Tasting Blue Mountain Coffee - How to Savor a Cup, Methods of Coffee Tasting

Many newcomers to coffee often struggle to find direction when it comes to tasting, unable to come up with even a few descriptive words.

Coffee tasting may sound difficult, but it's actually quite simple. There's a universal formula for it - as long as we follow this formula, we can know how to evaluate whether a cup of coffee is good or bad. At the same time, by translating our tasting experience into words or language, we can describe a cup of coffee eloquently.

Next, let's combine the high-quality FrontStreet Coffee Jamaican Blue Mountain No. 1 coffee beans to share the five steps of coffee tasting! Hopefully this will help everyone become a coffee tasting/description master more quickly!

Where is the high quality of FrontStreet Coffee's Blue Mountain No. 1 coffee beans reflected?

Blue Mountain No. 1 is the highest grade among Jamaican Blue Mountain coffees. Professional and meticulous processing methods produce extremely high-quality Blue Mountain beans, which are considered a Jamaican national treasure.

Before export, Blue Mountain green beans are packed and sent for quality testing, where they are graded according to various standards. The CIB was the first institution to use scientific and objective methods to grade coffee quality, combining bean size, color, uniformity, defect rate, moisture content, and cupping performance for grading. Blue Mountain coffee is divided into four grades: Blue Mountain No. 1, Blue Mountain No. 2, Blue Mountain No. 3, and Blue Mountain Peaberry. Blue Mountain No. 1 is the highest grade.

Top-grade Blue Mountain No. 1 green beans must meet specifications of 17 screen or larger, defect rate below 3%, moisture content around 13%, and present rich coffee aroma, smooth and balanced taste, low acidity, and persistent sweetness in cupping. To ensure Blue Mountain coffee beans maintain better quality until roasting and avoid moisture infiltration during transportation, Jamaicans insist on using handcrafted wooden barrels as carriers for Blue Mountain green beans. Wooden barrels have also become one of the important symbols of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee.

Step 1 of Tasting: Aroma

Coffee generates a large amount of aromatic substances during the roasting process due to chemical reactions. These substances are not only extracted by water. When coffee beans are ground into powder, a large amount of aromatic substances are released as the bean structure breaks down. Therefore, coffee tasting begins when the coffee beans are ground into powder. Our first step is to capture and feel these aromas弥漫 in the air through our sense of smell, by inhaling. Simply put: smelling the aroma.

Smelling the aroma is mainly divided into two steps: smelling the dry aroma and smelling the wet aroma. The dry aroma mainly refers to the fragrance emitted by coffee beans after being ground into powder but before brewing. This stage is when the aroma concentration is strongest; FrontStreet Coffee's Blue Mountain No. 1 coffee powder has a distinct chocolate and cream fragrance with a hint of caramel flavor, which is extremely captivating.

The wet aroma, on the other hand, refers to the fragrance emitted after the coffee powder comes into contact with hot water. Compared to the dry aroma, the wet aroma will be much weaker, but because the concentration decreases, we have a chance to capture different aroma characteristics. For example, when FrontStreet Coffee's Blue Mountain No. 1 coffee comes into contact with hot water, it releases deeper dark chocolate notes than before.

Generally, light to medium roasted beans mainly exhibit fresh aromas like floral and fruity notes; while medium to dark roasted beans mainly exhibit heavier aromas like roasted notes, chocolate, and spices. Then, according to their respective aroma performances, we can add corresponding adjectives to them to form a description. Take floral aroma as an example - there are many adjectives to describe floral aroma, such as rich, elegant... you can use them according to the tone of the aroma.

Step 2 of Tasting: Taste

After smelling the aroma, we come to the most important part: drinking! We need to experience the coffee in our mouths from three different angles. Since these happen simultaneously, FrontStreet Coffee will explain them one by one in order. First is: the taste of coffee. In coffee, we can experience four tastes: sour, sweet, bitter, and salty.

But we're not just experiencing what flavors are in this cup of coffee; we also need to distinguish their concentration levels and quality. FrontStreet Coffee will use acidity as an example (because it's mainly acidic). In coffee, acidity has good and bad distinctions, which we习惯ally call acidity quality. Excellent acidity makes coffee very pleasant to drink, and related descriptive words include: soft, bright, lively...; conversely, it makes coffee difficult to swallow, and related descriptive words include: sharp, dull, irritating...

