How can coffee experts improve their coffee tasting skills?

Every time I go to a coffee shop to drink coffee, I am curious about why some people can quickly react to the flavor of coffee. Although I often know some flavor descriptions of coffee beans, I feel confused when drinking coffee and can't taste anything. I think all coffees taste the same.

1. The sensory experience of coffee tasting

In fact, the flavor of coffee is a comprehensive experience of taste and smell, which is related to each person's flavor memory and is an acquired ability to distinguish. When talking about taste, people are generally accustomed to experiencing the taste as a feeling in the mouth. As a result, many times when describing the taste, people inadvertently confuse taste with flavor. In fact, taste is a mixture of taste and smell.

So what is the real taste? The real taste is the feeling inside your tongue and mouth after you pinch your nose and temporarily cut off your sense of smell. In fact, the flavor of food we experience mostly comes from smell and vision. Without smell and vision, you can't even tell whether the cup you drink is coffee or tea.

The main parts of coffee sensory perception are flavor and taste. Flavor is reflected in the prenasal sense of smell and the retronasal sense of smell; taste is reflected in sour, sweet, bitter, and salty, and the lightness or heaviness of the liquid. The secondary parts are divided into vision and hearing, including the color of the coffee, cups, other people's discussions, music, etc.

The five basic tastes are sour, sweet, bitter, salty, and fresh, but the balance of taste is not just about the balance of the five tastes mentioned above, but also requires the participation of the mouthfeel. The mouth feels the touch (thickness, astringency, softness, and hardness) produced by the chorda tympani nerve, the sensation (throat sensation) produced by the glossopharyngeal nerve, and the sensation (pain, cold and hot sensation) produced by the trigeminal nerve.

Our tongue will retain the residue of what we ate last time, so when tasting coffee, we need to rinse our mouth with water to try to restore our tongue to a blank state. The tongue is very delicate, and overheating or overcooling will damage your taste buds. The pain will cover your taste and make you unable to taste for a while. Like the sense of smell, our taste is also adaptable. If we keep tasting bitterness, our sense of bitterness will gradually decrease. But what is better than the sense of smell is that we can use rinsing our mouths or soda crackers to remove the previous taste.

Methods to train the ability to perceive taste. The organs that perceive taste are mainly distributed in the tongue. In addition, there are also a small number of taste buds distributed in the palate and throat. Select white sugar, salt, lemon juice, and bitter melon, taste and chew them in turn, and feel which parts of the mouth are most sensitive to the above tastes. Then conduct a comprehensive comparative test. Use samples with very similar taste experiences such as soft white sugar, rock sugar, brown sugar, or yellow lemon, green lemon, etc. to practice the ability to distinguish between taste persistence and similar tastes.

Undoubtedly, coffee is a beverage, and the quality of aroma and taste is the most intuitive evaluation standard. The flavor of a cup of coffee can be simply regarded as the interaction between aroma and structure, and its taste can be said to be the effect of taste and mouthfeel. When aroma and mouthfeel can be harmoniously combined and enhance each other, it can be said that this cup of coffee is balanced. To feel the beauty of the balanced taste experience, a high degree of acidity is needed to build the framework, break the greasy sweetness with the clear sourness, and weaken the heaviness brought by the greasy liquid through the stimulation produced by the acid, which is also the reason why more people prefer washed beans.

2. Common sensory misunderstandings

1 | Mistaking the smell of smoke and astringency for dryness

The so-called "dry feeling" generally refers to the burnt smell that appears within 24 hours after the coffee is roasted, and it mainly appears in coffee with a lighter roasting degree and incomplete roasting. This smell will disappear after "bean cultivation", and the coffee will taste rounder and smoother.

However, if the smoky taste and astringency are caused by insufficient smoking and insufficient temperature rise during roasting, and dryness appears from the root of the tongue to the throat after swallowing the coffee, it is a roasting defect. Such coffee will still have a rough taste even after several days of aging.

2 | Mistaking low-grade flavor/taste for high-grade

For unknown reasons, some bakers nowadays like to bake very lightly, or deliberately extend the development time but at insufficient temperature, resulting in two fatal baking defects: undercooked and overbaked. The grassy taste and overbaked bread taste produced by undercooked, as well as the sourness caused by insufficient degradation of chlorogenic acid, have led to an illusion of "this is right" due to wrong sensory guidance over the years. Not only do many practitioners themselves fail to realize this problem, but they also mislead newcomers and customers. This is the so-called "a lie becomes the truth after being told a thousand times".

