How to Distinguish Good from Bad Black Coffee Beans_What Coffee Beans Are Best for Black Coffee_Which Black Coffee Beans Taste Best

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Rethinking Coffee Standards: Beyond Professional Jargon

SCAA or SCAE cupping standards can be found in any book. The processing methods and flavor profiles from various growing regions are incredibly complex, and the learning curve for understanding the flavor wheel and other aspects is prohibitively steep. Can you imagine asking someone who just wants a simple beverage to understand the spectral differences between cardamom and cherries? Would they not go insane looking at the chart below? This includes Agtron values describing roast levels—how could ordinary coffee drinkers possibly understand what those numbers mean in terms of roast degree?

A Consumer-Centered Approach to Good Coffee

Therefore, I'm setting aside professional standards to discover what makes a coffee barista good in the popular sense, from the perspective of someone who isn't particularly knowledgeable. Let me attempt to follow Maslow's humanistic philosophy approach.

First: For the General Masses—A Smooth Coffee

In this aspect, I really appreciate Brazil's traditional grading system. Besides defect grading, cupping is divided into several levels:

First Grade: Strictly Soft / Second Grade: Soft / Third Grade: Softish / Fourth Grade: Hard (Unpleasant) / Fifth Grade: Rio (Iodine off-flavor)

The first requirement for good coffee is the absence of offensive defects: monotonous bitterness (dark roast schools pay great attention to analyzing bitterness—good bitterness like bittersweet, aromatic char is what they pursue, while monotonous bitterness should be avoided), astringency (try tasting a handful of dead beans after roasting for a clear understanding), asphalt flavor (as shown below—I happened to pick the most extreme example during roasting, usually such beans get stuck in the roaster and become carbonized), grassy flavors (common in light roasts, accompanied by astringency and numbness), and eye-closing sharp acidity (many half-baked light roast practitioners produce various sharply acidic beans).

Quality growing regions (not necessarily rare varieties or extremely high altitudes or bean size), appropriate roast level selection, and two rounds of hand-sorting (many specialty beans now undergo multiple hand-sortings in their growing regions, so beans at that level can skip raw bean sorting, with defects basically under 1%) can effectively ensure a smooth cup of coffee.

Second: For More Ambitious Friends—An Interesting Coffee

Enthusiasts in the single-origin world are usually masters of their craft. Beans from different regions and processing methods will take you to different worlds. The excitement and diversity of the coffee world, from citrus and jasmine-scented Yirgacheffe to herbal and woody Mandheling. The wild enzymatic flavors of natural processing methods, and so on. In this section, I don't recommend drinking many expensive beans—the interesting variety is what truly matters. There are actually tricks to getting reasonably priced beans. Japanese roasting master Taguchi Mamoru's approach is to buy beans that rank in COE (authoritative regional awards where winning batches are publicly auctioned online) but are at the bottom of the rankings. The premium is minimal, but the quality is high. I prefer to build good relationships with several importers (importers who are deeply rooted in growing regions, with year-round staff sourcing beans and close relationships with estates) and then specifically select non-auction batches from COE-winning estates. On average, I can select one excellent value-for-money bean from 5-10 samples.

Third: Beyond Just Flavor—A Cherished Coffee

Take Geisha, for example—its lemon-tea-like flavor had never appeared before. It won numerous awards upon its debut because when it was first discovered, it was a mutant variety with no large-scale cultivation, resulting in still limited production today and persistently high prices. But can a completely new flavor profile really justify a price three times higher than other coffee beans? The deciding factor isn't flavor but rarity, while its consistently high CUPPING scores actually reflect academic advantages.

This includes Kopi Luwak—do people who drink it really know what it is? Many circulating in the market, especially those that still look like feces, are made from honey and flour. Traditional Indonesian civet cats were later replaced with masked palm civets in Yunnan, and then... I'm getting off topic, so I won't expand further.

How Should One Drink Coffee? Is Black Coffee the Only "Real" Coffee?

Of course not. This is just a plant-based beverage, and coffee's development is accompanied by countless cultures. There's much knowledge about espresso that I won't elaborate on. Let me discuss some lesser-known aspects—if I were to open a café, I would definitely let you experience coffee flavors from various cultural systems rather than forcing you to drink only black coffee. For example, in both the UK and Australia, I've found shops provide raw sugar, which has richer flavors than regular white sugar, especially with caramel aromas. Below is a photo from Melbourne's MARKET LANE (I don't know how to flip it... what's on the table is raw sugar).

Vietnam primarily produces Robusta, and locals add large chunks of ice and condensed milk to bitter but malt-rich Robusta. Many people absolutely love it. Both Japan and Europe have had traditions of adding salt—I've tried it, and it's a very special flavor that seems to add a unique umami quality (just a little salt is enough—Europe uses mineral salt, Japan uses sea salt). Even more surprisingly, many customers have told me that black coffee with Wangzai milk is a perfect match!

So ultimately, what you need to find is that cup of coffee that makes you happy. Smooth or unique. Is Robusta bad? It's the most authentic flavor of Vietnamese coffee. (Photo below taken at FIREST POUR in Melbourne)

Final Recommendation: Try Different Regional Beans and Only Buy Fresh, Whole Coffee Beans

Freshness is the weakness of major brands, but now from the West to our domestic small and micro-roasters, they're growing rapidly, all practicing flexible manufacturing with order-based roasting. With such advanced logistics, it's easy to buy fresh beans. Typically, world-class chains like Starbucks ensure bean quality by roasting them in their Seattle roastery, then directly shipping from the adjacent airport to locations worldwide. However, by the time they reach individual stores in regions like China, 3-6 months have passed. So Starbucks's daily coffee, for example, is one of the most difficult to swallow coffees I've ever had (preparation also plays a role—I'm not that particular, but it's truly undrinkable, just charred bitterness on top of charred bitterness).

Time is coffee's killer, mainly from three factors: 1. Dissipation of aromatic compounds. 2. Maillard reactions at room temperature. 3. Oxidation of oils. The best solution is almost always to buy fresh—once you've experienced the aroma of coffee within a week of roasting, you basically can't drink stale coffee anymore.

There are many more myths to debunk—how great peaberries are—Blue Mountain legends—monkeys picking coffee—these basically belong to the realm of pseudoscience.

FrontStreet Coffee: A roastery in Guangzhou with a small shop but diverse bean varieties, where you can find various famous and lesser-known beans, also offering online services. https://shop104210103.taobao.com

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473