How to drink good coffee?

[Introduction] Everyone has their own preferences for food, and the same is true for coffee lovers. Each has his or her favorite coffee flavor, and that may be linked to a feeling, a memory, and lead to an emotion or mood in life.

Drink good coffee

It is the first step into the world of coffee

“In fact, coffee tastes very bitter, but the aroma of coffee is really charming.”

“Chain brand coffee tastes good, but it seems like all you get is the aroma of milk and sugar, and you can’t taste the individuality of the coffee beans.”

I believe this is the common voice of many people who drink coffee regularly. Everyone has different feelings when tasting food, and drinking coffee is no exception. Everyone tastes different feelings from the same cup of coffee. If you want to brew a good cup of coffee, the prerequisite is to know what flavors we can taste and smell in a cup of coffee? Then, through the recommendation of roasting experience or according to the professional advice of the barista during the brewing process, slowly adjust the taste you like.

Some coffee lovers are not only satisfied with an emotional or mood atmosphere, but also want to learn more about the cup of coffee they like. Then he is ready to enter the world of coffee. I would suggest that you start by drinking good coffee.

If we want to define a cup of "good coffee" , I think it is most objective to look at it from the basic perspective of "food freshness and quality". The problem with coffee is that it has too many and too strong aromas, and the flavor is too rich, which will blur your judgment. There are hundreds of aromas that humans can judge from coffee, so if ordinary people drink expired, oily, rancid, or uncomfortable bad tastes, it is difficult to identify them from these hundreds of flavors.

Bad coffee beans may even be mixed with moldy and defective beans, which may harm the health of coffee lovers without them realizing it. Therefore, the coffee manufacturers that supply coffee to consumers are very important. They must have sufficient professional knowledge and technology, strive for excellence in coffee quality, and insist on providing good quality coffee . These are the most basic responsibilities that chain coffee manufacturers, self-baked companies, or home-baked companies should have.

Coffee flavor knowledge and roasting experience have become a common language that coffee fans need to understand. Even when you buy coffee beans, you need to use these common descriptions to imagine and understand what a roaster tells you about the flavor information of this coffee bean.

With the help of the coffee flavor wheel

Come and drink coffee

The language used to describe coffee flavors can naturally be described differently based on the different sensory perceptions of each person. As long as the sensory experience you describe is understandable to the other person, it’s fine. However, it’s not easy to describe the flavor when you first taste a single-origin coffee, so we use the coffee flavor wheel to help coffee beginners enter the world of coffee flavors.

I often ask some friends who like to drink coffee, is there any particular coffee from any particular store that they particularly like to drink? Why?

Many people would tell me that they really like to go to a certain coffee shop and order a certain type of coffee, but when asked why they like it or how it tastes, they can’t really say. It turns out that understanding a cup of coffee requires training and learning.

Tasting coffee is a feeling, while understanding a cup of coffee is a knowledge training . The interaction between the two will lead you into the wonderful world of coffee.

Generally, when we taste a coffee bean, we start with its "dry aroma". We put the ground coffee powder in the aroma cup, shake it horizontally, open the smelling cover, and enjoy the aroma of the coffee beans. Then we will brew it and smell its "wet aroma", which is completely different from the dry aroma.

Then sip it, and use the tip and root of your tongue to feel and identify the flavors of the coffee liquid. Generally, hand-brewed coffee tastes cleaner, and you can clearly feel the clean flavor spectrum of the coffee.

The last aftertaste is the fat-soluble aroma, which must rely on the temperature in the mouth and then be exhaled through the nasal cavity before it can be smelled from the retronasal sense of smell.

For example, when we drink a cup of coffee, we compare it to the flavor wheel and find it sour, sweet and sour, rich in aroma, with hints of chocolate and caramel. If we look further down, can we identify which type of caramel it is?

If we cannot distinguish them, it is not because there is something wrong with our nose and tongue, but because we have not connected the memory. We may have tasted the flavor, but we cannot find the relevant olfactory experience in our sensory experience to describe the flavor.

Therefore, to “understand coffee”, three conditions are required:

The first question is, do you have similar taste and smell experiences? If you have never eaten dragon fruit, you certainly cannot describe the taste of dragon fruit.

The second question is, is that memory relevant to your current situation? If it does not exist in your food culture and life experience, you cannot tell it apart.

The third is that language communication requires consensus. Is the aroma you describe the same as what I have experienced?

The above three conditions are not easy to meet at once, and also require a lot of life experience. It is recommended to first understand the coffee roasting resume, listen to the introduction of the roaster, and then taste the flavor changes. The more experience you accumulate, the wider the spectrum of coffee flavors you can understand. Coffee has thousands of flavors, and there are hundreds of aromas that can be presented. The process of identifying flavors is endless fun.

Practice coffee tasting

Drink the changes

Drink coffee in small sips, like tasting red wine, until it is completely cold. Don't rush to drink it while it is hot, good coffee tastes better when it is cold.

Each bite will unfold with the change of temperature. The first two bites will be bitter at the back of the tongue, and when the temperature is palatable, it will slowly turn from bitter to sour, which will stimulate the production of saliva.

After the fifth sip, the coffee will turn from bitter to sweet, from sour to sweet, and begin to have a lingering aftertaste, bringing out the sweetness on the tongue. Finally, a burnt sweetness will appear, lingering between the mouth and nose.

When drinking coffee, first hold it in your mouth and stir it gently, or even gargle. After swallowing it into your throat, exhale through your nose and smell the aftertaste of the coffee through your retronasal sense.

If you drink it but can't find the flavor

What to do?

Many coffee lovers have encountered this problem. For example, they bought a bean that claims to have peach flavor, but they couldn't find the peach flavor after drinking it. Is it because he doesn't know how to drink it? Or is his taste buds not sensitive enough?

I usually tell him to trust his senses and body reactions, because taste is a kind of memory, and the cupping flavor description provided by the product can only be used as an analogy to trace back the cognition after subjective experience, which is often not vivid enough and can only be tried to be as objective as possible.

Under this general principle, I will provide two methods for you to try:

①The flavor of coffee will develop layers as the temperature drops, so it is recommended to drink the coffee until it is completely cool.

②The strength of coffee also affects a person’s ability to distinguish flavors. If it is lightly roasted coffee with floral and fruity tones, it is recommended to dilute it to spread out the flavor spectrum and make it easier to find the flavor.