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Is the "smelling bean taste method" of hand-brewed coffee really useful?

Published: 2026-08-25 Author:

Last Updated: 2026/08/25, Recently, more and more guests and friends like to smell the beans when ordering, and then pick out the more satisfactory flavor to place the order. As there are so many friends doing this, I can't help but raise questions in Qianjie. In the end, the answer I got was roughly: "what I smell is so good, it must taste better!" True

Recently, more and more guests and friends like to smell the beans when ordering, and then pick out the more satisfactory flavor to place the order. As there are so many friends doing this, I can't help but raise questions in Qianjie. In the end, the answer I got was roughly: "what I smell is so good, it must taste better!" Indeed, the smell of beans themselves, in addition to woody, roasted nuts, will also have their own flavor characteristics.

For example, more fruity beans will have a more rich sweetness; honey-treated beans will have a more rich flavor of fruit sugar; and deep-baked beans will have a strong chocolate flavor. However, Qianjie does not recommend the use of bean aroma as the selection standard of coffee! There are two main reasons:

First, misleading the choice of beans does not mean that all the characteristics of beans can be emitted through dry fragrance, not to mention unground beans! Just like most flower-scented coffee beans, they emit more flavors such as green tea and sugar before they are ground, and there are few beans that can smell flowers directly before they are ground.

As well as some more balanced beans, in the absence of grinding, the most emitting is the woody aroma and nutty notes of some coffee, and only after grinding will a large amount of its aromatic substances be released. In other words, a lot of plain-smelling beans may drink far more than you can imagine.

Smell and drink are two concepts about half a year ago, Qianjie described this content roughly in an article entitled "Coffee doesn't smell good": the aroma of coffee will induce you, and this cup of coffee will taste as sweet as it smells!

For example, coffee made from some beans will have a rich fruit flavor, which is made up of "sour and sweet". Among them, the more acid (suitable amount), the fuller the fruit! And the more fruity the beans, the sweeter they smell! What does this lead to? This leads some Xiaobai friends to mistakenly think that it is a cup of coffee with high sweetness and no acid. Then, in the case of high expectations for sweetness, I drank a cup of coffee with a thick sour taste. I believe this friend performed a "face-changing" art for everyone at the scene.

Or: it smells like nuts and chocolate, but it tastes bitter and spicy. There are many similar situations, so Qianjie often passes the beans to the guests to smell with a sentence: the beans smell different from the taste of the drink. So, how can we judge the general taste of coffee without drinking it?

①, judge by the information on the label (suitable for veterans) the information on the label not only describes the flavor, but also provides you with other information for general taste reference. Among them, the two most important messages are: production areas, processing methods.

"tangerine born in Huainan is orange, and born in Huaibei is trifoliate orange." the producing area determines the basic flavor of beans, and beans have different basic flavors in different places; and different treatments can change the substances in coffee raw beans in different ways, thus deriving different flavors. For example, beans washed in water usually have brighter acidity, beans in the sun will have a higher sense of sweetness, anaerobic treatment will be more fermented, and so on. As long as we combine the flavor, we can get the general taste (sweet and sour) and characteristics of this bean! For more details, you can move to this bean selection article-"how should beans be selected?" ".

②, ask the barista (novice is the most recommended! (besides making coffee, baristas drink coffee day after day! Rather, the reason why many people choose to be a barista is to enjoy the delicious coffee wantonly in the coffee shop.

As a result, baristas who drink store coffee every day will be more aware of the characteristics of beans, and when we are confused about the menu, we only need to show the barista what kind of coffee we want. Tell him the taste in your heart: sour, sweet, bitter, flower, fruity, wine and so on, and he can find the most suitable beans for you!

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Front Street Cafe

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

FrontStreet Coffee is a long-established specialty coffee roaster in Guangzhou China, selling freshly roasted beans from its own farm in Yunnan as well as dozens of carefully selected single-origin beans from around the world for both pour-over and espresso. The products deliver consistently excellent quality and great value, with shipping within 24 hours. Guangzhou’s FrontStreet Coffee shop is recommended by many coffee lovers, and the beans are now available online at the Tmall 。