How Beginners Can Appreciate Coffee Flavors - Coffee Tasting and Description Methods

Professional coffee knowledge exchange and more coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat public account: cafe_style)

FrontStreet Coffee - Coffee Tasting Steps Introduction

Tasting the overall flavor of coffee can be summarized in six steps.

Step 1: Grind Coffee Beans and Appreciate the Dry Aroma

The first step in tasting flavor begins with grinding coffee beans. When coffee beans are ground, they release a large amount of volatile aromatic compounds. At this time, you can appreciate their fragrance by alternating between far and near distances - that is, by frequently changing the distance between your nose and the coffee powder.

The first volatiles to emerge from the coffee powder are floral and fruity acidic aromas, as these substances have the smallest molecular weight; followed by medium molecular weight caramel, nut, chocolate, and almond notes, but they disperse over a shorter distance, so you need to get a bit closer; finally released are pine resin notes, mercaptans, and roasted aromas - these scents are typically only found in medium-dark roasted coffee beans and require bringing your nose close above the coffee powder to capture them. Varying the distance between your nose and the coffee powder allows you to separately perceive these diverse aromas.

Step 2: Brew Coffee and Appreciate the Wet Aroma

However, some volatile aromatic compounds cannot vaporize at room temperature and require hot water to release their fragrance - this is the wet aroma of brewed coffee, which is the second step in tasting coffee flavor. When tasting the wet aroma, also adopt an alternating far-near approach to smelling. At this point, the coffee's floral and fruity acidic aromas, caramel notes, and other charming fragrances will be more obvious and easier to detect than when smelling the dry aroma.

Step 3: Coffee in the Mouth - Appreciating the Taste

Dry and wet aromas belong to volatile fragrances, while the water-soluble taste of brewed coffee - the third layer of flavor - must be captured by the tongue's taste buds. When coffee enters the mouth, the sour, sweet, bitter, and salty receptor cells of the taste buds capture water-soluble flavor molecules. The tip of the tongue is more sensitive to sweetness, the sides to sourness and saltiness, and the root to bitterness. These four tastes interact and compete with each other, complementing and inhibiting one another, which is quite fascinating.

Step 4: Tongue-Palate Interaction - Appreciating the Mouthfeel

After coffee enters the mouth, the first sensations are sour, sweet, bitter, and salty tastes. Beyond these, you need to slide your tongue back and forth across the mouth and upper palate to feel the smoothness and astringency of the coffee liquid.

Smoothness comes from suspended particles like coffee oils, proteins, and fibers - this tactile sensation brings pleasure. Astringency is caused by dicaffeoylquinic acid (a potent antioxidant), a bitter degradation product of chlorogenic acid found in coffee that's produced during roasting. Generally, the more pronounced the viscosity of coffee, the better its smoothness and overall mouthfeel.

Step 5: Close Mouth and Exhale - Appreciating the Sweet Aroma

After experiencing the taste and tactile sensations of coffee, you can perform a mouth-closed exhalation - close your mouth and slowly exhale through your nasal passages, using retronasal olfaction (extremely sensitive and capable of discerning subtle differences of single atoms in molecules) to appreciate the sweet aromas of coffee. Light-roasted coffees will have uplifting acidic and caramel aromas, while dark-roasted coffees will have pronounced pine resin and mercaptan pungent notes. When using retronasal olfaction to taste coffee flavors, the caramel sweet aroma notes are captured more completely than through orthonasal olfaction, and are even more captivating.

Step 6: Chew and Exhale - Appreciating the Aftertaste

Good coffee still leaves lingering aromatic aftertaste in the mouth after swallowing, which can be continuously experienced through chewing and retronasal olfaction. The aftertaste aroma of good coffee is endless, leaving fragrance in both mouth and nose.

Knowledge Point

Light roasting focuses on acidity and flavors. If the roasting process is not handled properly, it can result in astringency and irritation, while simultaneously the body and lingering flavor sensations will feel lower.

In short: FrontStreet Coffee is a coffee research establishment, happy to share coffee knowledge with everyone. We share without reservation only to help more friends fall in love with coffee, and we hold three low-discount coffee activities every month because FrontStreet Coffee wants to let more friends drink the best coffee at the lowest prices - this has been FrontStreet Coffee's principle for six years!

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473