What should I do if I can't taste the coffee? Does the coffee flavor wheel need to be localized?

- A few days ago, when I was resting, I heard such a group of conversations:

Barista: "This sun-cured yeja sherry coffee bean has raspberry, grapefruit, orange blossom and oolong tea flavors..."

Guest A: Ah! Why didn't I drink any of it? What is a raspberry?"

(So the barista pulls out the SCA flavor wheel): em…something between blueberry and blackberry.

Guest A's friend: It can be roughly understood as sour and not delicious strawberry + pomelo peel (grapefruit peel)+ diluted jasmine tea

Barista: …grapefruit…

Many new contact with single/fine coffee partners, will always be coffee beans packaging flavor/coffee maker mentioned flavor feel confused. So I started looking for information on the Internet that I could identify the taste by looking at the coffee flavor, so I opened it and took a look! Boy, there's 7 out of 10 flavor descriptions that I haven't touched at all...

So I began to force myself to drink some of the flavors, but I still didn't feel it. I even began to doubt whether the flavor wheel was a lie, and even suspected that if I couldn't drink the flavor, I didn't deserve to drink single/fine coffee. Of course not! You can't taste the flavor wheel and you're innocent. How can you not be worthy of drinking it...

Not everyone can distinguish the delicate taste of coffee ~ do not rule out the taste and smell talent of small partners, can clearly distinguish the various flavors in coffee. However, most coffee drinkers are ordinary people. They can distinguish the difference between A and B tastes, but they can't identify the specific tastes of A and B. So coffee feels comfortable to drink on the line, do not force yourself to drink flavor.

SCA coffee flavor wheel appears to help coffee lovers and professionals understand and explain the sour, sweet and bitter taste and aroma they feel in the nose, in order to reduce the differences in taste expression between each other. But the flavor wheel also has a problem that can be said to be good or not, and that is the lack of inclusiveness.

The original coffee flavor wheel was published by the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) in 1995 and served as a standard reference at the time, reducing the number of international baristas who spoke in terms of coffee flavor. However, the flavor of the first generation of flavor wheel is very simple, can not meet the later coffee bean quality improvement, coffee flavor more refined rich development trend.

So SCA, together with the World Coffee Institute, Kansas State University, German A & M University and coffee representatives, weaved the World Coffee Research Sensory Dictionary as the basis for the new flavor wheel, and collected 29 local people in the United States who had not received sensory training but had been drinking coffee for a long time and 43 coffee industry experts to conduct cognitive tests on the relationship between tastes.

Although the new version of coffee flavor will be more detailed, many of the flavor descriptions are familiar to coffee lovers/professionals in the Americas/Europe, but it does not mean that coffee lovers/professionals on all seven continents will have some contact and understanding of some flavors.

Although the coffee flavor wheel has been translated into multiple languages, allowing everyone from different regions to discuss coffee flavors on the same front when tasting the same coffee, there are actually many flavors that do not resonate. So the coffee flavor wheel is used to reference/determine the flavor range, not necessarily that one flavor. For example, there are many kinds of citrus, as long as the sour fragrance to drink has the feeling of eating citrus fruit, can be defined as citrus, do not have to force themselves to distinguish orange or grapefruit lemon.

Can the flavor wheel be localized according to different regions? This is OK, but only for local consumers to communicate and judge coffee flavor, if you need to talk about professional, or need to follow SCA issued coffee flavor wheel.

In the past few years, China Taiwan and Indonesia have begun to study local flavor wheels and publish flavors that resonate with local coffee consumers, enthusiasts and professionals.

On the basis of SCA flavor wheel, Taiwan added some flavors familiar to local people, such as dried longan, roselle flower, ginseng, fir, pine and cypress, and deleted some flavors that could not resonate with Taiwanese, drawing a Taiwan native coffee flavor wheel with 95 flavors.

Indonesia, as a famous coffee-producing country, aims to cultivate and improve the taste judgment of local coffee farmers, which can improve the quality of coffee beans more effectively. The Gayo Cuppers team, which developed the Indonesian indigenous coffee flavor wheel, said that only coffee growers who understand the needs of specialty coffee consumers can know how to improve the quality of coffee beans from cultivation and processing, and also make coffee beans have high purchase prices. The Indonesian Native Coffee Flavor Theory contains 118 coffee flavors, adding more descriptions of plant and spice flavors to SCA's original flavor wheel.

"Do we need to create a localized flavor wheel for the entire China region?" This is a netizen a long time ago mentioned the problem, yes, I still remember! Let me answer you now: it doesn't matter whether there is or not.

Flavors have cultural bias, too many localized flavor rounds appear, it is easy to appear "judgment fight" phenomenon. For example, in Indonesian native flavor theory, coffee pulp flavor would be defined as being in the category of fermented acidity, while SCA flavor wheel would be defined in the category of blemished flavor. At the same time, localized flavor wheel does not clearly distinguish defective flavor, although it can improve coffee consumers 'recognition of good flavor, but it will reduce the recognition of defective flavor.

As mentioned above, the definition of good or bad taste varies from culture to culture. There are many kinds of food culture in China, and people's familiar tastes vary from place to place. It should not be easy to formulate local flavor wheels.

So yes, of course, it's a good thing, because it also proves that fine coffee has a wide coverage in the country, and it's becoming more inclusive and diverse. No, there is no relationship, no matter what the situation, drinking coffee, sharing coffee is a happy thing, is an opportunity to create a topic, sharing each other in the process of drinking coffee fun.

When a person can't taste coffee, encourage them to touch food/smell more, feel and remember the taste of food swallowed or smell left in the nose. instead of emphasizing that you can drink this taste, ah, or making a series of unfriendly statements.

Coffee is a very common drink, everyone can enjoy it, do not need everyone to distinguish the flavor, do not need to give up the fun of drinking coffee because of other people's unfriendly attitude.

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