What do you think of coffee flavor wheel? What is the flavor of coffee? How to correctly drink coffee to describe the flavor?

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When drinking coffee, you can obviously smell the aroma of coffee, those who know a little will know the type of aroma contained in coffee, and those who do not know will say it is the aroma of coffee. In fact, there are many kinds of coffee aroma, the exact number of how many, because there are so many aroma factors of coffee can not be determined, it is said that there are thousands of aroma, these smells are the aroma of coffee that we often smell. The aromas of these coffee are abstract, concrete, obvious and implicit, and it is a matter of time whether they can be distinguished or not. Regular coffee drinkers can tell the aroma of coffee.

So what does the flavor of coffee mean?

Coffee beans are rich in 1200 compounds, which bring rich sense of taste and smell to coffee. Bitter, just one of them.

How rich are the 1200 compounds? Take, for example, chocolates and wines that people love to taste:

Chocolate: rich in more than 300 compounds.

Wine: 150 to more than 500 compounds have made people fall in love with the surprises of different varieties.

There are more than 1200 compounds in coffee, four times as many as chocolate and more than twice as many as wine.

What is the taste of coffee besides bitter?

In fact, generally speaking, the flavor has the following 9 categories, a total of about 85.

These 85 flavors are produced by SCAA (American Fine Coffee Association) in cooperation with Kansas State University and Texas A & M University. The original intention is that when tasting coffee, we can describe the flavor of different varieties of coffee through a unified and quantitative language, so as to make the coffee evaluation more scientific and comparable.

Friends who love boutique coffee should be no stranger to this SCAA flavor wheel, but many say they don't understand it, so let's briefly talk about the structure and expression of flavor wheel today!

Classification and formation reasons of coffee flavor and aroma

Enzymatic fermentation: this is the flavor produced by fermentation during the treatment of raw beans (such as water washing, sun exposure, dense treatment), such as flower aroma, and fruit flavor.

Sugar browning sugar browning reaction: this part is the flavor produced by the caramelization reaction and Maillard reaction of coffee during roasting, such as nuts and chocolate.

Dry distilation dry distillation reaction: this part is the flavor produced by the dry distillation reaction in the coffee roasting process, such as currant, smoked flavor.

It is not very accurate to see that some people say that "the flavor wheel also represents the flavor produced by different degrees of roasting of coffee", but in fact there is a dry distillation reaction from the beginning of roasting.

There are different sensory categories of sour, sweet, bitter and salty taste, and it is said that there will be more delicious flavors in the future.

Coffee did not deal with the defective flavor during harvest and drying and the flavor produced by aging during storage.

If it is not treated in time or the drying humidity and temperature is unreasonable after harvest, it will produce Rio flavor, fermentation flavor and so on. In the drying process, the coffee beans are heated too much, which will cause the decomposition of oil and produce leather and other flavors.

During the storage process after the raw bean treatment is completed, there are still some reactions inside the raw bean, the organic matter gradually changes and loses, the new bean will have the taste of grass, and after a few years of storage, due to the loss of organic matter, it will become the taste of straw and wood. at this time, the coffee is already very boring!

The flavor of coffee is actually complex and multi-layered.

1) Flower & fruit aroma

When shallow roasting coffee beans, highly volatile molecules will come out first, one of which is the fragrance of flowers and fruits.

In the flavor wheel, flower aroma and fruit aroma are two separate types.

Floral: a light, slightly sweet, elegant fragrance

Fruity: a slightly sweet, fruity and floral blend of ripe fruits.

In boutique coffee, the scent of flowers is relatively rare.

1. "Yirga Cheffe" in Ethiopia (Ethiopia)

2. Sidamo producing area

3. Geisha of Panama (Panama)

Will have a charming floral aroma, similar to the aroma of jasmine and passion fruit.

Yega Xuefei, citrus is the most prominent in the fruity aroma.

Rose summer, the king of coffee and orange flavor, ripe beans for a few days, open the bag, pungent orange, lemon fragrance. English is very similar to Japanese "geisha", also known as "geisha".

In addition, Kenya (Kenya) national treasure varieties "S28" and "S34", with sweet and sour fruit aromas of black plum and berries.

2) Green / vegetables

At the beginning of this category, the flavor needs to be explained a little.

Raw Raw: the natural feel of uncooked ingredients, such as raw melon seeds and raw beans.

Under-Ripe: unripe fruit on a tree that tastes like a grapefruit peel.

Fresh (Fresh): freshly cut grass.

Dark green (Dark Green): boiled green vegetables, such as canned spinach that Popeye eats.

Vegetable (Vegetative): the slightly spicy taste of green vegetables, the reference given is canned asparagus.

