What is a good cup of coffee?

I have been playing coffee for nearly 6 years, during which time my friends have been asking me questions like "what is the best coffee" and "what is good coffee?" As a coffee lover, a coffee fan, rather than a coffee researcher, I have always given you some "ambiguous" answers from my personal experience and feelings. Coffee is your own, and of course you have to tell yourself what good coffee is, but if you say so, it doesn't seem to give you an answer. Based on this point, I would like to tell you about my personal feelings over the years. For me, what is a good cup of coffee?

In fact, six years ago, I was also searching in ignorance, subconsciously looking for a good cup of coffee of my own. At that time in China, there was not much coffee to choose from, mostly cheap old coffee. At that time, there were not many criteria for me to judge a cup of coffee, in fact, there was only one, that is, not bitter. It should be one day in the summer of 2008, in the German bakery on Luck Street in Beijing, I tasted the first cup of my "good coffee". When I think of it, I don't have much impression on the flavor, but my deep memory is that cup of coffee. I can't taste the "bitterness" we often talk about. In fact, it's just an ordinary cup of coffee. Now it should be fresh enough and brewed in an appropriate proportion. Let that cup of coffee be unique among the "bitter" coffee that is flooding everywhere.

In the years since then, at first, like many coffee drinkers, they will reject "sour" coffee, reject "bitter" coffee, and have no specific feelings and understanding of coffee. But constant contact with all kinds of coffee, and then gradually come into contact with boutique coffee, the Osher coffee tasting in 2010 (in that event photos, you can still see the then fisher Zhang Rong, later champion baristas Tang Tianchao, Jiang Deshang, Li Qiang, author of "just want to Open a Coffee Shop"), let me know that coffee can be "like this, like this", and then I began to bake coffee. Later, I even opened a coffee roasting studio, which made me have a deeper understanding and experience of coffee and the taste of coffee, and established a set of standards for identifying good coffee.

Well, after repeating it for so long, in fact, the core meaning I want to tell you is that good coffee needs to be experienced and discovered by yourself. here are some of my criteria for your reference.

1. The coffee is fresh enough

First of all, we still have to emphasize the freshness of coffee. Although freshness itself is not a standard of good coffee itself, you can taste it only if the coffee is fresh enough. Fresh coffee is not necessarily good coffee, but good coffee must be fresh. It should be understood this way. Coffee with the passage of time, its life will gradually pass, its "good" is to slowly dissolve in the air. How long is fresh? generally speaking, its "good" can be found within about 30 days after baking. By a more intuitive standard, if you make it by hand or by pressure, as long as the coffee expands when hot water is injected, indicating that the coffee is still alive, it has the most basic entry criteria for a good cup of coffee.

2. Coffee has a strong aroma and identifiable characteristics.

After talking about the freshness of the coffee, let's pay attention to the aroma of the coffee itself. Many friends will say that I want a strong coffee, which seems to be a very reasonable explanation, but it is not. In fact, the Chinese word "Xiang" is a very general description, that is, it is neither qualitative nor quantitative. We can say that a bowl of ribs is really delicious, we can also say that cabbage stewed tofu is really delicious, and of course, we can also say that the coffee in the cup is really delicious. What exactly is the meaning of this "incense"? I personally think it is not annoying, and it is more likable, at least to the majority. So the aroma of coffee is rich, that is to say, this coffee smells delightful, usually we smell the taste of baking (like toast), cocoa, nuts, peanuts, jasmine tea and so on. I don't think you would describe it as "fragrant" if you smell rubber, muddy, medicine, sour and so on. If you can recognize a special aroma of this coffee when you smell it again, it shows that the coffee's characteristics, or outstanding personality, can impress you and make you remember its "good" even more. For example, many people who do not come into contact with coffee very often will remember deeply when they smell the orange aroma of Yega Xuefei and associate the word "good" with it at the same time.

