What Does Coffee Balance Mean? What Does Balanced Flavor in Pour-Over Coffee Refer To?

Understanding Coffee Balance: Beyond Flavor and Mouthfeel

Flavor and mouthfeel are the two primary aspects we evaluate when tasting a cup of coffee. For example: "This coffee tastes very fresh with prominent XX flavor," or "This coffee has a rich, very smooth mouthfeel." But did you know that besides these two specific aspects, coffee has another relatively abstract quality? What is it? It's balance.

"This coffee is very balanced" is a description FrontStreet Coffee uses when introducing certain coffees. For many people, this statement might not be easy to understand because, as FrontStreet Coffee mentioned, "balance" is not specific enough. If we interpret it literally, it would mean that certain elements in the coffee have uniform equality, with no overly prominent strengths, giving a very plain and ordinary feeling. But in reality, balance is not equivalent to plainness, nor does it merely refer to absolute equality. Balance more commonly refers to the harmonious interplay between different elements in coffee, where no element is too prominent or weak, achieving a very harmonious state overall.

This might sound a bit profound, so FrontStreet Coffee will give an example: it's like the volume ratio between instruments and vocals during a musical performance. We're not saying they need to be perfectly matched, but at least the instrument volume shouldn't be so loud as to overpower the vocals, otherwise it would lead to an "unbalanced" situation where only the sound of instruments is present without vocals. When the volumes of vocals and instruments don't overpower each other but complement each other, we can call this a "balanced/harmonious" state. This is also true for coffee. Balance in coffee can refer to many dimensions, but in daily life, it most commonly refers to flavor balance.

Sour, sweet, and bitter are the three main flavors in coffee. When their proportions are appropriate and no single flavor is too prominent to overshadow the others, we can call it flavor balance.

When one flavor becomes too prominent and masks other flavors, the coffee's flavor becomes unbalanced. For example, if a coffee tastes only extremely sharp and sour, its flavor is unbalanced. This is because there isn't enough sweetness and bitterness to balance the sourness, allowing it to appear so sharp. Besides flavor, coffee balance also refers to whether the overall performance of a cup of coffee is harmonious. In coffee cupping, the coffee's mouthfeel, aftertaste, and flavor are all indicators used to measure whether coffee is balanced. Additionally, it's necessary to examine the balance of coffee's various characteristics as the temperature changes from hot to cold over time.

To put it simply, we need to see whether the coffee's aroma, mouthfeel, and flavor develop "shortcomings" at different temperatures. If so, points need to be deducted in the balance category of cupping. That means balance is a scoring category based on overall comfort level that functions as a deduction system. Let me give two simple examples: a coffee has prominent flavor and rich mouthfeel but no aftertaste; a coffee has prominent flavor and long aftertaste but somewhat lacks in mouthfeel. Both situations show that the coffee's overall performance is unbalanced, so they would need to have points deducted in the balance category of the cupping sheet.

FrontStreet Coffee believes that by now, everyone should understand what it means for a cup of coffee to be very balanced. This refers not only to balanced coffee flavors but also to the coffee having no shortcomings! It has excellent flavor performance, while aspects like mouthfeel and aftertaste are in no way inferior and can complement the flavors well.

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FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473