Is coffee sweet and sweet the same thing?

"Huigan Shengjin, bitterness comes" is the highest praise for a good cup of tea, and in the taste of coffee, people often use the word "Huigan", which often refers to the pleasing taste of coffee. So, what kind of taste experience is it when you taste sweet coffee in the middle? What's the difference between it and the sweetness of coffee?

After the coffee is swallowed, the aroma, taste and taste of the coffee substances left in the mouth are called Yuyun. Before swallowing, the taste, aroma and touch of coffee are classified as flavor and taste, while these characteristics of coffee after swallowing are called Yuyun, which can be simply understood as a matter of time lag. In this way, when tasting the coffee in the future, we can judge which part belongs to the flavor and which part belongs to the aftertaste according to this period of time.

Yu Yun is usually divided into two types: positive and negative. Good coffee naturally has a positive aftertaste, such as flower aroma, fruit sweetness, tea rhyme, honey, etc., while Huigan belongs to the positive aftertaste, while the negative aftertaste is common in the taste of dirt, rubber, sawdust and other tastes. And dry, rough, stuck throat and other unpleasant taste.

In addition to looking at the quality, we also depend on the duration of the aftertaste. The longer the good flavor stays, the better the performance of the aftertaste. For example, after drinking a cup of warm sun espresso, the remaining fermentation and cocoa aroma in the mouth will last for ten minutes, while the short Italian flavor will disappear within seconds even if there is no negative taste.

Next, let's take a closer look at Huigan's performance. A taste bud experience in which the coffee is slightly bitter or sour, then the sweetness gradually exceeds the bitter (sour) astringency, and finally ends with sweetness. The so-called "bitter before sweet" is the sweet smell that comes back after the bitter taste dissipates in the mouth. For example, the oil mandarin from Chaoshan, the first bite is to feel the stimulation of the sour, slightly astringent tongue, and then the mouth begins to give birth to fluid, while full of sweet taste.

Thus it can be seen that the Hui Gan de here is based on the taste shown by bitterness or astringency to a certain extent. Unlike the sweetness directly felt when eating candy, it must have experienced "bitterness" and set off by "bitterness" before it can be called "Huigan". However, it should be noted that there is no inevitable relationship between the degree of bitterness and the intensity of sweet beverage. a cup of coffee may be very bitter, but it may not be sweet.

When we evaluate bitter deep-roasted coffee beans, Huigan is a good indicator. For example, when tasting Brazilian Queen's Manor coffee in Qianjie, it first tastes bitter like fried peanuts and dark chocolate, then the bitterness begins to fade, accompanied by a sweet taste, and it lasts for a period of time. It can be called having a good return to sweet taste.

Nowadays, many coffees take shallow roasting techniques, highlighting the fragrance of flowers and rich acidity, but also less mellow and solid bitterness. Most of the coffee is made of small molecules, hydrophilic, volatile, and rich in organic acids, which promote saliva secretion, thus speeding up the loss of flavor. This is why when drinking light roasted coffee, the aftertaste is often not as strong and lasting as deep roasted coffee.

For this reason, rather than the word "Huigan", baristas prefer to combine its aftertaste in the mouth and sweet and sour aftertaste to describe the aftertaste of this kind of flower-and-fruit flavor coffee. For example, when Pokuit is washed in Qianjie Cup, the remaining rhyme will be described as the tea rhyme of Tieguanyin, the tangerine acidity of sugar and the sweetness of honey.

Finally, Qianjie noticed a phenomenon that some friends interpreted the sweetness of drinking water after drinking coffee as returning sweet. In fact, this is a kind of oral illusion caused by sensory contrast under the impact of bitterness. Because sweetness and bitterness are relative concepts, when you taste sugar, you will find that water is somewhat bitter, and when you taste bitter coffee, you will think that water is sweet, and this phenomenon is a contrastive effect. Similarly, Huigan can also be understood as an illusion of the mouth under the impact of bitterness.

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Front Street Cafe

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