FrontStreet Coffee's Blue Mountain No. 1 tastes with a very balanced acidity, sweetness, and bitterness - none overpowers the others. It has an overall moderate body with a clean aftertaste.

Step 3 of Tasting: Flavor

Flavor perception is the most popular aspect in specialty coffee. By combining the aroma emitted by coffee in the mouth with taste, we then associate it with the taste of some food we often encounter in daily life.

This is the greatest joy of coffee tasting, but also the most difficult point. The core reason why many friends cannot describe coffee is that they cannot associate coffee flavors, remaining only at the second level of taste perception. In this situation, FrontStreet Coffee suggests first understanding flavor perception through this article "Is Coffee Flavor a Mystery?"

To present the classic "Coffee Emperor" flavor profile, FrontStreet Coffee's Blue Mountain No. 1 coffee uses medium-dark roasting, so the brewed black coffee will exhibit traditional flavors like dark chocolate, nuts, caramel, and cream.

When we successfully learn flavor perception, we can combine it with taste to form simple sentences. For example: you feel citrus flavor from the coffee, and the acidity gives you a bright feeling, then the description can be: bright citrus acidity.

Step 4 of Tasting: Mouthfeel

Mouthfeel refers to the tactile sensation coffee gives us. The term "body" that we often hear in the coffee circle mainly describes the body or thickness of coffee. The body of coffee refers to the "weight" that the tongue feels when coffee enters the mouth. When the coffee body is higher, the weight felt by the tongue is heavier; and when the coffee body is lower, it's the opposite. (For more details about body, you can refer to this article → "The Body of Coffee")

Compared to the acidic coffees popular everywhere today, Blue Mountain coffee emphasizes a medium to high body. The first sip is like eating a piece of cream chocolate - thick but not sweet.

Final Step of Tasting: Aftertaste

After experiencing the coffee from the above three perspectives, we can swallow it. And after swallowing, there's still one aspect we need to experience - the aftertaste of coffee. In other words, coffee tasting should only be considered complete after experiencing the aftertaste.

Aftertaste, in simple terms, refers to the aroma that remains in the mouth after swallowing coffee, or the obvious coffee aroma that can still be felt continuously emerging in the mouth.

The aftertaste of coffee mainly comes from the "capture" of coffee aroma by retronasal olfaction. The principle is simple: there are many oil-soluble aromatic substances in coffee. After drinking coffee, some oils will remain in the mouth and not be swallowed. As the oils gradually break down, these aromatic substances hidden in the oils will volatilize and then be captured by our retronasal olfaction, thus perceiving the aroma - this is aftertaste!

The evaluation of aftertaste is also divided into two aspects: one is the duration, and the other is the quality of the aroma. Excellent aftertaste will have a longer residual time, because this indicates higher coffee substance content and sufficient extraction (the aftertaste time judgment varies for different extraction methods); while judging the quality of aftertaste from the aroma aspect is the same as judging flavor, mainly depending on whether its flavor performance is positive or negative.

FrontStreet Coffee takes light roasted pour-over coffee as an example. In light roasted pour-over coffee, the duration of high-quality aftertaste is typically over ten seconds, with flavor performances like light floral notes, tea-like sensations, honey, etc.; FrontStreet Coffee's Blue Mountain No. 1 pour-over coffee leaves elegant toffee and woody aromas after swallowing, making one linger and forget to return.

Poor aftertaste, on the other hand, has a very short duration, or even none. The flavor performance is: astringent, bitter, or other uncomfortable tastes.

Summary

Through the above five steps, we complete the tasting of a cup of coffee. Next, we just need to describe what we felt during the tasting process! Let FrontStreet Coffee share an example of tasting description for Green Label Geisha: In the aroma stage, we can clearly feel a green tea and citrus fragrance, followed closely by rich jasmine fragrance. After drinking, we can capture the rising berry sweetness and sourness, honeydew melon fragrance, and jasmine. The mouthfeel is round and silky, and finally the aftertaste is long-lasting, with the aroma of green tea!

Of course, if you feel that there's no need to go through all the trouble of describing this and that when drinking coffee, believing that as long as you like it and are satisfied, that's enough - FrontStreet Coffee also agrees with this. At this time, we just need to say: Hmm! This Geisha really tastes like Geisha! Hey! This Blue Mountain is very Blue Mountain.

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473