How to Describe Delicious Coffee Flavors? A Guide to Tasting Single-Origin Coffee Aroma and Notes

Many customers have shared with FrontStreet Coffee that they actually cannot distinguish coffee flavors, and despite watching many coffee tasting tutorials, they find that "it makes sense when reading, but they're at a loss when actually practicing." If you're in this situation, you might want to explore FrontStreet Coffee's insights on coffee appreciation.

Coffee Tasting ≠ Describing Flavors

Many people have the misconception that "being able to say (or taste) coffee flavors equals understanding coffee tasting." In reality, flavor descriptions are just a small part of the entire coffee tasting experience. Being able to taste coffee flavors doesn't necessarily mean you understand how to appreciate coffee.

So-called flavor descriptions simply borrow from common foods to help everyone better understand coffee's taste. For example, if the acidity of this coffee resembles green apples, then we can describe it as having green apple flavor notes.

However, if you want to detect green apple flavors in coffee, the prerequisite is that you've eaten green apples and remember that taste. This is what FrontStreet Coffee often tells everyone: taste more different foods (fruits) to expand your flavor memory library. There are no shortcuts to this; it can only be accumulated through experience.

When we taste coffee, we're mainly evaluating whether it's delicious, what makes it good, and what its shortcomings are. This has little to do with flavor descriptions—even if you can't taste the specific flavors, it won't affect your judgment of a cup of coffee. If you're just an enthusiast wanting to learn how to appreciate coffee, you can start from these five aspects: aroma, overall impression, mouthfeel, taste, and aftertaste.

First, Aroma

Aroma is what we first experience when drinking coffee. Aroma is also divided into two parts: dry aroma and wet aroma. Dry aroma reflects the quality of the coffee—after grinding, coffee beans release distinct aromas, most of which are very pleasant. Light-roasted beans typically release aromas of toasted bread, floral notes, and jam-like fragrances, while dark-roasted beans generally emit aromas of roasted nuts, spices, pine, and dark chocolate.

Wet aroma is the fragrance that emerges with the steam after coffee is brewed. Light-roasted coffee typically releases delicate floral aromas, sweet and tart fruit fragrances, and candied sweetness. Dark-roasted coffee generally emits aromas of spices, roasted walnuts, hazelnuts, and caramel.

When we smell pleasant aromas in coffee, it adds positive impression points. Similarly, if we detect uncomfortable odors or no aroma at all in coffee, we subconsciously rate this cup lower. Unpleasant odors that can appear in coffee include raw almond (peanut skin) notes, ginseng-like (medicinal) flavors, burnt scents, and rubbery smells. "Similarly, recognizing aromas cannot be learned from text alone—it still relies on accumulating memories through daily experience, smelling more and comparing more."

Overall Characteristics

Why does FrontStreet Coffee place overall characteristics second rather than last? Because the "overall" FrontStreet Coffee refers to here is how the first sip performs after smelling the aroma. The evaluation method is very simple: "Does it feel comfortable to drink, and do you have the urge to take a second sip?"

A cup of coffee that feels comfortable to drink is a passing performance. Comfortable performance means no off-flavors (high cleanliness), moderate concentration, and taste that isn't repulsive. If after the first sip you want to continue with a second sip, then this cup of coffee is very delicious.

Of course, if you're just an enthusiast, you can evaluate with very strong subjective preferences. For example, some friends simply don't like acidic coffee and feel nauseous when they drink it. In that case, you can follow your own preferences to find coffee that feels comfortable to you.

But if you truly want to properly understand coffee tasting, you need to balance your subjectivity and objectivity, looking for coffee's shortcomings in a "fault-finding" manner, such as off-flavors, burnt notes, astringency, or some unbalanced tastes. If the coffee doesn't have these defects, even if you subjectively don't particularly like this coffee's flavor, you can't let subjectivity hinder your judgment. (It's precisely because everyone has vastly different subjectivity that courses like coffee sensory evaluation exist—mainly to help you "obtain" that "ruler" of objective evaluation.)

Mouthfeel

This is actually the easiest to judge because we all have a very good reference point—water. For example, if what we drink feels similar to water, then in our description we would say "watery, thin mouthfeel." If what we drink feels harsh or astringent, then we would describe it as "rough mouthfeel, astringent."

Conversely, if it feels textured, heavier than water, we would say "full body, rich thickness." If it's very silky smooth, we would say "smooth." Describing a coffee's mouthfeel generally falls into these few categories: rough, smooth, thin, or rich, and they're also very easy to perceive.

Taste

For friends who don't drink coffee often, the taste of coffee might not be very good initially. Most first-time drinkers find coffee too bitter or too acidic. But as you drink coffee more frequently, you'll naturally come to understand what constitutes good acidity and what makes good bitterness—most importantly, you'll be able to detect the sweetness in coffee.

In fact, when we drink coffee, our brains also remember the flavors. As we drink coffee more frequently, we accumulate more corresponding coffee flavor samples. Then when we taste different coffees, we compare the perceived flavors with our previous flavor library. For example, if this coffee differs from previous ones—it's not as bitter and not as acidic—then it's sweet.

Aftertaste

Everyone can understand this as the mouthfeel after drinking coffee. As enthusiasts, you can treat this as a deductive criterion. For example, after finishing a cup of coffee, if your mouth feels bitter or has strong fermented flavors or intense vinegar notes, these are uncomfortable sensations that should result in point deductions. When your mouth has no particular sensation after drinking coffee, it can be considered neither good nor bad.

When, after drinking coffee, your mouth feels sweet (returning sweetness), or releases light, comfortable fragrances (such as floral notes, tea-like qualities), or strong and pleasant aromas (like caramel or cocoa), then this coffee's aftertaste is very good—it's a complete experience.

Finally, Returning to Flavor Descriptions

Actually, everyone has the ability to distinguish flavors. For those who can't taste coffee flavors, the first reason is not having accumulated a flavor library, making it impossible to identify which flavors are present in coffee; the second reason is lack of methodical organization—you might actually be able to distinguish coffee flavors, but subconsciously believe your approach is "unorthodox," leading to self-doubt, reluctance to express yourself, lack of communication, and potential isolation.

In fact, everyone in the coffee community is very enthusiastic and kind. As long as you bravely express what you perceive as flavor characteristics and participate more in discussions, you'll gradually find that "ruler" for measuring flavors.

If after all this, someone still asks, "I've tried the fruits mentioned in flavor descriptions, but I genuinely can't taste them in coffee!" FrontStreet Coffee has two suggestions:

The first is to start from the basics—detailed methods can be found by clicking here; the second is a shortcut method, which you shouldn't use if you truly want to enjoy coffee flavors. This method involves abandoning your preconceived notions of the flavors described, then drinking coffee and matching the tastes in coffee one-to-one with the objects mentioned in flavor descriptions. As you drink more coffee, you'll remember that certain flavors in coffee correspond with the described flavors, thereby remembering coffee's flavor characteristics.

So, regardless of the method, if you want to learn coffee appreciation, you ultimately need to drink more coffee!

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

For more specialty coffee beans, please add FrontStreet Coffee on private WeChat (FrontStreet Coffee), WeChat ID: qjcoffeex

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