Coffee review

The astringent feeling of coffee is revealed, and the astringent feeling of tea is distinguished! What does the feeling of tea in hand-brewed coffee mean?

Published: 2025-06-24 Author:
Last Updated: 2025/06/24, Whenever a friend hesitates in front of the Qianjie bean list, Qianjie will always recommend the corresponding beans by asking the guests about their preferences, directly breaking the "dilemma" of difficulty in selecting. Then Qianjie found that in addition to public preferences such as flower fragrance, fruit acid, and nut chocolate, there were also many friends who liked "tea rhyme" as a relative.

Whenever a friend hesitates in front of the Qianjie bean list, Qianjie will always recommend the corresponding beans by asking the guests about their preferences, directly breaking the "dilemma" of difficulty in selecting. Then Qianjie found that in addition to public preferences such as flower fragrance, fruit acid, and nut chocolate, there were also many friends who liked relatively niche characteristics such as "tea charm":"I want a cup of coffee with a stronger tea touch. "These friends said so. Perhaps this will make many friends feel strange. Tea is tea and coffee is coffee. How can you still taste tea in coffee?

But in fact, we can indeed drink the flavor of tea from coffee. For example, in the latest version of the coffee flavor wheel, there is the flavor of "black tea", but it is classified in the flower fragrance column.

Although only black tea is included in the flavor wheel, in fact, there are far more types of tea rhyme we can drink from coffee. If you read Qianjie's articles often, it is not difficult to find that in the introduction of the tail flavor of some coffee, Qianjie will use other tea descriptions such as green tea, oolong tea, white tea, etc. Then the question arises: Why does coffee have tea rhyme?

Why is there tea in coffee? It's simple, because coffee also contains the same aroma components as tea leaves. In the article "Is Coffee Flavor Metaphysics", Qianjie introduced in detail that the various flavors we drink from coffee actually mainly come from the combination of volatile compounds and taste. After coffee is in the mouth, our taste buds will be the first to judge the strength of the taste, and then volatile aroma substances will slip into the nasal cavity during swallowing and be captured by the sense of smell. Then the brain combines the taste we taste with the aroma captured by our sense of smell, and then searches for a similar food in our memory to form a flavor.

The same reason is that we can get the charm of tea from coffee, because coffee also contains some compounds that are the same as the aroma of tea, so we can naturally associate the charm of tea. However, compared with the charm of tea, we will use "tea feeling" to describe it. Because in many cases we need to combine the taste/touch to make the flavor of "tea" in coffee more three-dimensional.

"Shengjin returns to sweetness" is a feeling we can often experience while drinking tea. Simply put, when we drink some tea, we can feel a slight astringent feeling in our tongue, followed by a sweet aftertaste. The reason why this phenomenon occurs is that tea polyphenols, one of the main components in tea that provide brown color and tea aroma, are working. Tea tannins, which account for the largest proportion of polyphenols, can not only increase the concentration of tea charm, but also make the taste of tea rough and produce so-called astringent feeling, stimulate the salivary glands to secrete saliva, thereby breeding sweetness. When the content of tea tannin is more in tea, the stronger the salivation and sweetness we can experience when drinking tea, and the longer it lasts.

In addition, experiences such as stimulating the body and returning to sweetness can also be formed through the formation of organic acids. Organic acids stimulate the secretion of salivary glands, resulting in the feeling of "salivation and sweetness." It's like the feeling we experience when eating red bayberry, green plum and other fruits. Coffee itself is very rich in organic acids, so we can often experience the feeling of "salivation and rejuvenation" when drinking coffee. That is combined with the tea aroma provided by other compounds, and a "tea feeling" is formed. It has both the taste of tea and the taste experience of tea.

However, it should be noted that because the astringent feeling in coffee mainly comes from chlorogenic acid, its astringent feeling will still be slightly different from that of tea. For example, the astringency of some coffee will have a slight bitterness, which has a lot to do with its sugar content. Then, like other flavors, not all coffee will have a tea flavor.

What kind of coffee has a tea feel? Whether a cup of coffee can have a tea feel is closely related to the variety of coffee beans, the planting, processing, roasting and brewing of coffee. The first three determine whether coffee can have a tea feeling and its type, while the latter two determine the strength of tea feeling in coffee. Just as the variety Rose Summer (T2722) has more floral fragrance because it has more terpenes in its genes, some coffee beans will have tea at the beginning because it has more of the same compounds as tea. For example, Rose Summer (T2722)...

Needless to say, the cultivation of coffee beans can determine the accumulation and richness of substances. Coffee beans from some producing areas are famous for their excellent tea feel, such as Sidamo and Yejia Shefei in Ethiopia... When it comes to the post-processing stage, different processing methods will give coffee different tea flavors. For example, washing will be cleaner, which can bias the tea taste of coffee towards fresh and pure types, such as green tea (not necessarily), while sun treatment will make the fermentation degree of coffee heavier, which will bias the tea taste of coffee towards the type with a strong flavor, if honey-scented black tea (not necessarily)...

Then there is coffee roasting. The degree of coffee roasting will determine the aroma of coffee. Generally speaking, most of the coffee that we can drink tea taste is roasted below moderate, that is, medium, light, and light roasted coffee. Because they are lightly baked and do not undergo too much caramelization reaction, there is not much burnt bitterness in the coffee to cover up the aroma of the coffee itself, making the tea feel more prominent. Many times we can hear the description "This cup of coffee does not taste like coffee, but more like a cup of tea." The reason is that the coffee is not roasted deeply, so it is impossible to drink the traditional impression of "coffee" from coffee. Taste (bitterness), coupled with the rich coffee flavor and tea feel, makes it easier for people to think of drinking a cup of flower and fruit tea.

The last thing is boiling! Because the source of astringent feeling in coffee is mainly reflected in the end of coffee tasting such as the aftertaste of coffee and sweetness, this means that we need to make coffee have a more complete extraction. When the coffee is not extracted enough or the extraction rate is not high enough, the aftertaste and sweetness of the coffee will be lacking, and the tea feeling will be less obvious.

Therefore, when we want to drink tea from a cup of coffee, in addition to buying a coffee bean with tea-like expression, we also need to ensure that the coffee can be extracted enough. Regarding the recommendations of tea-like beans, you can refer to the following: Panama Flower Butterfly, Poquet Rose Summer, Hope Manor Rose Summer, Peruvian Rose Summer, Yega Shefi Tintin, Sidamo Flower Kui, Alo, Elto...

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