Have you ever heard of coffee Body? What is the Body that the barista talks about?

Food flavor comes from the comprehensive sensory sensation of smell, mouth taste and touch from the nose. The flavor is reflected by different flavor memories, and the synesthesia involved is quite complex. The current taste of coffee focuses on describing the aroma, taste, aftertaste and taste of coffee and so on.

In the project of taste, it can be subdivided into weight and texture. When we describe the human body, we mean the human body and posture. In the language of the coffee world, the adjectives used with Body are often light and heavy. Yes, Body, which means the sense of weight. Try to think of the tongue as a weight meter. The concentration, density and thickness we feel when the liquid flows on it is Body, which can also be called the alcohol thickness of coffee.

What is coffee Body (alcohol thickness)

In "The Professional Barista's Handbook", Scott Rao defines alcohol thickness as the weight or fullness of the drink felt in the mouth.

At the entrance of the coffee, we gently slide our tongue across the mouth, carefully feel the texture, analyze the smoothness, and then use the back of the tongue to measure the weight, which is as light as tea, thick as syrup, thick and sticky. Our description of this feeling may be light or carry weight.

Occasionally there is a misunderstanding that Body is associated with bitterness. In fact, bitter coffee does not represent the absolute weight of Body. What Body shows is not a specific flavor, but a comprehensive result of the interaction of several characteristics. For this reason, there is no specific measure of Body, and there is more than one factor affecting it.

Important factors affecting Body

What kind of Body will be described as light, and what kind of Body will be described as thick? In fact, no matter the variety of raw beans, the processing method of raw coffee beans, and even the baking and blending of beans, as well as the way of cooking, are all closely related to Body.

The influence of treatment on body

Take the treatment as an example, the greatest advantage of sun-dried beans is that the Body is thick, while the Body of washed beans tends to be clean and refreshing, and raw beans treated with honey are usually easier to bring Body as sticky as sauce. The unique wet planing method of Indonesian Mantenin coffee, most of which have grass and wood aroma, the acid quality is much lower than that of washing and sun exposure, and Body also increases a lot. As the judgment of Body is the same as flavor appreciation, it has certain subjective components, so when practicing to identify Body, people will be advised to choose several different types of coffee at a time, through cross-tasting, through comparison to strengthen their different feelings about Body.

Effect of Baking on Body

From the point of view of baking, the acid mostly dissipates quickly after baking, while Body, on the contrary, not only increases with the baking degree, but also increases faster after baking. Assuming that the acid performance of a raw bean is excellent, the baker will usually choose the range from light baking to medium baking, slightly sacrificing the thickness of Body to achieve balance. Sometimes, it is possible to improve the Body in baking to make up for the shortcomings in the performance of some beans.

According to theory, the deeper the baking degree, the thicker the Body. Why do you feel that Body is a little delicate when you taste it when you encounter deep baking or are lucky enough to encounter very deep baking? Because the performance of Body will reach the highest point in the state of medium and deep roasting, and when roasting coffee beans further down, Body will gradually weaken, so when drinking deep-roasted and very deep-roasted coffee, we feel that Body is very fine, which is a natural phenomenon.

The relationship between brewing and Body

Different cooking methods will also create different Body feelings. The thicker the Body, the more likely it is to have a complex, full-bodied flavor; the lighter the Body, the clearer and intuitive the flavor.

Under normal circumstances, the Body feeling of espresso is obviously much thicker than that of hand-brewed coffee. Crema is produced at nine atmospheres, and the coffee contents are carefully extracted. When the flavor is concentrated in a small espresso cup, you can imagine its fullness and mellowness.

Because of its high ratio of water to powder, hand-brewed coffee extends the closely intertwined complex flavor, giving us the opportunity to taste distinct flavor characteristics in different paragraphs and have more time to distinguish. The citrus acidity drunk in the previous paragraph can be subdivided into which citrus flavor can be subdivided into Body in the middle, which is fresh water, light tea, moist as syrup, silky as nectar, sticky as syrup. Or a slightly creamy feeling.