What should coffee taste like? What are the criteria for measuring good coffee?

For those who are new to coffee, they may think that coffee only tastes bitter, but the taste of a cup of fine coffee should not be so monotonous. Everyone has different tastes and standards, so the taste of coffee has always been a difficult term to explain. So what does a cup of high-quality coffee taste like? And from which angles should we judge it?

Sweetness and sourness are indicators of the taste of a cup of coffee. Many low-end coffee beans actually lack sourness, such as Robusta coffee beans, which only bring obvious bitterness and are difficult to swallow.

Or Kenyan coffee beans, which have a "phosphoric acid" taste, and the sour taste is so excessive that it can make people shrink their senses. However, high-quality coffee beans are accompanied by a fruity sour taste, which cannot be compared with such low-quality coffee beans.

One of the differences in coffee flavors is sweetness, which is one of the flavors that everyone will not refuse. During the coffee extraction process, the sweetness appears between sourness and bitterness.

If the extraction is insufficient, we will clearly feel sourness and thinness during the tasting process, and will not be able to taste the sweetness that should be there; if the extraction is excessive, we will clearly feel bitterness during the tasting process, which will also cover up the extracted sweetness.

Astringency, unlike sour, sweet, and bitter, is not strictly a taste. The taste is mainly produced by polyphenol compounds in food, which creates a rough and astringent feeling in the mouth. It does not mean that the coffee with astringency is of poor quality. The difference is mainly based on the length of time.

Even carefully selected coffee beans will have a certain astringency during the later processing and grinding. This short-term astringency will make the flavor of the coffee richer and prolong the shelf life of the coffee.

The lasting astringency is definitely caused by the immaturity of the coffee beans in the early stage or incorrect roasting methods in the later stage. This can quickly determine the quality of the coffee in front of you.

The taste of coffee is not determined by just one aspect or level. The effort behind a cup of coffee is also worthy of our respect.