It’s actually very simple to understand coffee like this

Where and how to start learning about coffee?

This question is probably the most frequently asked one by coffee novices.

Whether it's actual practice in a store, in the classroom, listening to a lecture, or gathering with a few friends to chat and drink coffee together, no no no these are not the most effective ways.

If you ask me, the answer is just one word: drink!

That's right, drink.

The process from a novice to an expert is nothing more than: drink! Drink more! Love to drink!!

Love making your own drink!!!

Love to drink what I make myself! ! ! !

It's just such a simple evolutionary process.

For people who don't drink coffee, it's all empty talk to others about how much they love coffee, how much they like coffee, and how interested they are in coffee. How can they like coffee if they haven't even tasted it? This "liking" is too pale and powerless. All coffee experts start by drinking it.

First, let me quote a passage from coffee chemist Joseph A. Rivera: "Alchemists in the Middle Ages tried to turn scrap metal into gold through chemical methods, but to no avail. However, coffee roasters can use flames to make humble coffee beans fragrant, completing thermal decomposition and polymerization reactions that are difficult to replicate in a laboratory, synthesizing more than a thousand kinds of aromatic spirits to become the most fragrant beverage in the world."

This is a classic description of coffee. To date, scientists have separated more than 800 aromatic compounds from roasted coffee beans, and their complexity is beyond the level that can be replicated by today's high-tech laboratories. The above text tells you from a rational level:

Even if coffee is delicious, how can you appreciate it if you don’t drink it? !

Customers who often drink coffee can tell whether the black coffee served is their favorite Columbia or their favorite Mandheling. Customers who often drink Columbia and Mandheling can tell whether the coffee brewed by their favorite barista today is the coffee they like, even if it is latte or cappuccino, they can still tell it if it is mixed with milk.

This is a taste that can only be distinguished by drinking more. For the training of baristas, drinking more can improve skills, especially for the coffee you make yourself. No matter how bad it tastes, you have to drink it. If you can't drink it yourself, how can others drink it? Therefore, I later asked students to do the same in class. Coffee can only be drunk, not thrown away. First, respect the hard work of others. First, the coffee farmers plant and pick the coffee beans. Most of the coffee beans extracted by various methods are shipped from overseas. Secondly, the coffee beans must be carefully roasted by the roaster before they can be used for brewing. Second, find problems in the coffee that you dislike and avoid it next time.

How to adjust if you don’t drink?! How to practice?!

Coffee has five classic flavors: sour, sweet, bitter, fragrant, and mellow. Almost everyone who has just started drinking coffee thinks that coffee has only one flavor, which is bitter. It is actually very simple to break this habit. Just hold the coffee in your mouth for a while, and maybe you can taste other flavors besides bitterness in the second sip. I don't know if you have ever had experience drinking Chinese medicine. Regardless of whether it is bitter or not, you basically swallow it directly into your mouth, and you also have to mobilize the muscles of your mouth, squeeze your mouth narrow, and resolutely don't want the medicine to stick to your tongue a little more, and swallow the medicine faster, for fear that it will taste too bitter. For people who drink coffee for the first time, it should be a similar experience. But don't worry, you will only taste bitterness if you drink it this way! Because our taste buds near the root of the tongue are the most sensitive to bitterness, as long as the coffee is swallowed, bitterness cannot escape. If we relax our oral muscles and hold the coffee in our mouth, we may taste the sourness in the coffee. Because once the oral muscles relax, the coffee liquid will begin to surround the tongue and taste buds from the back of the tongue, and the taste buds near the cheeks of our tongue are most sensitive to sourness. When the coffee liquid completely surrounds and soaks your tongue, you can slowly find the sour, sweet, bitter and mellow flavors of the coffee. See, drinking coffee is fun, right?

Where's the fun without drinking?!

In the modern era when the third wave of coffee is flourishing everywhere, the coffee menu in the coffee shop includes not only the well-known latte, cappuccino, mocha, and caramel macchiato, but also Ethiopia Yirgacheffe G1 or G2, Sumatra Mandheling, Colombian Huilan, Guatemalan Huivetnango, etc. If you are good at it and lucky enough, you can even bid for the king Geisha. You will also hear the barista talking to you about a certain coffee that is very good, it is hand-selected three times, or it is honey-processed, or it is a certain estate bean. Not only is it exaggerated, but it is also confusing. If you don’t understand, drink more, and you will understand it as you drink. Each bean will have a different flavor, and these flavors are the different proportions of sour, sweet, bitter, fragrant and mellow, or high acid, or heavy bitter, or fragrant, or mellow. Because they are produced in different regions, the temperature, altitude, rainfall, soil quality, picking method, processing and extraction method, etc. in the region will affect the flavor of the coffee beans. Each regional bean has a different flavor, so in order to facilitate identification, they will be named after the place of origin. It takes multiple tastings to adapt to and distinguish the flavors.

How to tell if you don’t drink it?!

So, to sum up, if you want to understand coffee, you have to start by drinking it. You have to drink it, and you have to know how to drink it, which is often called tasting. Coffee tasting is the most direct and convenient way to get started with coffee, and the essence of it can only be slowly understood by drinking more!