Coffee tasting | how to taste coffee like a professional?

For professional baristas, please follow the coffee workshop (Wechat official account cafe_style)

As a coffee practitioner, I am always used to judging the quality of each cup of coffee, but not deliberately, but just curious about the taste of each cup of coffee. It's hard for a person who hasn't smelled a rose to tell what a rose smells like, so all the smells you can feel need to have a connection, and you have to remember what kind of smell comes from and then summarize the types of smells you remember to form your own memory logic.

The sense of smell is adaptable, and it is strongest when we smell it for the first time, but the longer we smell it, the more insensitive we become to it.

When talking about taste, it is easy to confuse taste with taste. In fact, taste is a mixture of taste and smell. Although you may feel as if the smell in your mouth is smelled in your mouth, it is actually an illusion. The nose is connected to the mouth. Try to hold your nose while drinking coffee, and you will find that there is only a monotonous texture in your mouth, and at the moment you release your nose, the aroma suddenly rushes in, as if the smell is coming out of your mouth.

When we taste coffee, let the coffee liquid keep rolling in the mouth, we can feel the aroma in the nasal cavity. How should we train?

The way to exercise the ability of taste perception

The organs of taste perception are mainly distributed in the tongue, and there are also a small number of taste buds in the palate and throat. Choose sugar, salt, lemon juice and balsam pear to taste and chew in turn to feel which parts of the mouth are most sensitive to the above taste. Then a comprehensive comparative test was carried out. Use white sugar, rock sugar, brown sugar, or yellow lemon, green lemon and other samples with very similar taste experience to practice the ability to distinguish between taste persistence and similar taste.

The method of training the ability of olfactory perception

When we come into contact with coffee, we are first attracted by the aroma of the coffee when it is ground, and then captured by the mellow aroma after the entrance.

Coffee cup test is a global coffee tasting method, which allows you to taste many kinds of coffee at the same time. For this reason, you need to prepare coffee beans, kettle, electronic scale, water, glass, timer, cup spoon and bean grinder.

Cup test preparation:

The ratio of water to water: 8.2 Murray 8.3 grams of coffee beans with 150ml water, the ratio of water to powder is 1 to 18.18, and the water temperature should be 94 °C.

Cup test cup: toughened glass or ceramic materials should be used

Cup test capacity: between 207ml and 266ml

Diameter of cup mouth: 76-89mm, all cups should be made of the same volume, size and material.

Cup test spoons: to use antistatic metal material (mostly stainless steel), each spoon capacity can have 4-5ml.

Cup testing process:

1. Grind the beans to be tested in the cup into powder

two。 Smell dry aroma

3. Pour hot water (94 degrees) into the cup until it is full and time for 4 minutes.

4. At the end of 2 minutes, smell the wet aroma

5. At the end of 4 minutes, the slag can be broken.

"broken residue": use a cup spoon to push away the coffee powder floating on the surface, make the aroma at the bottom burst out, confirm the aroma performance of the coffee, gently stir 3 times with the cup spoon and let stand for 2 minutes.

6. At the end of 2 minutes, you can pick up the slag.

"dregs": use a cup spoon to pick up the foam on the surface, and clean the cup spoon each time to avoid leaving a bad taste to affect the coffee.

7. Scoop up the coffee liquid with a cup spoon and test it by sipping. Sipping will make the coffee liquid fog in the mouth, the flavor molecules can be more clearly displayed.

8. Spit the coffee liquid from your mouth into the spitting cup.

Coffee cup test is a sensory analysis process specifically for coffee. A method used to systematically evaluate the aroma, taste and taste of coffee beans.

Sipping is different from normal tasting. When the coffee liquid enters the mouth, it is sprayed evenly over the surface of the tongue coating, and the aroma is transmitted to the central nervous system of the brain through the sense of smell behind the nose. At this point, our brain will compare these aromas with the olfactory memories in your memory bank.

If you have this kind of memory, then congratulations, you drink this flavor.

How to build your own taste memory?

In addition to systematic training, you also need daily accumulation.

[smell incense bottle]

What it does is actually train your sense of smell to make your brain remember the aroma, and later in the cup test you can sip and contrast the aroma in the coffee with the brain.

When I memorized all the aromas, I found it easier to capture the flavor when I tested it in the cup. I know the flavor of many fruits and spices that I have never eaten before.

[eat more fruits, nuts, etc.)

Tasting these things regularly will help you remember these flavors and help you find them in your coffee. The most typical example is that girls are often surprised to tell me that there are a lot of lemons, peaches, plums and so on in the coffee.

And then fall in love with that coffee, of course, this is a cumulative process.

Fruit group

Let's start with everyone's favorite fruit group. The flavors of berries and dried fruits are as follows: Dole natural strawberry, Jell-O raspberry jelly powder, canned Oregon Fruit Products blueberry syrup, Smucker BlackBerry jam, Sun-Maid raisin (some friends say she often adds it to her breakfast cereal in the United States), and Sun-Maid 's dried prunes.

For example, berries, one of the important and friendly flavor substances in coffee, bring not only high acidity, but also rich and charming aromas, such as raspberries, raspberries, blackcurrants and blackberries.

1 | Raspberry raspberry / raspberry

What does raspberry taste like?

It turns out that raspberries and raspberries are the same thing, that is, there is a hole in the middle that can be put on ten fingers to act cute. Although fresh raspberries are relatively rare in the north.

2 | Cranberry cranberry

What does cranberry taste like?

The smooth surface of cranberries is olive-shaped and tastes sour. It is not suitable for direct consumption and is often processed into fruit juices or dried cranberries. The cranberry cookies that have been popular in the past two years are dried with cranberries.