Herb like: spice leaves are more suitable. Such as incense leaf, basil, thyme.

Beany: the taste of beans and legume products. (the aromatic acid in the sour category, although it is also beans, but that one is more sour. )

Among the coffee products, the "Mandeling" of Lake Toba Forest (Indonesia Lake Toba) in Indonesia can sometimes smell the fragrance of immortal grass after roasting to medium-deep roasting.

Toba Lake Forest, Indonesia

3) Nuts / cocoa

Coffee beans are roasted as a result of the Mena reaction. This aroma is more common, including:

Nuts: roasted almond Roasted Almonds, roasted peanut Roasted Peanuts, roasted hazelnut Roaster Hazelnuts, walnut Walnuts

Cocoa: dark chocolate BlackChocolate

4) sweetness

The aroma of caramel produced by caramelization due to the cracking of acid aroma during baking. These include:

Vanillin (Vanillin): although it is also vanilla, unlike Vanilla, which emphasizes vanilla pod flavor, vanillin mainly refers to chemical vanilla flavor, such as vanilla-flavored marshmallow.

Chemical sweet (Sweet Aromatics): again, it refers to the sweetness of chemicals.

5) spices

It usually occurs during deep baking, including:

Pungent (Pungent): such as the sharp taste of the nose, the reference is an orange essential oil.

6) Acid / fermentation

Aromatic acid (Sour Aromatics): an acidic product, such as (Bush's Pinto Beans), a canned black-and-white spotted bean.

Citric acid (Citric Acid) and malic acid (MalicAcid): more emphasis on sour, astringent taste, more intense.

Butyric acid (Butyric Acid): the taste of some old cheese, such as cheese Parmesan.

Isovaleric acid (Isovaleric Acid): it is also the taste of some old cheese, such as cheese Romano

Among the coffee products, the "Mandeling" of Indonesia (Indonesia), because of its unique wet planing method, greatly shortens the drying time, creating a unique low-acid and smelly regional flavor.

6) in the alcohol / fermentation subcategory:

Overripe: although the reference is banana, it also refers to the sweet, slightly sour, moist, moldy or earthy taste of other overripe fruits or vegetables.

Wine (Winey): the reference is Yellow Tail Cabernet Sauvignon

Whisky (Whiskey): the reference is JackDaniel's Tennessee Whiskey Old No. 7

Fermented: the reference is Guinness Extra Stout beer

Among the coffee products, the varieties of beans in the sun are more or less alcoholic, of which the editor's favorite is Yirgacheffe, and the smell of wine in Guatemala.

Bitterness (Acrid): especially the bitterness after baking. The bitterness you usually drink is the bitterness of caffeine, not necessarily the bitterness after baking.

Ashy: the smell of paper dust after burning paper

Smoky: the smell of wood ash after burning wood.

Browning (Brown, Roast): purely refers to the feeling of being baked.

Toast: this is one of the subtle fragrances that roasters strive to achieve, and it is also a symbol of baking skill. If the coffee is roasted for one more second, the full and delicate aroma will be lost and replaced by other more aggressive flavors.

8) other

Stale: lack of freshness, fermented bread, taste of expired bread.

Moldy/Damp: the smell of damp in the basement.

Mildew / dust (Musty/Dusty): wheat germ, similar to the taste of cereal crumbs.

Phenols (Phenolic): this is not a misplaced picture, nor is it a still picture of 50 shades of gray. This is the old-fashioned harness room, damp space, with the smell of animals.

Among them, the woody aroma is produced by dry distillation in the process of deep baking. This flavor has received mixed praise and criticism. People who like it enjoy the woody flavor of the coffee and do not like it to affect the flavor of the coffee itself.

Coffee beans with woody flavor are:

1. Colombia (Columbia) "Huila"

2. El Salvador (ElSalvador) National Treasure Variety "Pacamara"

Hawaii (Hawaii) "Kona"

4. Manor beans from Honduras

5. Ireta Manor, Panama (Panama)

Most of these varieties have a unique aroma because the coffee estates also happen to have pine fir or other trees.

Most of these flavor descriptions are based on the taste experience of Westerners, such as cheese, meatloaf, skunk and so on.

Having said so much, do you understand the flavor of coffee? It turns out that a small coffee bean can contain so many aroma factors, because these aromas are what people often call coffee flavor. How can you tell the aroma of so many kinds of coffee? As the saying goes, practice makes perfect. A regular coffee drinker and someone who knows coffee can naturally tell why, so don't be surprised if you meet someone who can say all kinds of coffee flavors. it is possible that he is a coffee lover or he is a barista himself.

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