Coffee is sweet. why is coffee sweet? What's the sweet taste of coffee?

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Black coffee is bitter? That's in the past. Today's boutique coffee manufacturers and consumers will directly look for sweetness in black coffee. We are not talking about added sugar or honey here. But in the black coffee to drink the natural pure sweetness. Is that possible?

But why is coffee sweet? Can you bring the sweetness to the extreme by baking and cooking?

What is sweetness?

Sweetness is generally associated with the high sugar content of the food itself, which is most commonly found in carbohydrates, which contain sucrose (usually granulated sugar) and lactose (milk).

In the Flavor Bible, Page and Dornenburg write: "sweetness provides the greatest stimulation to the taste buds of the tongue (in contrast to salty, sour and bitter). However, through the balance and roundness, we can feel the delicacy brought by the subtle sweetness of the food.

In other words, sweetness is not only important to us sweet lovers, it is also an element of balancing taste.

Why do we love sweets and sugar drinks?

Humans and many animals have a preference for sweets. Sweets give us energy, just as bitterness warns us that food is poisonous, and humans are much more sensitive to bitterness than sweetness, which allows us to save our lives when we eat.

Most people remember the bitter taste when our parents gave us our first cup of coffee or beer when we were teenagers. With the passage of time, we are also used to bitter taste. "time" is a keyword.

The love of sweetness is probably due to natural reactions. Babies enjoy lactose in breast milk, and lovers give candy and chocolates to each other as gifts.

What kind of sugar is in coffee?

The website records that carbohydrates in raw coffee beans account for 50% of the total weight of coffee, including sucrose, pectose, mannose, glucose, galactose, rhamnose, xylose and other natural sugars. Of course, not all of these sugars are water-soluble, only some of them will be boiled into your coffee.

The sugar content in coffee is also related to varieties, tree species and treatment process. For example, coffee grown in Arabica contains almost twice as much sugar as Robusta, which is one of the reasons why Arabica has better quality. It is generally believed that Bourbon coffee is sweeter than Catimor coffee.

The slower the coffee fruit ripens (for example, it may be planted at a higher altitude), it usually contains more sugar. in addition, honey-treated coffee may be sweeter than washed coffee.

Why is some coffee not sweet?

Even so, most mature, healthy and flawless Arabica beans are graded in sweetness. When there is a lack of sweetness, it is usually classified as immature or defective in the process. The cup test table of Zhuoyue Cup reads: "the feeling of sweetness will directly reflect the balance of ripening of coffee fruit when it is harvested." "

If coffee doesn't taste sweet, does it mean it's undercooked or defective? Not necessarily. Roasting and brewing also affect the sweetness and bitterness of coffee, and the intensity of taste buds varies from person to person.

Bake for sweetness

Sugars play an important role in baking, especially in the Maynard reaction (caramelization). Rob Hoos wrote in his book adjusting the Flavor of Coffee: "this chemical reaction begins in the early stages of baking, when amino acids act as catalysts with reducing sugars, leading to complex non-enzymatic saccharification. "

Chemical terms read headaches? Don't worry, it's the same with the author. As far as everyone can understand, more than 600 kinds of organic compounds and melanoidins, as well as complex browning products are produced during the baking process.

When baked to explosion, sugars, especially sucrose, will be caramelized. Interestingly, the longer the baking time, the sugars will disintegrate to form complex and bitter caramel compounds. Yes, bitterness is not just a metaphor.

To cook for sweet taste.

Suppose you have coffee baked for sweetness, and the next step is to brew it for sweetness. It's not easy, and it's very difficult to find the sweet spots of coffee.

Why is sweetness so hard to rush out? "when coffee goes from underextraction to overextraction, it gets sweeter and sweeter like sugar, but it quickly becomes dry and bitter," Matt Perger said. "when coffee is at its best, the sweetness of this moment is what we pursue, but it is easy to be self-defeating.

Brewing for sweetness means that you should carefully adjust the brewing parameters and control all brewing factors to ensure that each brewing achieves the same effect, and remember that the longer the coffee is roasted, the more you need to adjust the brewing parameters.

If black coffee can be very sweet, why does anyone want to drink it with sugar?

Many people think that coffee is bitter, even without adding one or two spoonfuls of sugar, some consumers may drink low-quality robusta formula beans that are baked to deep baking, and such beans will cover most of the sweetness. of course, it may also have something to do with eating habits.

Professional coffee makers are often frustrated by consumers' habit of adding sugar to coffee, which covers or even replaces the original flavor of coffee, which is carefully processed, baked and brewed.

But we must understand what customers think. As professional coffee makers, we look for the sweetest flavor of coffee, because we know that this is the delicious taste. And don't our customers think the same way? The only difference is that those who add sugar to the coffee are unable to taste the original sweetness of the coffee as we do, which is one of the reasons.

How to train the sweet taste?

Modern foods contain a lot of sugar, reducing the sensitivity of most people to sweetness. A 355 ml bottle of Coke contains about 39 grams of sugar, which is more than 9 teaspoons of sugar. Imagine how would you feel if someone ordered a latte and added nine teaspoons of sugar?

Ironically, if you want to taste sweet foods in nature, such as coffee, fruit, milk, etc., you must reduce your intake of sugar, especially foods with sugar.

There is a small experiment that can help you taste sweetness in unsweetened foods, which is proposed by Danish sensory scientist Ida Steen to "release repressed taste."

Prepare a glass of orange juice and a glass of lemon juice. First, taste the orange juice. Feel its sour and mild sweetness. Then, taste the lemon juice, which will not be too pleasant and may tremble during the taste, but it is good training for the senses.

A cup of carefully prepared coffee can clearly taste the sweetness emitted by the self, and we must learn by listening more; more appropriately, we must taste more to explore the mysteries of coffee.