Quick Tips to Appreciate Coffee Flavors! Where Do Coffee Flavors Come From? Hot Brew vs. Cold Brew: Which is Better for Pour-Over Coffee?

Understanding Coffee Flavor: The Complete Sensory Experience

Coffee flavor represents our comprehensive sensory experience derived from the aroma, taste, and mouthfeel of coffee. Because flavor is influenced by coffee variety, origin, processing method, and roast degree, each coffee possesses its unique flavor characteristics. Tasting different flavors in various coffees has become one of the greatest pleasures for most coffee enthusiasts.

However, for beginners, perceiving distinct flavors in coffee is no simple task. In most cases, beginners can only detect sour and bitter tastes in coffee. Flavors like citrus or floral notes might seem like mere fantasy (just kidding).

"Drink more" is the approach FrontStreet Coffee consistently advocates. Only through frequent tasting can we more easily distinguish between different coffees and better perceive their flavors. While tasting more, we can also employ certain methods to enhance our flavor perception, thereby quickly mastering the ability to identify coffee flavors. Today, FrontStreet Coffee will share how we can enhance flavor perception when drinking coffee and how to quickly identify coffee flavors in a short time! This is divided into three stages: preparation, extraction, and tasting. Let's begin with the preparation stage!

Preparation Stage

After roasting, coffee produces thousands of aromatic compounds, which are key to flavor formation. However, because most of these compounds are volatile, they continuously dissipate after coffee beans are roasted.

If we want to experience rich aromas from coffee, we should use relatively fresh coffee beans for brewing. The fresher the coffee beans, the less aromatic substance loss occurs, allowing us to brew more aromatic coffee and increasing our chances of perceiving flavors. Of course, beans shouldn't be too fresh either. Very fresh coffee beans contain high amounts of carbon dioxide, which can hinder extraction and affect the dissolution of flavor compounds. Additionally, brewed coffee may have a certain astringency that negatively impacts the mouthfeel. Therefore, we should try to select coffee beans roasted between five days and one month ago for brewing.

Coffee Extraction

Once we have fresh coffee beans prepared, the next step is to dissolve the flavor compounds from the coffee. FrontStreet Coffee has shared extensively about coffee brewing methods, so we won't elaborate here. What FrontStreet Coffee wants to emphasize is that if your goal in drinking coffee is to experience its flavors, hot brewing is the optimal choice.

There are three reasons for this: First, compared to cold brewing, hot brewing better dissolves flavor compounds from coffee. Cold brewing, limited by water volume, requires greater understanding of coffee extraction to achieve the same flavor dissolution as hot brewing; Second, high temperatures help release volatile aromas, making hot brewed coffee's aromas easier to capture and thus easier to associate with specific scents; Third, low temperatures reduce taste sensitivity, diminishing our flavor perception ability and consequently affecting flavor association.

Therefore, to better perceive coffee aromas, we should choose hot brewing for coffee preparation. Additionally, we should avoid cup warming during hot brewing. Although cup warming helps maintain coffee temperature, it causes the brewed coffee to start at a higher temperature. With warmed cups, coffee remains around 70°C, which is too hot for proper tasting. Without cup warming, our brewed coffee reaches about 65°C, which is not scalding and significantly reduces temperature-related interference, allowing us to better perceive coffee flavors.

Coffee Tasting

After brewing our coffee, we enter the tasting phase. Regarding coffee flavor tasting, FrontStreet Coffee shares two approaches: one is conventional coffee tasting, which involves directly experiencing the coffee's aroma and taste to associate flavors.

FrontStreet Coffee breaks this down into three steps: First is smelling, inhaling the coffee's aroma through orthonasal olfaction to create initial memory points and pave the way for subsequent flavor association; Next is drinking, aerosolizing the coffee through slurping, which increases surface area and allows better aroma release while providing a more comprehensive taste experience; Finally is aftertaste, where coffee residues remain in our mouth after swallowing. These residues contain abundant aromatic compounds that release aromas as they gradually break down, captured by retronasal olfaction. Therefore, experiencing the aftertaste is also an excellent opportunity to capture coffee aromas. Following these three steps allows us to perceive more aromas than conventional coffee drinking methods, thus better associating coffee flavors.

If you still struggle with flavor association, you might try a distinctive approach: eating corresponding foods to assist flavor perception. For example, FrontStreet Coffee's Kenya Assalia coffee exhibits cherry tomato notes when brewed. If you can't detect this flavor, try eating a cherry tomato first, then re-taste the coffee. You'll discover that the cherry tomato flavor in the coffee is quite prominent. The principle is simple: coffee flavors share only partial aromatic similarities with certain foods, not complete identity (as FrontStreet Coffee detailed in the article "Is Coffee Flavor Pseudoscience?"). Therefore, drinking coffee alone might make it difficult to associate specific flavors. However, if we first "input" the aroma of the reference object, then drink the coffee, we can more directly identify the just-experienced aromas and thus associate coffee flavors.

These are several methods to assist coffee flavor perception. If you're in the beginner stage and have difficulty perceiving flavors in coffee, why not try these approaches? Ultimately, we still need to drink more, smell more, and experience more—only then can we improve our flavor perception proficiency.

- END -

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473