3 | Confused Senses

As mentioned above, some people mistake maple syrup for roasted sweet potato, the taste of white beans for roasted melon seeds, the woody flavor for floral scent, and the berry flavor for tomato... Some of these are due to the accumulation of life experience and the lack of systematic sensory training and correction, and some are due to long-term mistaking incorrect taste experiences for correct ones.

4 | Hearsay

This is a misunderstanding that follows from points 2 and 3 above. Some people do not have the correct senses, and the people around them will not be able to make accurate judgments and analyses, which will lead to inaccurate calibration and audio-visual confusion. This is why standard cupping situations must be conducted in a quiet and rigorous discussion, because once the information is received, people's thinking can easily be guided in a specific direction and affect judgment.

3. How to improve your senses

The following is just my personal opinion. If there are any mistakes, I hope you can correct them and make progress together~

1 | Scented Bottles & Fruits & Daily Life

It is of course good to buy a scent bottle if you have the conditions, because it is the preferred tool for "common language". However, to achieve the same effect, eating fruit is also a good choice, and paying more attention to the smells around you in daily life can better accumulate sensory memory, but what I want to say is that we should add analysis when we train. For example, when eating apples, we can analyze its sourness, its aroma, and its taste. Although it is very tiring, and eating for training violates our purpose of "taking nutrients", you will find that your senses will be greatly improved after persistence.

2 | Take a professional sensory course

Even practitioners who have passed the "Q" test still need to calibrate their senses regularly, because daily life and age will have an impact on our senses, so it is very necessary to participate in professional sensory calibration courses! The premise is that the calibration agency has real materials and is not a money-making course.

3. Drink more coffee

Whether it is cupping or daily tasting, a lot of practice is the only way to develop your senses. There is no shortcut! After sensory training and calibration, trying a variety of coffees will help you form a "standard" in your mind, which is also an important indicator of cupping scores. When you have a good understanding of the flavor characteristics of coffees from various origins and roasting degrees, as well as how many points they should get in the cupping score, and have formed your own evaluation criteria, you can evaluate all the coffees you come into contact with for the first time.

Of course, everyone’s rating of the same coffee is different, so we should participate in cupping with others more often, and it is best to participate with different people, because participants in different environments will have different evaluations of the same coffee, and we can learn from each other in the subsequent discussion~

4. Detailed description of flavor descriptors

Rich – refers to body and richness;

Complexity – a sense of many flavors;

Balanced – All essential taste characteristics are satisfying, with no one flavor overshadowing another.

Fresh, bright, dry, brisk, or lively (common in Central American coffees):

Caramel-flavored - like sugar or syrup;

Chocolatey – similar to unsweetened chocolate or vanilla aftertaste;

Umami – subtle, delicate flavor on the tip of the tongue (washed New Guinea Arabica beans);

Earthy – aromatic qualities of earth (typical of Sumatran coffees);

Aromatic – An aromatic quality ranging from floral to spiced;

Fruity – an aromatic quality reminiscent of berries or oranges;

Luscious and mellow - round, smooth taste, lacking acidity;

Nutty – with an aftertaste similar to roasted nuts;

Spicy - reminiscent of the flavors and aromas of various spices;

Sweet - no bitterness;

Wild – a wild flavor not generally considered pleasant (common in Ethiopian coffees)

Winey – An aftertaste reminiscent of well-ripened wine (common in Kenyan and Yemeni coffees).

Unpleasant flavor characteristics:

Bitter - a taste that originates at the base of the tongue, often caused by over-roasting;

bland, unexciting – neutral in flavor;

Charcoal - with a smell of burnt carbon;

Inanimate - same as "Flat";

There are mixed smells - musty smells that remind people of eating dirt;

Earthy - same as "having mixed taste";

Bland - no acidity, lack of moist aroma and aftertaste;

Grassy – A scent reminiscent of freshly cut grass;

Coarse – a caustic, scratchy, rough quality;

Turbid - thick and not strong in flavor;

Stiff - starchy texture, similar to water used to cook pasta;

Rough - a feeling on the tongue, similar to eating salt;

Rubbery – similar to the smell of burnt rubber (commonly seen in dry-processed Robusta beans);

Soft - same as "bland, unexciting";

Sour – similar to the sour taste of unripe fruit;

Thin - lacking acidity, usually due to insufficient extraction;

Turpentine-smells like turpentine;

Watery - lacks body and stickiness in the mouth;

Untamed – the quality of being wild.

