Why Does Coffee Have a Sweet Taste? Which Coffee Tastes the Sweetest? How Can You Brew Sweet Coffee?

FrontStreet Coffee often uses descriptive terms like "highly sweet without bitterness" and "highly sweet with low acidity" to describe coffee flavors in our articles. In daily life, we frequently hear friends or café customers praising a coffee by describing it as "sweet." Many newcomers to coffee often look confused upon hearing such descriptions, thinking to themselves: "Sweet? Isn't coffee supposed to only taste sour and bitter?"

This confusion is completely understandable, especially since you haven't added any sugar! Coffee's sweetness isn't referring to the direct sweetness we typically perceive through our taste buds in daily life. Although FrontStreet Coffee has mentioned this point in many articles, these references were usually brief, so many friends may not have fully understood. Don't worry~ Today, FrontStreet Coffee will thoroughly explain what sweetness in coffee really is and how we can better perceive it.

Where Does Coffee's Sweetness Come From?

As we all know, raw coffee beans themselves contain sugar compounds, which make up about 50% of the entire coffee bean. However, not all sugar compounds exhibit sweetness. The sweet-tasting compounds (like sucrose) only account for about 8% of the bean's weight (for Arabica varieties), while the rest are non-sweet coffee residues.

And this is just at the raw bean level. During the roasting process when raw beans transform into roasted beans, these sweet-tasting compounds are affected by various chemical reactions, with most being decomposed and recombined into other non-sweet substances. For example, sucrose converts to caramel. The deeper the roast, the more thorough this conversion becomes. After coffee beans complete roasting, the sweetness from the remaining sugars becomes barely perceptible due to their minimal quantity or complete absence, which is why we taste more prominent acidity and bitterness from coffee. This brings us to the question: if everyone says they can detect clear sweetness in coffee, where does this "sweetness" come from?

The Science Behind Coffee Sweetness

Actually, this sweetness is perceived through what we habitually call "sweet sensation." Coffee sweetness can be described as the result of a comprehensive sensory experience that requires more than just taste – we also need to perceive it through our sense of smell. On the taste level, as FrontStreet Coffee mentioned earlier, this "sweetness" isn't a flavor that can be directly and clearly perceived through taste alone. It needs to be perceived through coffee's acidity and bitterness stimulating the palate, creating taste contrast effects and physiological responses in the mouth. For instance, phenomena like sweetness emerging from acidity or the sweet aftertaste following bitterness are examples where sweetness becomes prominent after drinking coffee. (For more details on this topic, you can refer to the article "Why Does Water Taste Sweet After Drinking Coffee?") The olfactory aspect is much easier to understand. Here, FrontStreet Coffee will use strawberries as an example to aid comprehension. I believe everyone is familiar with the aroma of strawberries~ Even before tasting them, just smelling their fragrance allows us to perceive a sweet taste, which is actually an association! Part of coffee's sweetness is perceived similarly through its aroma.

When coffee enters the mouth, taste first perceives its flavor. Subsequently, the coffee in the mouth continuously releases aroma, which is captured by retronasal olfaction. The brain then quickly combines the taste with the aroma received in the nasal cavity, associating it with the flavor of specific foods in our memory. This is the flavor association of coffee and simultaneously the perception process of sweetness. When we associate the aroma with a particularly sweet food from memory, we subconsciously believe this coffee has sweet characteristics, similar to how smelling strawberry aroma naturally leads to thoughts of sweetness. As FrontStreet Coffee mentioned earlier, the sweet-tasting sugar compounds in coffee are converted during roasting, and the compounds they transform into become the main source of sweet aromas. For example, compounds like furaneol and cyclopentenone make us associate with highly sweet aromas like honey, sweet fruits, caramel, and maple syrup.

How to Better Perceive Coffee Sweetness

To summarize, now everyone can understand that perceiving sweetness in coffee is not an illusion but rather a comprehensive sensory experience. However, for inexperienced newcomers, perceiving sweetness in coffee is not an easy task. So are there methods to help us better perceive coffee's sweetness?

Of course there are! By choosing the right beans, brewing coffee properly, and applying some tasting techniques, we can better perceive the sweetness in coffee (of course, practice is required)~ In the article "Why Do Some Coffees Taste Sweeter Than Others?" FrontStreet Coffee explained in detail that some beans naturally produce sweeter coffee than others under the same extraction conditions, which is closely related to their variety genetics, growing environment, processing methods, and roast degree. If you're not sure how to choose, you can click the blue text above to learn more~ Or you can directly refer to some sweet beans that FrontStreet Coffee typically recommends to customers: Guji·Horsemei 8.0, Panama Elida·Catuai, Esperanza·Geisha, Papua New Guinea·Bird of Paradise, FrontStreet Coffee 2013, and others~

Once we've prepared suitable coffee beans, the next step is brewing to dissolve the flavor compounds from the coffee. FrontStreet Coffee previously shared an article about making coffee "sweet" based on different coffee bean characteristics, which interested friends can check out→"How to Brew Sweet Coffee?"~ Of course, this isn't FrontStreet Coffee being lazy, it's just that explaining it would make this article too long and tiring to read!

Finally, let's talk about tasting! When drinking coffee, we can appropriately extend the time the coffee liquid stays in the mouth while holding our breath, as this helps us better perceive the coffee's inherent flavors. When we swallow the coffee, keep your mouth closed and exhale through your nose, allowing the aromatic compounds to be better captured by retronasal olfaction, thus associating more concrete food flavors. Remember to perceive both the aftertaste and the return of sweetness after swallowing (there's a slight difference between the two). Finally, combine the taste and aroma to associate with specific sweet foods, which will allow you to perceive coffee's sweetness to the maximum extent! (If you can't perceive it, just drink more~)

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