What is considered a good cup of coffee? What are the criteria?

For people who drink coffee regularly, the quality of a cup of coffee can be judged by just tasting it, but for novices who don’t taste it, it’s a bit difficult to tell how to taste it. However, the editor of Ai Shen Jia believes that the quality of a cup of coffee must start from this point. Let’s talk about what a good coffee with qualified taste is like.

From the aroma point of view, if there is a clear smell of smoke or burnt, it means that your coffee has been roasted poorly or over-extracted, because only over-roasted coffee will produce a burnt smell. At the same time, the taste will be sour and difficult to swallow. The acidity of a really good coffee should be very soft fruit acid, not strong acetic acid.

When coffee tastes very salty, it is mostly due to roasting defects. Although the slight saltiness of some sun-dried coffee beans can sometimes make the coffee flavor more layered, more often the salty coffee that people can perceive often gives people the feeling of a cup of light soy sauce.

If it tastes bitter like Chinese medicine , this is mostly due to a failed roast. Good coffee should be slightly bitter and acceptable to people, even without sugar. There are also some other flavors like wood, rubber, Chinese medicine, rot, etc., which are generally caused by poor quality of raw beans and improper storage of raw beans.

In terms of drinking and aroma, it should have a slightly bitter taste. The moderate bitterness can help to refresh and relieve fatigue. As a cup of coffee, combined with the human taste, a little bitterness can effectively stimulate the taste buds, rather than just like a glass of juice, which is weak.

If you don't have the above tactile sensations when tasting a cup of coffee, but instead have a slightly sweet aftertaste after the bitterness, and a fragrant aroma, then congratulations, you have tasted a good cup of coffee.

Of course, different coffee beans produce different flavors, some are sour and some are bitter, but the flavors they produce will give people a comfortable taste. You can't generalize the flavors of all coffee beans with one flavor.