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Coffee sensory tool cognition: coffee taste devil water Q grader devil water formula

Published: 2025-08-21 Author: World Gafei
Last Updated: 2025/08/21, Professional coffee knowledge exchange more coffee bean information please follow the coffee workshop (Wechat official account cafe_style) Devil Water appeared in the Q-grader exam as we know, (Q-grader: international coffee tasters, divided into Arabica and Robusta). The so-called devil water is actually a mixed solution of sour, sweet and salty, and in the assessment of the appraiser, it is necessary

Professional coffee knowledge exchange more coffee bean information please follow the coffee workshop (Wechat official account cafe_style)

Devil's water is known to us in the Q-grader exam (Q-grader: international coffee tasters, divided into Arabica and Robusta). The so-called Devil's Water is actually a mixture of sour, sweet and salty solution, and in the tasting teacher's assessment, it is necessary to distinguish the corresponding sour, sweet and salty category in the solution and correctly identify its intensity. Since few people have gone through this kind of taste training, this course has a very low pass rate in the Q exam, so it is also known as Devil Water.

Devil's water, as a taste test, examines the sensitivity and taste of our tongues to sour, sweet and salty. Therefore, we need to grasp the characteristics of each different taste and the corresponding intensity under these characteristics.

At the beginning of our training, in order to enable students to better understand and learn, we will simply put sour, sweet and salty according to different intensity order, so that everyone can identify and remember them one by one.

After training in this way, we disrupt the order of the devil water in all individual categories, and the tasting exercises sort them according to their taste and intensity to deepen the impression.

Finally, the actual assessment of devil water is that there are two or three different kinds of taste in one cup of aqueous solution, so it is necessary to distinguish the corresponding taste of 8 cups of solution and fill in the corresponding taste level correctly. It sounds terrible. This is the so-called devil water.

How can you tell whether a cup of coffee is good or bad? Do professional coffee tasters need a keen sense of smell that others cannot match? Reveal how Q-Grader (Arabica boutique coffee quality grader), one of the most rigorous coffee sensory testing systems in the world, is refined.

In recent years, with the rapid development of the domestic coffee market, consumers begin to pay more attention to the quality of coffee, professional coffee tasters are also gradually known by people, and attract more and more coffee lovers to join this ranks. In order to become an Q-Grader, you need to take about 20 exams, including theory test, raw bean grading, cup test, smell bottle smell test, organic acid matching, baking degree identification, taste sense test, and so on.

The teacher prepares "devil's water" made from a mixture of sour, salty and sweet solutions of different intensities for students. Students need to distinguish the taste and intensity of the drink.

They need to repeatedly scoop up the coffee and sip it, and then write down the taste, taste and flavor of the coffee. The day before, they had had a training in the sense of smell of incense bottles.

"in order to successfully pass the Q-Grader exam, students need not only to learn coffee expertise such as raw bean grading, but also to carry out all kinds of devil training in taste and smell." Training course preparation Q instructor Jiang Chennan told reporters that coffee tasting is similar to tasting wine and perfume, and olfactory training is the first step. Students are asked to memorize and identify 36 fragrance types, including lemon, potato, green pea, coffee flower, honey, caramel, vanilla, malt, tobacco and soil.

The cup test that the students are learning is the quantitative identification of the quality of coffee. It converts a rather subjective sensory experience into quantitative data to judge whether coffee is good or bad. The reporter saw at the scene that students need to rate each cup of coffee tested, including dry / wet aroma, flavor, acidity, alcohol thickness, consistency and so on.

"the emergence of a cup of boutique coffee is closely linked to every link of the industrial chain. Coffee growers, roasters, baristas and quality controllers all need to master cup testing skills that act as a connecting link between the preceding and the following, and learning Q-Grader is the beginning of mastering this skill.

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