Why does coffee smell better than it tastes? What is the main source of the aroma of coffee

You may not like coffee, but you can't resist the aroma of coffee. Sometimes guests who haven't had single-serve coffee come to the store and want to try it. Through the observation of the front street and the feedback of customers, they prefer the dry aroma of freshly ground coffee and the wet aroma of brewed coffee to the taste of coffee.

Most people's impression of coffee flavor should be the coffee flavor of heavy roasting era. This classic coffee aroma is a compound aroma of spices, roasted nuts, hazelnuts, caramel and woody aromas. For the classic coffee taste, just one word ~ bitter. It is also the long-standing popularity of heavily roasted coffee that makes everyone think of coffee as a black liquid that smells good and tastes bitter.

With the advent of light roast coffee, coffee tastes sour, sweet, and even salty in addition to bitter. But at the same time, the aroma changes more colorful, we can smell flowers, citrus, berries, tropical fruits, sugar aroma from the light roast coffee. Let us feel the aroma of coffee is so rich, mainly because coffee contains more than 1200 aroma substances, these volatile and semi-volatile substances together to construct a complex aroma. Faced with such complex aromas, mainstream coffee institutions will divide these aromas into four categories: enzymatic group, caramel group, retort group and defect group.

The aroma of enzymatic group is produced by enzyme catalysis during coffee production or treatment, mainly some fresh sweet and sour aroma, such as flower fragrance, lemon, peach, honey, cucumber and so on. Caramel group aroma is produced by Mena reaction and caramelization reaction during baking, mainly caramel, maple syrup, dark chocolate, roasted nuts aroma. The aroma of dry distillation group is produced by coking fiber substance when coffee is roasted. The common aromas are spices, woody aroma and smoky flavor. The aroma of defective group is mainly caused by the quality of coffee beans themselves or improper roasting. The common aromas are rubber, leather, earthy smell, rotten fruit and so on. Back to why coffee doesn't smell good. Coffee ground into coffee powder at this moment aroma is the most complex, the widest range of diffusion, this part of the aroma we call dry incense. This is because coffee beans ground into coffee powder, coffee powder has more contact surface, volatile aroma substances are very easy to dissipate in the air, so when grinding beans, do not need to put your nose close to smell coffee dry fragrance.

The dry aroma of coffee can smell not only the aroma of enzymatic group and caramel group, but also the aroma of dry distillation group. This is also the difference between dry and wet fragrance. Wet fragrance is the aroma of coffee liquid. At this time, the aroma of coffee is not as strong as dry fragrance. You need to put your nose to the edge of the cup to smell it. The wet aroma of coffee is also very rich, for example, we taste the aroma of flowers and citrus fruits in coffee, we can associate it with a cup of sour coffee, smell the aroma of honey, grapes and strawberries in coffee, we can associate it with a cup of sweet coffee.

So, we know why it doesn't smell so good, usually we smell the aroma of coffee first, feel very fragrant to produce the motivation to drink it, because the aroma of coffee makes you have very high expectations for this cup of coffee, resulting in drinking When the taste does not reach the expected value, it becomes the feeling of "smelling very fragrant, not dripping when drinking". In particular, many friends are attracted by the aroma of coffee to try the first cup, in the absence of specific cognition, can only rely on their own memory base to infer the taste, such as smelling a cup of coffee has a very obvious honey, roasted sweet potato aroma, then they will think that drinking should also have such a sweet feeling. But coffee is coffee after all, even if it is coffee with a higher sweetness, in a person who tries it for the first time, he will still think it is sour or bitter, not sweet. In fact, coffee can also feel the aroma of coffee when drinking. At this stage, we will call it "post-nasal olfaction", which is different from the previous smell of dry fragrance and wet fragrance. This is the aroma perceived by the atomized coffee liquid in the mouth with aroma substances returning to the nasal cavity. However, the smell behind the nose is not so obvious compared to the direct smell, and it is easy to be ignored.