, when you pick up a cup of coffee and bring it to your lips to taste, whether or not you consciously explore the olfactory performance of this cup, the smell of the coffee has already entered your nasal cavity and been recorded by your brain.
Learning coffee tasting is a long process. Beginners should not be discouraged by temporary difficulties. Expose yourself to more coffee, taste more coffee, and use the three steps of smelling, tasting, and aftertaste to appreciate coffee. Gradually, you will discover the wonders of coffee flavors.
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
