Why Can't You Detect Floral Notes in Coffee? What Are the Floral Flavors in Coffee?

Whenever FrontStreet Coffee brews coffee beans with prominent floral and fruity aromas, the floral fragrance rushes into the nostrils right from the grinding stage. Sometimes delicate, sometimes rich, it offers sweet and sour fruity notes upon tasting, leaving one feeling refreshed and uplifted.

However, precisely because floral characteristics not only indicate exceptional bean quality but are also often difficult to capture individually, they appear particularly precious. Everyone's sensory experiences are naturally different, so many friends are curious: do coffees really have floral notes? If they do, why can't some people perceive them? As coffee enthusiasts, how can we usually practice identifying floral aromas?

Where Do Coffee's Floral Notes Come From?

Floral aromas have three characteristics: sweet and fresh, light, and fragrant. Mainstream research indicates that floral notes in coffee are generated by a series of complex compounds, including terpenes, alcohols, esters, aldehydes, lactones, and other compounds. The key reason we smell floral notes is that these aromatic compounds in coffee stimulate our senses, triggering memories of smelling fresh flowers, thus leading us to conclude that there are "floral notes."

As for the generation of floral notes, it partly depends on the coffee variety, cultivation, and fermentation level during post-processing, while roasting is a crucial step in controlling the intensity of floral notes. From a roasting perspective alone, light to medium roasts typically preserve floral notes better. Therefore, in daily life, we can prioritize light-to-medium roasted coffee beans with floral and fruity notes as the main profile. They often have gentle aromas and textures, making it easier to perceive the presence of floral notes when tasting.

What Common Types of Floral Notes Are Found in Coffee?

Friends familiar with the coffee flavor wheel should know that it mentions three types of floral notes described in different colors: white jasmine, pink rose, and orange-yellow chamomile. They correspond to three specific fragrance types respectively: fresh fragrance type, elegant fragrance type, and rich fragrance type.

The fresh fragrance type, represented by jasmine, is most common and the type of floral note that people can most easily perceive. It often appears in high-altitude coffees from regions such as Africa and Central America, with washed light-roasted beans being predominant. It's bright, uplifting, and energetic, with representative flower species including coffee flowers, magnolias, gardenias, lemon blossoms, orange blossoms, and marigolds.

The elegant fragrance type is most typically represented by red roses. It has high fragrance intensity, with a warm and bright character that gives people a sense of peace and comfort. Other representative floral notes include violets, lavender, camellias, and monthly roses. For example, the sun-dried Emerald Red Label Geisha on FrontStreet Coffee's bean list carries rich rose floral notes, and recently, a sun-dried 74158 from Alo village in the Bensa region also exhibited very rich purple lavender aroma.

The rich fragrance type is quite special. It has a slightly stimulating fragrance and is usually accompanied by lemongrass and certain spice aromas. It might feel a bit overwhelming at first smell, making it highly recognizable and easy to identify. It's typically represented by chamomile and osmanthus. For example, FrontStreet Coffee's Colombian Sakura variety reveals chamomile and pepper notes with some stimulating quality after grinding.

How to Practice Identifying Floral Notes?

In many fields, we often see flavors described as specific varieties of flowers, with distinct and clear characteristics. However, in roasted coffee beans, various aromas, whether strong or faint, blend together and stimulate our senses. Therefore, in most cases, it's difficult to find characteristics that exactly match real flowers. More often, we can only capture their "resemblance in form" and then find corresponding plants/flowers from our memory bank. Therefore, when practicing floral note identification, we might as well capture the fragrance in coffee from the "spirit and outline" of the aroma.

When we smell aromas, aroma molecules fill the sinuses in our nasal cavity. The so-called sinuses are actually several groups of bony air cavities on both sides of the nose, respectively called frontal sinuses, sphenoid sinuses, ethmoid sinuses, and maxillary sinuses. We can simply understand this as the sensation felt near the forehead's center (between the eyebrows), combined with the aroma smelled by the nose, allowing us to easily distinguish whether coffee has floral notes and which type they belong to.

For example, the fresh fragrance type we most commonly encounter—this type of floral note rushes to the frontal sinus area first after entering the nasal cavity, then quickly spreads out. Because it doesn't gather in one place, its duration is very short. Coffees with fresh fragrance types often contain the soft sweetness of honey, thus always giving people a gentle impression.

Next is the elegant fragrance type. This type of floral note has medium to high intensity, is lasting and rich. After entering the nasal cavity, it quickly rushes to the frontal sinus, then gathers at the back of the nose, creating a full sensation. It often appears together with the aroma of ripe fruits, making people first think of flower types with darker colors and stable, elegant characteristics.

Finally, there's the rich fragrance type. Compared to the first two types, this type of floral note first gathers in the frontal sinus after entering the nasal cavity, then moves upward toward the top of the head. When exhaling with the mouth closed, you can feel the aroma lingering in the nasal cavity and between the eyebrows. Because the rich fragrance type has a slightly stimulating quality and doesn't dissipate easily, it might feel a bit overwhelming or cause dizziness at first. Only after getting used to it for a while will one slowly adapt.

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