How to Appreciate Pour-Over Coffee? A Guide to Tasting Aroma, Flavor, and Mouthfeel

Usually, when FrontStreet Coffee has some downtime, we share popular pour-over single-origin coffees with our customers. However, most of our customers typically only drink espresso coffee, so they're often curious about the sudden pour-over samples. After watching others savor them with delight, they might nervously take a sip and then ask with a puzzled expression: "Boss, how should I properly appreciate this pour-over coffee?"

Indeed, compared to espresso coffee, pour-over coffee often doesn't have such a direct flavor profile, and understanding pour-over coffee isn't exactly simple. So today, FrontStreet Coffee would like to briefly share with everyone the different aspects of how to appreciate pour-over coffee!

Aroma - The Perception of Volatile Compounds

When coffee beans are ground, the first thing we need to experience is the coffee aroma that fills the air. This is the sensation brought to us by the release of volatile compounds! Aroma also has a sequential release pattern based on the molecular weight of the compounds, so we typically first detect the light molecular weight aromas of flowers and fruits; followed by medium molecular weight aromas like hazelnuts, almonds, and cream; and finally, high molecular weight aromas such as roasted notes and pine resin.

Of course, these don't necessarily all appear in the same coffee bean. For instance, high molecular weight aromas typically only appear in dark-roasted coffee beans. It's just that during grinding, their release speed follows this pattern~ The dry fragrance of coffee grounds, the wet aroma during brewing, and the aroma after brewing completion are all aromatic elements we can experience, making this the first step in appreciating pour-over coffee — smelling the aroma.

Flavor - The Perception of Water-Soluble Compounds

After smelling comes tasting. When the coffee enters your mouth, the flavors we can taste come from the water-soluble compounds contained in the coffee! Sour, sweet, bitter, and salty are the four basic tastes we can perceive in coffee. However, it's important to know that the tongue only detects these basic tastes. If we want to associate them with specific items, the primary source doesn't come from the taste data transmitted to the brain.

Whether it's the citrus flavors we mentioned a few days ago or white floral aromas, they aren't actually perceived directly through drinking! Instead, after coffee enters the mouth and is catalyzed by saliva, aromatic molecules hidden within the coffee oils are released! These vaporized molecules are perceived through retronasal olfaction, and when the olfactory system detects their presence, it sends information to the brain. The brain then combines the sour, sweet, bitter, and salty sensations in the mouth and begins searching the "memory bank" for similar flavors, allowing us to perceive them through this brain-matching process! This is what everyone enjoys most when tasting pour-over coffee — experiencing the flavors of pour-over coffee.

Mouthfeel - The Sensation of Insoluble Compounds

Beyond flavor, when drinking coffee, we also need to experience the mouthfeel it provides. As the name suggests, this is the tactile sensation that the coffee liquid brings to the mouth! The main contributors to this are the insoluble compounds in the coffee liquid, such as oils and coffee fibers, which can enhance mouthfeel and body.

The key terms for mouthfeel include: full-bodied, thin, smooth, and astringent. These mouthfeel characteristics can be altered not only through brewing methods but also through roast levels! The lighter the roast, the fewer oils there are, making the coffee taste relatively lighter; the darker the roast, the more oils there are, making the coffee taste smoother.

Regarding full-bodied and thin mouthfeel, we can understand them this way: when there are more compounds in the coffee liquid, there's a certain "weight" that presses on the tip of the tongue — this is full-bodied; when there are too few compounds in the coffee liquid, it leads to a series of thin sensations like "watery" or "hollow"! The astringency we often refer to is the rough sensation that's completely opposite to smoothness. Its main source is the degradation of chlorogenic acids during the roasting process, which creates this experience. This has a lot to do with the quality of the green coffee beans! When a coffee bean is of excellent quality, it tastes good no matter how you brew it, but when its quality has issues, it will produce these "distinctive experiences"~ By the way, under-roasting can also cause this problem, so please everyone, distinguish carefully~

The above covers the appreciation of pour-over coffee. We can start by not rushing to identify what specific flavors are in the cup, but first understand how to drink it and what we're mainly tasting, then move on to flavor identification. This is because for beginners, this approach allows them to more quickly understand what they're drinking in coffee, thereby finding more efficient ways to identify flavors~

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FrontStreet Coffee

No. 10, Bao'an Qianjie, Yandun Road, Dongshankou, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province

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FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473