Let's talk about what is particular about smelling coffee and when to smell it. Friends who have grinded their own coffee may have experienced that when the coffee is most fragrant, it is not the original bean, nor the production process, but grinding. When the coffee bean is "broken to pieces" between the grinding plates, its fragrance is the strongest. But the taste of the immediately ground coffee powder is so strong that the baking flavor is so strong that it will completely overwhelm the subtle and complex flavor, so you can put it for 2-3 minutes, and then you can smell it gently after the strong flavor weakens. At that time, the coffee will show its soft side, which may be orange, apricot blossom and so on. In fact, the aroma at this time is what we often call the aroma of dried coffee in coffee terminology, fragrance.

Next, when making, we will inject water into the prepared coffee powder, the fresh coffee powder will expand, and under the "stimulation" of hot water, the coffee will release more fragrance, which is that you can put your nose close to the expanded coffee and smell it gently. Find the "fragrance" you want. The aroma is actually the wet aroma of coffee, aroma.

3. Coffee has a balanced taste

Finally got the taste of coffee. What is the smell? In fact, taste is the kind of feeling that can be judged by our tongue. In English, it is taste. The basic taste we can feel is sour, sweet, bitter and salty. A good cup of coffee, its taste should be balanced. It's actually very simple to say, but you may ask, what exactly is equilibrium? After drinking for such a long time, I think the so-called balance means that there is no very exciting feeling after the entrance, no surprising bitterness, no squinting sour, and as for sweet and salty, they will never stand out in the coffee, at least not as sweet and salty as we usually know. Balanced taste, should be after the entrance, smooth, very harmonious, easy to swallow, there will not be difficult to swallow feeling, so basically achieve a balanced taste. To achieve the above three points, in fact, it can basically be said to be a qualified cup of good coffee. The following points are actually bonus points for a good cup of coffee. The more you are satisfied, the better.

4. Coffee has outstanding flavor.

In the third point, we talked about the taste of coffee taste, here we want to talk about the flavor, that is, the English flavor, so what is the flavor? Let me give you a simple example, you may know that sour, sweet, bitter and salty are the basic tastes of our daily food, while our group distinguishes different kinds of food. Beef has the flavor of pork, cabbage has the flavor of persimmon pepper, and it is the flavor of these foods that distinguishes them from other foods. This is the flavor, which is what we often call flavor. And the flavor of coffee is also the characteristic that distinguishes it from other coffees, such as the unique orange flavor of Yega Xuefei, the unique wood flavor of Mantenin, the cocoa flavor of Central American coffee, and so on. These iconic flavors are all good coffee plus items. The more special and rare the flavor, the more impressive this coffee will be.

5. Coffee tastes smooth

After talking about taste and flavor, let's talk about taste, that is, mouth feel in English, the first few points are taste and smell, and this is actually the sense of touch, that is, the feeling of coffee in your mouth. Usually we think that a good cup of coffee should be smooth and mellow, while a bad cup of coffee will be astringent and light. The so-called smoothness is actually easier to understand. When we eat some chocolate, the "silky feeling" is the smooth feeling, while the astringent feeling when eating unripe persimmons is certainly not the smooth feeling. As for the mellowness, let me give you an example, you will understand that the mellowness of water is the lowest, the mellowness of milk is higher than that of water, and the mellowness of cream is higher than milk. You can simply understand the mellowness as the consistency of coffee, the higher the mellowness of coffee, the more conducive to the retention of its taste in the mouth, and the lower the mellowness, the shorter its retention time in the mouth. One of the disadvantages of many Yunnan coffee is that it is low in alcohol and light to drink.

6. Leave fragrance on the lips after drinking

The last point is the taste left in the mouth after the coffee has been drunk, which is what we often call aftertaste. A good cup of coffee should leave a fragrance in your lips and teeth after you drink it, and it will not go away for a long time. This aroma can always make you aftertaste the "good" of that cup of coffee. For example, most of the good coffee will make people have a "sweet" experience. Some coffee will also make you remember the flavor you just felt.

These are my criteria for judging a good cup of coffee. In fact, it is not my innovation, but also the judgment standard left by many predecessors. I just use more popular language to express it, so that many friends who are new to coffee can find a "recognized" cup of good coffee more quickly. Say one thousand, ten thousand, coffee to drink, you still have to use your own experience to feel, to find a good cup of coffee of your own.