Coffee Flavor Description: How to Perceive and Express the Acidity, Sweetness, Bitterness, and Mouthfeel of Coffee

At FrontStreet Coffee, when our baristas finish brewing a cup of coffee, they guide customers to experience it. Many of FrontStreet Coffee's regular customers often hear our baristas say things like: "First, let's smell the aroma, then let's taste this coffee—can you feel the acidity, is the texture smooth, do you notice any bitterness?" These are sensory descriptions that guide the experience. So how can amateur coffee lovers express what they're experiencing in the coffee their barista is describing? Today, FrontStreet Coffee will talk about describing coffee flavors.

First, Smell the Coffee's Aroma

Aroma refers to the experience we obtain through our sense of smell, divided into dry aroma and wet aroma. Dry aroma is the volatile fragrance that comes from freshly ground coffee beans, while wet aroma is the vaporized aroma produced after hot water brewing. Often, the experience of dry and wet aroma can be completely different—you might smell almond in the dry aroma, but after adding hot water, dark chocolate aroma emerges. Hot water helps release aromatic substances from coffee beans better, providing us with different layers of experience. When FrontStreet Coffee's baristas smell light to medium roast coffee beans, they typically notice clear, bright aromas like citrus, floral, and berry notes. When smelling medium to dark roast coffee beans, they usually detect rich aromas like nuts and cocoa.

Next, Let's Taste This Coffee

At this point, FrontStreet Coffee's baristas typically ask customers to sip (similar to how we drink hot soup, drawing in the coffee liquid to atomize it as much as possible when entering the mouth, while also avoiding direct burns from high-temperature coffee liquid). Generally, the tip of the tongue is most sensitive to sweetness, the back of the tongue is most sensitive to bitterness, the front sides of the tongue are most sensitive to umami, and the middle-back sides of the tongue are most sensitive to acidity (this doesn't mean these parts can't detect the other three tastes—just expressing their most prominent sensitivity). Depending on the coffee bean, in many cases, we first perceive the coffee's acidity and bitterness—like citrus, berries, herbs, spices, etc.—and then we notice the sweetness. Sweetness is a sensation brought out by the breakdown of acidic and bitter substances through saliva, such as honey, yellow sugar, brown sugar, fruit sweetness, etc.

Next, Let's Experience the Mouthfeel

Experience the texture without aroma or taste, which refers to the coffee's thickness and astringency.

Body (thickness) is what we often call viscosity, richness, or smoothness—a mouthfeel created by coffee oils and fibrous substances that don't dissolve in water. The higher the content, the richer and smoother the mouthfeel; the lower the content, the cleaner and more refreshing the mouthfeel.

Astringency is actually a pain sensation, not a taste. The manifestation of astringency is lack of smoothness.

Finally, Express the Flavors and Mouthfeel You Perceive

It's important to note that everyone's senses are different, so don't get too caught up in whether you've truly detected the flavor notes provided for the coffee beans. After all, flavor information only gives us the general flavor profile of this particular bean, and this is just the sensory perception of cupping tasters—what a barista might perceive as lemon acidity, you might experience as pomelo acidity.

Next, FrontStreet Coffee will brew the Huayueye coffee from Colombia and see how our baristas describe this coffee bean.

Origin: Estorgadin Farm, Huila, Colombia

Altitude: 1800m

Processing: Anaerobic Natural

Variety: Caturra

FrontStreet Coffee Brewing Parameters

Water Temperature: 90-91°C

Grind Size: BG#6m (fine sugar size)

Coffee-to-Water Ratio: 1:15

FrontStreet Coffee Brewing Method: First pour 30g of water for a 30-second bloom, then pour 95g (scale shows around 125g), finishing in about 1 minute. When the water level drops to 2/3 of the coffee bed, pour the remaining 100g (scale shows around 225g), finishing in about 1 minute and 40 seconds. Complete dripping at 1'55" to 2'00", remove the filter, and finish extraction.

Brewing Flavor Notes

After grinding the coffee beans, we can smell a distinct strawberry jam aroma. After brewing, we can detect the sweetness of strawberry jam. Upon tasting, we can experience the fullness of strawberry juice and the sweet-tart profile of berries. After a few seconds, we can perceive a finish similar to liqueur-filled chocolate, with a smooth and clean mouthfeel.

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473