What is the sweetness of coffee? what is the sweetness of coffee? what is the effect of the extracted substances?

In many cases, when we come to a strange coffee shop, we will not directly choose a certain type of coffee or beans, but tell the barista what we like, hoping to help recommend it. Many people will say that they want to drink "sweet", but later the barista brought up a cup of thick black "bitter coffee" and specially stressed that it was very sweet. Wait a minute... What's so sweet about this? Didn't drink it at all? Is the barista wrong?

What baristas call "sweet" usually, when a barista takes a sip of black coffee and then says, Wow, this cup of coffee is so sweet! The word "sweet" here contains two meanings, one is that coffee is high in sweetness, and the other is that it is sweet. In the same way as the sweetness value of fruit, the sweetness of coffee fruit is mainly affected by variety, planting management, altitude, picking maturity and other factors. On the other hand, the post-treatment method and the baking degree (time) determine the amount of sweet substances retained in coffee beans, and the degree of sugar transformation, such as honey treatment and sun-cured coffee, are more likely to show sweet flavor.

The sweetness of a bag of roasted coffee beans can be said to be an objective fixed value, and sweetness is a flavor description that includes taste and smell when people taste it. At this time, the level of sweetness is related to the extraction methods, techniques, and the sensory sensitivity of the tasters. For example, drinking sun-red roses in Qianjie feels obvious cantaloupe-like sweetness in summer, Yega Xuefei has a honey similar to the scent of flowers, and birds of paradise is as sweet as sugar cane. The bitter feeling is low, so the sweet feeling is high. Many friends have just come into contact with high-quality coffee, and the reason why get is not sweet in the mouth of baristas is largely because the description of "sweet" is too different from the "bitter coffee" they drink every day. If you also think that coffee is bitter, you might as well find a low-bitter and high-sweet coffee bean to get you started. The sweetness of coffee does not exist independently. We can perceive that sweetness mainly depends on the coordination of bitterness and sour. For example, the medium and shallow baked beans have less bitter substances, and after the fruit acid is reasonably extracted, the coffee will rely on showing a sweet and sour feeling in high acidity and low bitterness, reminiscent of some fruit-like taste. The front street feels low bitterness, medium acidity, and high sweetness from the light-baked Hartman roses. Sweetness and bitterness is the most sensitive of tastes. Many people understand it as an unacceptable feeling, which is the most easily perceived taste, while the sweetness that most people crave for refers to the sense of pleasure caused by sugars, which is more difficult to perceive than other tastes. To put it simply, our perception of the four flavors is bitter > sour > salty > sweet.

When bitterness and sweetness exist in a pot of coffee at the same time, the first thing we feel is often bitterness, and a sense of sweetness stays at the base of the tongue after swallowing. The sweetness of this bitter coffee is often described as "Huigan", that is, the so-called bitter sweet, which is most common in medium and deep roasted coffee. For example, Blue Mountain one and Golden Manning will show this kind of rhyme. Aroma creates the illusion of sweetness on the tongue. In addition to taste, we can also feel the sweetness of coffee from our sense of smell. The sense of smell is divided into two stages, one is the sense of smell before the nose, the other is the sense of smell after the nose. The sense of smell in front of the nose refers to the smell felt by inhaling directly. When we feel the dry and wet fragrance of coffee, we smell it directly.

After the coffee enters the mouth, the taste buds first judge the strength of the sweet, sour, bitter and salty coffee, and then the aroma substances slip into the nasal cavity during swallowing, and our brains combine the taste with the aroma in the nasal passage. thus showing the flavor of a particular food in memory, this is the sense of smell behind the nose. When the figurative aroma brought by the smell behind the nose reminds us of very sweet food, we subconsciously feel that this cup of coffee is very sweet. When tasting Dorothy in Qianjie, he thought of the taste of biting off the ripe apricot flesh, so he subconsciously thought that coffee had the sweetness of peaches.

If it is not sweet enough, then we can only add sugar. In Qianjie's view, everyone's eating habits are different, and their recognition of sweet, sour, bitter and salty is naturally different. Even if they drink the same pot of coffee, some people may think it is very bitter, while others think it is very sweet. If you don't want the barista to serve what you think is "bitter coffee", you might as well add when ordering that the coffee you want is sweet and sour, deep-roasted, sweet, sweet, or sweet with extra sugar.

If we really want to improve our judgment on the sweetness of coffee and discuss "the same sweetness" with baristas, we need to constantly taste various styles of beans, let the brain accumulate more memories of various sweet flavors, and discuss more with friends who often drink coffee. compare how sweet coffee will show.

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Front Street Cafe

No. 10 Baoqian street, Yandun road, Dongshankou, Yuexiu district, Guangzhou, Guangdong province