For some people, black coffee is bitter; for others, it is sour. But if you hear “Wow, this cup of coffee is so sweet!” you’ll probably think to yourself,“How could black coffee possibly be sweet?”

In an article analyzing the composition of green coffee beans, Front Street Coffee also explained that sucrose and polysaccharides make up 50% of green coffee beans, but the vast majority—polysaccharides (carbohydrates)—are basically not sweet and are also difficult to dissolve in water; the remaining about 8% of sucrose-type substances can taste sweet.

This is only at the green bean level. After roasting, these substances in coffee beans also change. For example, sucrose turns into caramel; therefore, roasted coffee does not actually have the sweetness provided by pure sugars.

If you perceive a sugar-like sweetness when drinking black coffee, it does not come from sweetness in taste, but from sweetness in flavor. This is easy to understand: in a cup of coffee, we can easily taste bitterness and sourness because these are perceived by the taste buds.

And much of the sweetness we can detect in coffee comes from sweet aromas smelled through the sense of smell. These are mainly divided into three types. Front Street Coffee lists them in order according to roast level:

1. If you want to taste the sweetness of honey, honey pomelo, mango, honeydew melon, and fruit candy, Front Street Coffee recommends Front Street Emerald Green Label Geisha, Front Street Sidamo Alo, and Front Street Yirgacheffe; they mainlycome from light roastingfuraneol (the source of roasted apple and honey flavors).

2. If you want the sweetness of chocolate, candied fruit, and sucrose, Front Street Coffee recommends Front Street Queen’s Estate, Front Street Strawberry Candy, and Front Street Yunnan Small-Bean Typica; they are mainly formed by the flavors provided by medium-roastfuraneol (the source of caramel and maple syrup flavors).

3. If you do not like sourness and want the sweet aftertaste in dark-roasted coffee, Front Street Coffee recommends coffees such as Front Street Golden Mandheling, Front Street Brazil Red Bourbon, and Front Street Jamaica Blue Mountain. We can taste sweet-leaning flavors such as caramel, maple syrup, and toffee at the same time.

Can brewing coffee a different way make it sweeter?

Sweetness is a flavor humans cannot resist. Including Front Street Coffee, many friends who like to share brewing methods have had the experience of sharing how to brew coffee so that it is sweeter. In fact, no matter how much the specific methods of different schools and styles vary, their inner core idea is the same: within a set time, dissolve and extract more acidic substances and sweet substances.

Brewing sharing

The coffee beans used by Front Street Coffee this time are Front Street Ethiopia Huakui from the bean list, using natural processing and a medium-light roast, with the sweetness of ripe strawberries and honey. The dripper paired by Front Street Coffee is a V60, and the extraction parameters are the same as always:

Dose used: 15g

Grind level: 75%~80% passing rate on a No. 20 sieve, Ek43 setting 10

Coffee-to-water ratio: 1:15

Brewing water temperature: 92°C

First, we use 30ml of hot water for a 30-second bloom to release the carbon dioxide in the coffee beans that hinders extraction.

After the bloom ends, we use a relatively large stream of water and pour in 120ml of hot water in a wide circular motion. Here, Front Street Coffee’s pouring rate is 6ml/s, and the pour is completed in 20 seconds.

When the hot water in the dripper has mostly drained through, we can see that the coffee bed in the dripper has formed a bowl shape. At this point, our hot water needs to be poured concentrated in the center.

Then, because our pouring rate in the second stage was relatively high, the drainage speed will be relatively fast. If we want the coffee to get enough extraction, then when pouring the third stage of hot water, we need to lower the pouring rate and extend the extraction time, thereby ensuring that the coffee can have a sufficient extraction yield.

Therefore, in the third stage we use a small stream and pour in a small circle around the center. This stage pours a total of 75ml of hot water, and Front Street Coffee’s pouring rate is 4ml/s. After all the poured hot water has drained through the dripper, we can remove the dripper and end the extraction!

The total time is 2 minutes 15 seconds. The Huakui brewed this way, just as Front Street Coffee mentioned, has especially high sweetness and a particularly rich layering. Orange blossom, strawberry, citrus, cream, and honey are the rich aromas that Front Street Coffee can capture from it. The finish is oolong tea aroma, and after swallowing, there is a long berry aftertaste that intensifies in the mouth—very comfortable.

The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.