What is coffee flavor? What are the flavors of coffee? What does the flavor of coffee mean? What is boutique coffee?

Flavor description is the product of the release of the concept of boutique coffee. When people began to realize that the taste of coffee is no longer just the same bitterness, they began to optimize every aspect of "cooking" coffee. Try to feel a richer and more delicate taste in the coffee you end up drinking. There is always a group of people in the coffee shop who gather together to vividly describe the flavors they have just felt in a cup of "boutique coffee". Maybe some of the flavors are so attractive that they will inevitably attract some friends who drink coffee to order a cup of caffeine, who also want to experience this colorful boutique world.

But when they drank the same coffee, they found that the so-called coffee with rich floral flavor and explosive juice tasted only sour or bitter. As a result, this can not help but make people imagine: is it because the coffee they drink is different from mine, is it the addition of bacteria, giving them hallucinations? Can a cup of coffee have so much flavor?

Is the coffee flavor real? To know the answer to this question, we need to know what the flavor of coffee is! The so-called coffee flavor is when we drink coffee, we feel from it some kind of concrete taste that exists in other foods. For example, we often mention it when drinking coffee: White flowers, citrus, strawberry and so on. But this actually brings a very big misunderstanding to many friends, that is, the flavor of these coffee is felt by the taste buds on the tongue.

In fact, there are only five tastes that our tongues can perceive: sour, sweet, bitter, salty and fresh. In fact, the main source of the strawberry and citrus flavor we feel in the coffee is the aroma emitted by the coffee after it enters the mouth, including the "sweetness" felt in the coffee. These aromas are captured by our sense of smell through the nasal ducts in the mouth, and then combined with the taste buds, which arouses our association with figurative flavor. If we hold our nose and eat, it will be difficult for you to feel anything other than the sweet, sour, bitter and salty taste.

I believe that many friends will think that the coffee flavor is only a fantasy of the drinker, and it is not real. In fact, this case often occurs in the daily life of coffee people: many friends do not drink the flavor of coffee at first, but after they receive a description of the flavor given by others or on the card, immediately drink the same taste in this cup of coffee. Then many friends will think that this is just a psychological hint, not really drinking flavor, but simply "deceiving" themselves. Well, on this issue, in fact, Qianjie wants to say that coffee flavor is not the so-called open mouth. I believe everyone knows that coffee raw beans contain more than 200 aroma substances, and thousands of aromatic compounds will be transformed after roasting ripe beans. The point is, according to research, most of these baked aroma substances can also be found in other individuals (plants, food, spices, etc.).

Because it's not just coffee, it's the same with other individuals. The smell of apple we feel on apples and the smell of oranges on oranges are actually sensed by the smell of the food. To take a more understandable chestnut, the orange smell we smell when peeling oranges actually comes from d-limonene hidden in the fragrance of orange peel, and its presence makes us feel the so-called "orange smell". So we can know that it is not oranges that smell like oranges, but oranges that smell like oranges. And because there are aroma compounds such as d-limonene among the thousands of aromatic substances in coffee, we are able to drink a similar flavor from coffee.

Why is it similar? Because what you need to know is that a smell is not made up of a single aroma component. Just like the single color we see in our daily life, although it looks like one color, they are actually the appearance of a combination of other colors. As the saying goes, as long as you master the three primary colors, any color can be combined by you! And the taste is the same. But the difference is that colors can be classified, but aromas are not. It is also d-limonene, which tastes different from different combinations of other aromas. Different people have different perception of taste, so even if it is the same taste, it will associate different concrete flavor under the feelings of different people. Also take d-limonene as an example, some people will think it is orange flavor because they feel the aroma from orange peel. Some people feel the aroma from the lemon peel, so they will think it is lemon flavor.

Everyone expresses their own views and is completely unable to reach unity, which brings great obstacles to exchanges. So in 1995, SCAA released the first version of Coffee Flavor Wheel. The birth of the flavor wheel has brought a comb to the baristas, and we can rely on the flavor wheel to better understand the aroma and taste we feel.

There are two flavor wheels in this edition, one is positive flavor and the other is negative flavor. Because the target group is baristas, ordinary people seem to have some difficulties. However, with the gradual improvement of the quality of coffee, coupled with the fact that this group of flavor wheels are difficult to understand. In 2016, SCAA released a new coffee flavor wheel, which removes most of the negative flavors and is easier to understand, not only for baristas but also for rookies. (about the use of flavor wheels can be moved to today's second article ~)

With these foundations, coffee flavor description has become a communication standard for discussing coffee quality. Boutique coffee itself is the pursuit of higher coffee quality and culture, and the flavor description happens to materialize the flavor of coffee and form a coffee culture. We can feel some other flavors while drinking coffee, which makes people think about it, and we simply don't have to be too happy. So we can know that coffee flavor is not metaphysics, but a kind of existence with scientific basis. But as said at the beginning, many friends do not drink coffee flavor at the beginning, this is because the aroma threshold is not enough, so we can not quickly identify. You need to savor it carefully before you can perceive the main type of aroma.

And distinguishing flavor also depends on skill and experience, after all, it is not an inborn skill. Even if we can clearly feel the aroma and taste, if we have not eaten a food with a similar taste and are not very impressed with it, it is difficult for us to distinguish the flavor of the food when drinking coffee. Therefore, at present, there will be some coffee sensory courses on the market, which will tell you how to comb and record the flavor, which will lay an important foundation for you to distinguish the flavor.

But in the end, to improve their flavor perception is still inseparable from the street in front of the common saying: drink more, smell more, feel more. There is a saying in "the Science of Coffee Flavor" that Qianjie likes it very much: no matter what field or what thing it is, in order to be reproducible, we have to go through a process of simple repetition over a period of time, even for experts in various industries. Because simple repetition can create depth, even things that are already familiar have to go through simple repetition to find the essentials and see subtle differences. As a result, the vision becomes higher, and the technology grows. Even creative artists need to practice basic skills over and over again. Therefore, although the taste of coffee is not so difficult, it is not as simple as it is supposed to be.

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