How to Taste Coffee Flavors: A Guide to Sensory Perception and Flavor Description

"How can a regular cup of black coffee possibly have flavors like strawberry, tomato, or mango?"

"The coffee flavor wheel is the most successful marketing campaign since diamonds!" "I've followed your advice to eat more fruits, and the more I eat, the more I realize coffee doesn't have the same flavors as the fruits I eat."

We must acknowledge that some people are genuinely gifted, with many having exceptionally sensitive senses of smell and taste who can easily distinguish the flavor differences between object A and object B. However, this world is mostly populated by ordinary people. While ordinary people can also distinguish flavor differences between objects, they lack clear boundaries - they can detect differences but cannot articulate exactly what those differences are. There aren't that many geniuses in this world; most people considered geniuses by society have simply found the right methods and then doubled their efforts. Yes, it's about finding the right approach and then implementing it effectively. With the wrong method, even the hardest-working person will only achieve futile results.

Why We Describe Coffee as Strawberry, Tomato, or Dark Chocolate

Imagine a conversation that might occur when two people are drinking coffee. "This coffee tastes great." "What makes it great?" "It's sweet and sour, with a bit of bitterness, but the bitterness is still acceptable." "Let me take a sip... [spits]... You call this sweet and sour? It's clearly bitter to the point of being sour."

People have different thresholds for sweet, sour, and bitter - a flavor you consider very sweet, I might perceive as bitter. This is where flavor descriptions come in to facilitate better communication. Foods we encounter daily like strawberries, tomatoes, and dark chocolate have distinctly different flavors that most ordinary people can distinguish between.

However, it's important to recognize that coffee is still coffee. Even when described as having strawberry notes, it remains coffee - it's just that certain aromas or flavors might remind you of strawberries.

So when a coffee is described as having citrus, floral, or honey notes, it might simply smell like flowers, have citrus-like acidity or aroma, or possess a honey-like quality, similar to drinking honey water.

Whether商家 want to convey a coffee's flavor to consumers or coffee enthusiasts communicate with each other, using flavor descriptions makes communication more concrete.

However, to facilitate better communication, establishing standards becomes very important, which led to the creation of the "coffee flavor wheel." It basically includes all possible flavor types in coffee, with both pleasant and unpleasant flavors listed. But this doesn't make it the "coffee flavor bible" - different regions develop different people. Americans created the flavor wheel to match their flavor standards (expressions). For example, Europeans typically describe coffee as red currant, which we rarely use in our descriptions because differences in dietary habits lead to different expressions.

The Role of the Coffee Flavor Wheel

The purpose of the coffee flavor wheel is to systematically categorize people's understanding of coffee flavors, providing a reference point when describing coffee flavors, rather than serving as a scoring sheet to determine right or wrong. FrontStreet Coffee offers an example: Student A thinks this coffee has pineapple flavor, while Student B believes it has mango flavor. This doesn't necessarily mean one of them is wrong. From a broader perspective, they both detected tropical fruit flavors, so disagreements in specific subcategories are quite common.

For instance, when tasting a coffee with rich fermentation notes, Student C thinks it's good coffee with jackfruit aroma, while Student D considers it bad coffee with rotten fruit flavor. In professional coffee evaluation, there are standards for whether fermentation is excessive, but for general appreciation, they could both be right.

How to Taste and Describe Coffee Flavors

As for questions like how to taste coffee flavors and how to describe them, FrontStreet Coffee previously suggested experiencing common food flavors more, eating more fruits, and drinking more coffee. Clearly, this advice is still too broad. For this reason, FrontStreet Coffee has concluded that what's actually needed is a systematic learning framework.

Courses like SCA Sensory and Q Grader programs, when teaching people how to appreciate coffee flavors, all follow a scientific and specific learning framework. Usually, to learn or master a skill, you first need to clarify your purpose and identify your weaknesses.

① Cannot taste coffee flavors

For those who cannot taste coffee flavors, FrontStreet Coffee recommends starting with dietary habits - maintain a light diet, then begin trying coffee, starting with simple ones to distinguish the sweet, sour, and bitter directions. Use a 5-level standard to rate the degree of sweetness, sourness, and bitterness in a cup of coffee. Gradually cultivate your senses, then move to point ②.

② Don't know how to describe flavors

A large part of flavor comes from coffee's aroma. If you drink coffee while pinching your nose, you'll only taste sweet, sour, and bitter. So at this stage, when drinking coffee, make good use of your nose to smell the coffee aroma. When drinking, use a sipping method to allow more coffee liquid to atomize, engaging retronasal olfactory senses.

On the other hand, you need to supplement your knowledge of flavor descriptions. The coffee flavor wheel, as mentioned before, isn't absolute, but currently there's no more scientific diagram expressing coffee flavor relationships. Learn to categorize coffee flavors. For example, in a coffee with explosive floral and fruit notes, it logically wouldn't have dark chocolate or nut flavors.

③ Lack confidence in expressing coffee flavors to others

Another aspect is enriching your flavor memory bank. You can't describe a flavor you've never tasted unless you're someone who just memorizes things for tests. Taste more and experience more - there are no shortcuts.

However, according to FrontStreet Coffee's observations, some people can taste flavors and sense coffee's characteristics but just can't articulate them. This type usually comes from a "self-taught" background and lacks confidence in their skills (though there may also be some unknown key knowledge gaps). The solution for this type is simple: they need recognition, which can come from participating in coffee exchange meetings to gain others' approval, or enrolling in coffee sensory courses to get instructors' recognition. Or if you have similar friends around, you can try encouraging them.

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