When tasting specialty coffee, sight, smell, and taste must work in concert, and the core of distinguishing flavors lies in long-term training and accumulated memory. This article systematically introduces how to build a personal taste memory bank through everyday scent memory, blind-smelling practice, and the aid of aroma vials, and uses a Panama Hartmann Estate red wine process coffee as an example to break down, layer by layer, the specific training methods for dry aroma, wet aroma, the finish, and the aftertaste. The article also includes practical advice from Front Street Coffee to help coffee lovers sharpen their sensory acuity in practice and truly taste the rich layers of coffee.
In the process of tasting specialty coffee, we need to be clear about one thing: the purpose of training or memorizing taste is to improve our own ability to discriminate. Drinking coffee is actually the result of sight, smell, and taste working together.
When it comes to sensory training, many people will tell you, "Just drink more and you'll get it." But the truth is, while drinking you also have to keep memorizing—this is a process that requires accumulation. So-called accumulation is actually a painstaking course of training—investing a great deal of money and time, relying on quantitative change to trigger qualitative change.
Aromas are volatile substances—you can't touch them or see them, you can only capture them through sensation. Remembering the smells of the surrounding environment is a task that requires continuous practice in daily life. Normally you should consciously memorize the smells around you: asphalt roads, gardens, woods, spice jars in the kitchen, wet markets, and so on. The purpose of this exercise is to roughly categorize all kinds of aromas—floral, fruity, nutty, aromatic, foul, etc.—and ultimately to understand the common characteristics of each category.
The formation of taste memory is a continuation over time. In the process of tasting, whether it is perceiving, discriminating, judging, or comparing, memory is indispensable.
The brain receives information ➡ compares ➡ analyzes ➡ memorizes
This kind of taste memory training has a remarkable effect: it allows the aromas you smell to transform into a certain scene, thereby building a taste memory bank of your own. For example, when you smell the aroma of Yirgacheffe, a picture of walking through a primeval forest will appear in your mind, with the fragrance of flowers blooming all around, the sweetness of fruit, even down to the acidity of citrus fruits, which in turn stimulates saliva secretion—this is actually a kind of conditioned reflex. Many times, when we smell certain odors we naturally associate them with specific scenes, and may even trigger certain emotions; this is also the result of frequently coming into contact with certain smells in childhood forming memories, and such memories can even last a lifetime. In this process, brain neurons generate new memory nerve cells, and this is precisely the root of learning and memory.
Memory for the smells of specific objects: this exercise requires closing your eyes and blindly smelling various objects. Taking fruit practice as an example, we can use various fruits—first sniff the aroma and try to memorize it, then randomly pick one fruit and smell it blindfolded, and categorize it: Is it a yellow fruit? A red-black fruit? Or a dried fruit? Then go further and identify exactly which fruit it is, and what state it is in: fresh? ripe? overripe and about to rot? And so on. You can even keep expanding the variety of smells, crossing and mixing various odors, which helps you learn and master the ability to distinguish all kinds of smells.
In addition, we can also make use of coffee's 36 aroma vials, using long-term training to help build correct sensory cognition. Of course, this kind of tool is, after all, artificially made essential oil, and there is a certain gap between it and actual smells, so the editor suggests that it is best to find real objects from daily life for smell training. In addition, when training with aroma vials, the editor suggests smelling the lid—gently wave the lid of the aroma vial in front of your nose so the scent drifts out, rather than smelling the bottle directly, otherwise after smelling several bottles in a row you may feel dizzy.
Now for a practical demonstration:
We'll take the red wine process coffee from [Panama Hartmann Estate] as an example.
Red wine process (also known as carbonic maceration)
The red wine process was inspired by the winemaking techniques of red wine.
This process involves removing the pulp and skin from the coffee beans, then placing them into a stainless steel container and injecting carbon dioxide gas so that they enter an anaerobic state. The fermentation tank is sealed, and by precisely controlling the ratio of oxygen to carbon dioxide inside the tank, the coffee develops richer aromatic substances.
The flavor description of this [Panama Hartmann Estate] red wine process coffee is: dry aroma of nuts, wet aroma of red wine fermentation, jasmine in the finish, aftertaste of pear juice with honey, and caramel aroma.
1. Dry aroma of nuts: when eating almonds or stir-fried peanuts, take extra sniffs of this scent.
2. Wet aroma of red wine fermentation: normally pay attention to smelling red wine, even if you don't drink it.
3. Jasmine in the finish: if you have never smelled fresh jasmine, it is similar to the coffee flower (No. 12) in the aroma vial; jasmine tea also works—remember to drink it several times, as it also contains the scent of honey, which you need to distinguish.
4. Aftertaste of pear juice: eat more fruit and memorize more; coffee contains many fruity notes, and fruit training helps us identify these flavors in coffee.
5. Honey and caramel aroma at the bottom of the cup after drinking: these basically correspond to the flavors in the aroma vials, but there will be a slight difference from actual honey and caramel. These two are also part of the sweetness we taste. (We will introduce the composition of coffee sweetness in the future, so remember to stay tuned!)
The above is the experience regarding the olfactory aspect of sensory training—did everyone get it?
Related recommendations: Is pour-over coffee really that good? Why does coffee smell better than it tastes?
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
