Evaluating a cup of coffee is...

What makes a good cup of coffee?

Usually professionals will use the following 6 criteria to evaluate the quality of a cup of coffee.

1. Flavor: Flavor is an important item used to evaluate espresso. When drinking espresso, the taste that spreads throughout the mouth and the aroma that surges into the nose are all included together and are called flavor. When describing the flavor, you can start with simple distinctions such as "fragrant flavor" and "fruity flavor", and finally find specific adjectives with the names of flowers and fruits such as "jasmine-like" and "nuts or fruits-like".

2. Acidity quality: Acidity is a very important factor for coffee, and it is also a key factor in judging the quality of raw beans. Acidity is affected by roasting and extraction, and it is also a characteristic of the raw beans themselves. Many people will quickly make negative comments if they feel sourness when tasting espresso. But when you taste sourness, is it a "sharp" feeling, a sour tingling feeling deep in the jaw, or the sweetness of fruits such as oranges? Before rushing to draw conclusions, you must clearly identify the nature of the sourness.

3. Sweetness: Coffee contains sugar. The sweetness of coffee varies greatly depending on the amount of powder and the extraction state. There are two ways to feel the sweetness: one is the fruity sweetness that appears when the liquid is held in the mouth, and the other is the sweetness like sugar that comes with the aftertaste after swallowing.

4. Taste: The texture of espresso in the mouth is called taste. The viscosity of espresso is higher than that of drip coffee, and this viscosity is one of the main characteristics of espresso. When evaluating the taste, if you only take the Crema in your mouth for the first bite, you may sometimes mistakenly think that it has a good taste. However, the good taste is not in the Crema, but in the black liquid at the bottom. A good taste will have a strong and heavy feeling, which makes people have endless aftertaste, and will not have a rough or astringent feeling.

5. Aftertaste: The feeling left in the mouth after drinking espresso. Whether the aftertaste and sweetness in the mouth lasts well or disappears immediately, and whether it is accompanied by irritating sourness and astringency, these feelings are used to judge the quality of the aftertaste.

6. The touch on the tongue: refers to which part of the tongue feels the taste. If you put the coffee in your mouth and only feel a strong taste at the tip of your tongue (note: each part of the tongue can feel sour, sweet, bitter and salty, but the intensity is different), it may be a sign of insufficient extraction. If you feel a strong taste at the root of the tongue or the root of the jaw, it may be over-extraction.

If you taste a cup of coffee and it doesn’t meet any of the above criteria, then I suggest you try another cafe.