How to Make Pour-Over Coffee Taste Sweeter and Recommended High-Sweetness Coffee Beans

Black coffee can taste bitter to some people and sour to others. But when you hear someone say, "Wow, this coffee is so sweet," you will probably make this face.

"How can black coffee be sweet?"

FrontStreet Coffee has explained in articles analyzing the chemical composition of green coffee beans that sucrose and polysaccharides account for 50% of green coffee beans. The vast majority of those polysaccharides (carbohydrates), however, do not taste sweet and are difficult to dissolve in water. The remaining roughly 8%, the sucrose-based substances, are what can display sweetness.

And that is only at the green bean stage. After roasting, these substances change as well. Sucrose, for example, converts to caramel. Roasted coffee therefore does not actually carry the sweetness of pure sugars.

If you have spent time around coffee professionals, you have probably heard remarks like "this bean, roasted this way, will become sweeter" or "this bean, brewed this way, can highlight sweetness."

The Sweetness in Coffee Isn't Actually Sweet

When you taste black coffee and experience a sugar-like sweetness, it does not come from the sense of taste but from flavor. This is easy to understand. In a cup of coffee we readily detect bitterness and acidity because those are perceived by the taste buds.

We find it hard to detect sweetness largely because we rely on our sense of smell to perceive sweet aromas. When tasting Yirgacheffe or Geisha coffee, for example, we can often "taste" the sweetness of honey and honey pomelo. That comes from furanones, the source of caramel and maple flavors and of roasted apple and honey flavors, produced during a light roast.

In the same way, when we taste dark-roasted Mandheling, Brazilian or Blue Mountain coffees and detect sweet flavors like caramel and maple, it is for the same reason.

Can Different Brewing Methods Make Coffee Sweeter?

Sweetness is an irresistible flavor for humans. FrontStreet Coffee, like many friends who enjoy sharing brewing methods, has written about how to brew coffee to make it sweeter. In fact, no matter how much the specifics vary from one approach to another, the core principle is the same: extracting more of the acidic and sweet substances within a set time. There is no need to worship any particular technique. Take your time, observe the details patiently, study the principles, and perhaps next time you will be the one on stage sharing your method.

- Back to the main topic -

To taste the sweetness in black coffee, then, you actually need your nose and your tongue working together. The tongue is responsible for the five basic tastes; anything beyond those five is not its territory. We know the nose is connected to the oral cavity. Everyone is familiar with orthonasal olfaction, which is simply bringing your nose close to smell something. The key here is retronasal olfaction: when coffee enters the mouth, aromas travel from the throat back up to the nasal cavity, letting us smell the fragrances.

When we decide whether a fruit is a tangerine or an orange, for example, we do not rely on our taste buds to distinguish their acidity. Most of the time we identify them by aroma, since tangerines and oranges smell very different.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

If you want to chase that sweet impression, start with Yirgacheffe. FrontStreet Washed Yirgacheffe is the classic introduction to the region, known for white jasmine, bright citrus and lemon acidity and a tea-like body. Much of its sweetness registers through aroma rather than taste, which makes it a good cup to practice on.

For a sweeter, fruitier expression, FrontStreet Yirgacheffe Natural Red Cherry is made only from fully ripe red cherries and dried on raised beds. The natural process gives it mature fruit aromatics, a clear fermented note, berry flavor, citrus acidity, a creamy body and the juicy sweetness of ripe grapes - a vivid demonstration of why we describe coffee as sweet even when the beans contain no sugar.