How Can Coffee Beginners Appreciate the Flavors of Pour-Over Coffee? Is the Tea-Like Sensation in Specialty Coffee Actually Astringency?

"Isn't tea-like sensation the same as sweetness?!" "Tea-like sensation is actually astringency...!" "Isn't tea-like sensation the taste of tea??" The inspiration for this article comes from everyday life, where the above conversation was recently overheard by FrontStreet Coffee's barista among three friends quietly discussing the topic.

Understanding Astringency Before Tea-like Sensation

Before understanding tea-like sensation, let's first understand astringency.

Astringency is a tactile sensation in the mouth. The appearance of "astringency" is when polyphenol compounds in food manifest themselves in the mouth, creating a rough sensation. Strong roughness can be described as dry astringency, which lingers in the mouth for a long time and affects your experience when tasting the next food. While astringency is certainly unpleasant, we still need to divide it into two categories: negative astringency and positive astringency.

Negative Astringency

Negative astringency is difficult to reverse. For example, when coffee beans themselves contain too much chlorogenic acid, it degrades into quinic acid during the roasting process. Quinic acid is a phenolic acid and non-volatile, so it cannot be detected through smell, but it tastes bitter and has strong astringency. Another example is when coffee beans are not completely dehydrated during roasting. The moisture in green beans affects heat conduction, leading to situations where the bean surface is roasted but the core remains underdeveloped. This tastes somewhat herbal and brings a green, puckering sensation.

Positive Astringency

Positive astringency enriches the complexity of coffee. For example, slight citrus peel astringency, combined with clean acidity and mild skin astringency, can remind us of eating pomelo flesh and encountering the inner membrane (the layer that wraps the flesh). The sweet and sour taste with a hint of bitterness is not unpleasant and actually creates a sweet aftertaste.

What Exactly is Tea-like Sensation?

First, when we taste tea with明显的苦涩味 (obvious bitter and astringent taste), in many cases, it's due to the quality of the tea leaves itself or over-extraction during brewing, which releases too many tea polyphenols, creating bitterness and astringency. Quality tea leaves combined with proper brewing will leave the mouth filled with the unique aroma of the tea variety and a sweet aftertaste.

For example, when tasting green tea, it retains a large amount of tea polyphenols, so the mouth experiences a rough sensation (mild astringency) and a fresh aroma. At the same time, you might also detect the marine-like umami taste of seaweed, known as umami (meaning savory flavor, a special taste brought by amino acids).

Another example when tasting oolong tea (such as Tieguanyin), as it's a semi-fermented tea, the tea-like sensation is smooth, mellow and refreshing, with obvious sweet aftertaste and lasting fragrance.

Another example when tasting black tea, as it's a fully fermented tea, the tea-like sensation is full and substantial, with rich aroma, strong tea flavor, and obvious sweet aftertaste.

Tea-like Sensation in Coffee

Now, let's return to coffee flavors. Actually, the tea-like sensation we taste in coffee cannot be compared directly to the sensation of drinking tea soup. The tea-like sensation in coffee often manifests in the coffee's aftertaste and the degree of sweet aftertaste in the mouth, reminding you of the aroma, texture, or aftertaste of certain types of tea or tea soup.

FrontStreet Coffee often experiences the unique umami of green tea or the fresh aroma of green tea itself in the aftertaste when tasting washed Yirgacheffe coffee.

When tasting washed Esmeralda Special Green Dot coffee, we feel obvious sweet aftertaste and a light feeling, just like drinking Tieguanyin tea, with both aroma and sweet aftertaste being very lasting.

When tasting natural-processed Yunnan Typica coffee, we feel a substantial sweet aftertaste, similar to the sensation of drinking black tea.

Final Thoughts

The world of coffee offers ever-changing flavors, and everyone's sensory perception is different. Not everyone can detect the tea-like sensation in coffee flavors. In foreign descriptions of specialty coffee beans, tea-related descriptions rarely appear, whereas in China, we prefer to use tea-like sensation or tea aroma as flavor descriptions.

On one hand, this is because Chinese people have an "innate" familiarity with tea-like sensation. On the other hand, we hope to gradually change people's inherent impression that coffee only has a burnt, bitter taste. Through descriptions of tea-like sensation and tea aroma, we want everyone to know that specialty coffee, like good tea, can have excellent aroma, clean texture, and sweet aftertaste.

Important Notice :

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