5. Description of the flavor of different coffee varieties

Geisha

Panama (Geisha): strawberry, jasmine floral, bergamot, caramelly, chocolate, grapefruity, plum, citrus-orange

Costa Rica (Geisha): sweet floral, jasmine, citrus-orange, caramelly, chocolate

Colombia (Geisha): pomegranate, vanilla, chocolate, caramelly, citrus

Guatemala (Geisha): lime juice, vanilla, jasmine floral, sweet grapefruit, tea-rose, pine-strawberry

Typica

Peru (Typica): nutty, milky chocolate, herbal-floral, pear-fruit, vanilla, caramel, apple-like, honey-like, peach tea, ripe orange, jasmine hints

Honduras (Typica): almond skins, silky mouthfeel, brightness, red apple acidity, roasted peanut, hazelnut, orange peel, melon, sweet spice grape juice

Guatemala (Typica): apple, cocoa powder, caramel, black berry, orange pekoe tea, honey

Mexico (Typica): floral, hazelnut, mango sweetness, peach-apricot, vanilla, unripe apple (malic)

Panama (Typica): chocolate, apple, peach, plum, floral, caramel-malt, lemon, buttery mouthfeel

Costa Rica (Typica): soft chocolate, honey-candy, apple, less citrus acidity, white grape, tangerine, apple juice, floral honey, hibiscus floral

Bourbon

Bourbon: cocoa powder, orange, vanilla, almond, chocolate, caramelly, brown-sugar, dry mango, peach

Nicaragua (Bourbon): milky chocolate, maple syrup, walnut, peach-apricot, almond, honey, malty

Bourbon: floral, cherry-fruited, vanilla, malty, caramelly, chocolate

Tanzania (Bourbon): caramelly, very sweet fruit, brown sugar, vanilla, chocolate

Guatemala (Bourbon): caramelly, toasted bread, chocolate powder, apple, plum

Costa Rica (Bourbon): sugar sweetness, roasted almond, hazelnut, peanut, black berry, cinnamon, malt, sweet tobacco flavor

Maragogype

Nicaragua (Maragogype): lemon, cinnamon, cola, floral, citrus, melon

Guatemala (Maragogype): strawberry, toasted bread, vanilla, raisin, floral, plum, hibiscus

Kent

Indian Malabar (Kent): pungent spicy, tobacco (pipe tabacco), caramel (caramelly)

Pacas

El Salvador (Pacas): sweet peach, vanilla, floral, jasmine floral, caramelly, orange, lemon, melon

Honduras (Pacas): bergamot, cedar, honey, peach, lemon, grape, watermelon, apple, raisin

Pacamara

Guatemala (Pacamara): caramelly, honey, vanilla, floral, peach, hazelnut, jasmine

Nicaragua (Pacamara): chocolate, caramelly, orange, maple syrup, honey, raspberry, cinnamon, apricot

El Salvador (Pacamara): orange, vanilla, lemon, chocolate, apricot, lemonade, lime, floral

SL28

Kenya (SL28): malty, caramelly, almond, floral, vanilla, citrus, apple, peach

SL34

Kenya (SL34): caramelly, butter scotch candy, orange, grape, plum

Catuai

Panama (Catuai): apple, peach, chocolate, apricot, mango, almond

Guatemala (Catuai): chocolate, cinnamon, plum, honey, lemon, apple, grape

Brazil (Catuai): floral, watermelon, peach, grapefruity

Costa Rica (Catuai): pear, floral, mango, caramelly, lemon grass, chocolate, cedar

Mundo Novo

Brazil (Mundo Novo): nutty, malty, chocolate, banana skin, sweet tobacco, tangerine/orange

Finally, drinking coffee is the result of the joint operation of vision, smell and taste, which requires continuous practice. The sense of smell can be cultivated and is not just innate.