What is the Flavor of White Flowers in Coffee? How to Brew Floral Notes in Pour-Over Coffee?

When purchasing coffee beans, we're often drawn to enticing floral descriptions on the labels. But after brewing and tasting, we frequently find ourselves wondering: "Where's the floral aroma? Why can't I taste it?"

Floral notes are quite special in coffee. Even when we buy beans described as having floral characteristics, detecting these aromas isn't always straightforward. This leads to a common question: "Are there ways to make the floral aromas more pronounced in brewed coffee?" Before answering that, let's first understand why some coffee beans naturally possess floral aromas.

Why Coffee Contains Floral Aromas

Some coffees exhibit rich floral aromas due to their bean variety, growing region, and post-harvest processing (for details, see our article: How Coffee Flavors Are Formed). However, to transform from seed to the coffee we drink, beans must undergo roasting, and the roast level plays a crucial role in determining the intensity of floral notes.

As beans roast in the drum, aromatic compounds continuously transform through various reactions. The darker the roast, the more floral notes diminish. Additionally, floral aromas are easily overpowered by other flavors. When coffee is roasted too dark and other flavor concentrations increase, floral notes become easily masked. Therefore, beans with floral descriptions are typically roasted to light-medium levels, where fewer competing flavors exist and floral compounds are most abundant.

Types of Floral Aromas

Just as we experience different fruit flavors, floral aromas also have various classifications. These aren't categorized by simple color groups like "white flowers" or "purple flowers," but rather by how we perceive these scents. The main types of floral aromas are three: fresh floral, rich floral, and subtle floral.

Fresh floral aromas, as the name suggests, provide a refreshing and elegant sensation. White floral notes are the most typical representative and the most frequently encountered type of floral aroma in our experience! Subtle floral aromas offer a gentle, soothing sensation. Roses and lavender are classic examples of subtle floral aromas. Rich floral aromas differ from the previous two types - they're more assertive and slightly overwhelming initially. These aromas are typically represented by osmanthus and chamomile. Here's an additional point: the description "white floral" encompasses a vast group of flowers. Beyond common jasmine, camellia, and coffee flowers, it also includes magnolia, gardenia, white roses, and many other white flowers.

When tasting coffee, the complex combination of flavors and aromas makes it difficult to identify specific flower types, especially since white flowers share similar aromatic foundations. Therefore, people collectively refer to these aromas as "white floral notes."

Brewing Techniques for Enhanced Floral Aromas

So, are there specific techniques to extract more floral aromas? Indeed, research by American biologist Dr. Hachlott and SCAA consultant Linde shows that coffee extraction involves hot water dissolving flavor molecules from coffee, where molecular weight and polarity determine the dissolution rate of these molecules!

Generally, flavor molecules with smaller mass and higher polarity dissolve faster; those with larger mass and lower polarity dissolve more slowly! Floral flavor compounds belong to low-polarity molecules, requiring longer extraction times. Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, these are molecules with very subtle sensory impact. If concentration or other flavors are too high, floral notes become extremely difficult for our senses to detect.

Quite challenging! Not only are they difficult to extract, but they're also easily masked. Following this logic, to clearly taste floral notes, wouldn't we need to increase extraction while decreasing concentration? You're absolutely right! In 2020, SCA commissioned extraction experiments at the University of California, and results confirmed that coffee with low concentration and high extraction indeed exhibits more pronounced floral aromas! The solution becomes simple: we just need to adjust brewing parameters with floral beans, and we'll get a coffee with rich floral aromas!

Lowering concentration is straightforward - we simply need more water to dilute the coffee by increasing the coffee-to-water ratio! FrontStreet Coffee typically uses a 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio for pour-over. To release floral notes through dilution, we can increase the ratio to 1:16! (FrontStreet Coffee has compared 1:16 and 1:17 ratios, finding that 1:17 dilutes concentration too much for those with "heavier" taste preferences). To increase extraction, we have several options: higher water temperature, finer grind, or increased agitation! FrontStreet Coffee recommends increasing agitation, as the first two options require adjusting other parameters to avoid over-extraction risks. Therefore, while maintaining stability, increasing agitation is clearly the best choice!

During brewing, agitation comes from water flow. We can increase agitation and extraction by appropriately increasing water flow impact or the number of pouring circles. Without further ado, FrontStreet Coffee will conduct a brewing experiment with floral-rich beans! Extraction parameters are as follows: Beans used: Ethiopia · Gold Label Geisha Bean weight: 15g Coffee-to-water ratio: 1:16 (normally 1:15) Water temperature: 92°C Grind setting: EK43 setting 10, with 70% passing through #20 sieve Brewer: V60 Brewing method: Three-stage pour The three-stage pour amounts are: 30ml bloom, second stage after bloom of 140ml poured with even circular motion (normally slower), third stage of 70ml poured with even smaller circular motion!

Total extraction time was 2 minutes 12 seconds. Compared to Gold Label Geisha extracted with original parameters (1:15 and slow circular motion), this cup indeed had richer white floral aromas, with fruit acidity being more mellow and a distinct green tea finish. Excellent results! Try it yourself!

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