3 | Blackberry BlackBerry

I simply thought that the BlackBerry was the black version of the raspberry, but I was wrong. There is such a thing as a black raspberry, but it's Black Raspberry, not Blackberry. The difference between the two is obvious. Blackberries are solid and sweeter than black raspberries.

4 | Black Raspberry BlackBerry

This is a black raspberry that is relatively rare on the market and basically not seen in China. Except for the color difference between red raspberry and red raspberry, the rest of the structure is basically the same. It tastes sour and can be eaten directly.

5 | Blackcurrant blackcurrant / blackcurrant

Blackcurrant is also a brain-burning thing. It is often found in all kinds of so-called pure fruit juice drinks with no more than 12% juice, or in sugar-free gum with extremely strange taste, and its real body is black and shiny round beans. This flavor is shown in Coffee nose.

6 | Redcurrant red currant

Compared with blackcurrant, red currant has a better sense of transparency and acidity, so it takes courage to eat directly.

7 | Mulberries mulberry

This is something we are very familiar with. I remember that when I was a child, it was very sweet and delicious, but now it looks delicate and tasteless. It is estimated that it has been made slightly. It looks a bit like a BlackBerry.

Blueberry blueberry

Citrus fruit flavors include: Ocean Spray 100% white grapefruit juice, Tropicana 100% orange juice, ReaLime 100% Lemon Juice. And freshly squeezed lemon juice.

Other fruit flavors: R.W. Knudsen Just sour cherry juice, R.W. Knudsen Just pomegranate juice, Dole canned pineapple juice, Welch 100% concentrated grape juice, Gerber mashed apple, Jell-O peach jelly powder, Jumax canned pear juice beverage, peach flavor can also smell fresh peach kernel instead, as for coconut flavor, the flavor dictionary refers to the taste of coconut extract.

Flower scent group

Citrus and black tea: Celestial Seasonings chamomile tea, Lipton Black Tea.

Don't eat or drink roses and jasmine. The references listed in the dictionary are rose water and jasmine extract. Nothing more to go to the flower market, or buy some flowers and plants at home to often exchange feelings with them, it is estimated that it will automatically join the flavor memory bank.

Cocoa flavor

Chocolate & dark chocolate, all we like to drop, ~ ~ so a few things: Nestle Toll House semi-sweet chocolate beans, Swiss lotus 90% cocoa dark chocolate, Dev slippery dark chocolate.

Nutty flavor

Peanuts, eat some bulk peeled roasted peanuts; hazelnut-tasty imitation hazelnut extract, add to the milk to taste. You can also use the "coffee nose" scent bottle to feel the nutty aroma: 27# roasted almonds, 29# roasted hazelnuts.

Spice flavor

And a little more pungent spice. The appearance rate of delicious seems to be a little high: black pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon. Cloves are not lilac flowers, but spices, and the corresponding aroma is the vase of "coffee nose". In the face of so many spices, what I want to say is: a barista who can't cook is not a good cook.

The spice group also contains a spicy and pungent flavor. The chestnut cited in the Coffee Flavor Dictionary is Brazil's Majestic Mountain Sage orange essential oil. What other delicious coffee flavor do you have?

Sugar taste

Syrup / maple syrup / caramel / honey: Grandma's original syrup, Maple Grove Farms pure bee syrup (amber), Crabh pure sucrose (golden brown), Busy Bee pure honey. Vanilla, Spice Islands vanilla bean; vanillin, can be tasted by adding pure vanilla extract to milk.

If you feel "fragrant and sweet", you can come to a box of Nabisco Lorna Doone cookies; Post crushed cereal, General Mills cereal and Nabisco Lorna Doone cookies all speak for "overall sweetness".

Alcohol / fermented flavor

This group should also be quite popular. Alcohol / whisky / wine / fermentation: absolute vodka (Type 80), Jack Danny Tennessee whisky No.7, yellow-tailed kangaroo Cabernet Sauvignon, Guinness Guinness. Don't say you don't drink, but if you really can't, get close to nature and feel the smell of fermented grass. Bring some "overripe" bananas by the way.

Baked product

Cut tobacco in baked products, the reference given in the Coffee Flavor Dictionary is Carter Hall cut tobacco; smell American camel cigarettes (Turkish blend), cigar leaves, and tasteless cut tobacco, or feel the smell of cut tobacco in 3 bottles of "coffee nose".

Burning, including pungent, ash, smoky, browning and baking. Prickly nose smell: Alf natural nutrition red wheat oatmeal, Wright legume shrub smoke liquid; ash flavor: Gerkens10/12 midnight black heavy alkalized cocoa powder, or paper ash flavor; smoke smell: Diamond smoked almonds, wood ash; browning & baking flavor: canned Bush beans, Clover H golden brown pure sucrose.

Cereals include rice and malt. Feel the cereal flavor and mix all kinds of breakfast cereals together, General Mills crispy rice & General Mills oatmeal & Quaker instant oatmeal. To taste the malt, you can have some Post grape cereal.

Green plants

Olive oil flavor: Bertolli extra virgin olive oil; raw flavor: Fisher natural all almonds.

Green vegetables include undercooked / pod / fresh, with a nose to feel the smell of grapefruit peel, coffee nose bottle pea, and fresh grass.

Taste the taste of dark green vegetables and vegetables, just a few canned food. Dark green vegetables: canned Green Giant green beans, canned Del Monte spinach leaves; vegetable flavor: canned Green Giant asparagus.

The smell of beans is fishy, and it is still canned beans of Bush.

Then it's time to taste good (these guys who edit coffee flavor dictionaries seem to really love it).

Withered grass: delicious celery slices; herbal flavor: tasty bay leaf + thyme powder + basil leaf.