Do all coffees taste the same? Here's how to taste coffee flavors

Many friends who have just started tasting coffee often say, "I don't taste anything. Why do you all say I taste citrus, but I don't?" We are always good at finding what we like and don't like, but lack specific words to describe the experience of food in the mouth.

In fact, the flavor of coffee is a comprehensive experience of taste and smell. This is related to each person's flavor memory and is an acquired ability to distinguish. Tasting coffee is like an interesting training to develop vivid senses.

Although coffee tasting does not require strict rules like tasting, understanding some basic knowledge will greatly enhance the fun of tasting. In addition to discovering the differences in coffee, it will also make it easier to find the flavor you like.

From the first wave of coffee craze to the current specialty coffee, the consumer demand for coffee is getting higher and higher. Coffee beans have advanced from commercial beans to specialty coffee beans, and the roasting degree has also changed from deep roasting to light roasting or medium-deep roasting. The flavor of coffee could only be described as "bitter, sour, fragrant, mellow, and sweet" before, but now specialty coffee can further subdivide these five flavors.

The flavor of specialty coffee has become more complex. It is no longer the mixed taste of coffee, milk and sugar that is not too bitter and not too sweet. But from another perspective, it has also become purer, and the uniqueness of the specialty beans themselves is more clearly presented.

Another point to note is that the substances contained in coffee itself and formed through chemical reactions after roasting cause coffee to have flavors such as bitter, sour, sweet, fragrant, and mellow. These flavors were expressed in quantitative form when described in the past, and specialty coffee is the concretization of all the flavors felt.

When cupping, combine the flavor you feel with the associated words. For example, if someone feels sour and sweet and thinks it tastes like lychee, they will say it has a lychee flavor, while others may think it has a special aroma. This is a very subjective feeling. Knowing this, you should not let these existing flavors take precedence when tasting, but make your own taste judgment.

When you first start learning about taste, it won’t be very obvious, so looking for existing flavors is also a good way to train yourself. However, it is easy to become dependent on them. Once there is no reference, it is difficult to form your own flavor, so you need to build taste memory.

First, you need to familiarize yourself with the various related flavors and the subtle differences between them, then remember these taste elements and compare and identify them with what you feel in the coffee.

After understanding some basic knowledge, let's taste it together

1. Smell the "dry aroma": After grinding, smell the aroma of the coffee powder before brewing. You can make a preliminary judgment based on the acidity. There are more nutty or woody aromas.

2. "Wet aroma": If you make coffee yourself, you can smell the aroma during the process. However, due to the temperature, some aromas will be covered, so it is recommended to smell it at different temperatures, which will give you different results.

3. "First bite": Generally, the most vivid feeling is the first bite, so you must rinse your mouth with water before drinking to avoid the influence of foreign flavors. The amount of coffee you drink should be enough to slide across the inner surface of your mouth.

4. "Aftertaste": When the coffee slides down the throat, there will still be residual coffee liquid attached, which will emit some aroma. A little trick is to yawn with your mouth closed so that the aroma comes out of the nasal cavity, and then you can feel the aroma of the coffee.

Each type of bean has its own unique flavor. The best may not be the one you like, and the one you like may not be the most expensive. So do as you please and enjoy the good time with coffee.