Coffee Basics Words related to "tasting"

Once upon a time, the use of language as a tool to describe how something tastes, often made us look poor. But for coffee professionals, they can all use words that both understand each other, such as the flavor of food and drink that they come into contact with in daily life to describe the taste of coffee. The use of such words will make it easier to classify and distinguish the flavor of coffee.

First of all, I would like to introduce to you a little bit about the raw coffee beans and the flavor words we can feel under different roasting modes. The author does not mention those words that are too technical or sensory evaluation, but only mention the most important and widely used flavor defects that describe the performance of the cup, as well as the defective flavor words that may be caused by improper handling of raw coffee beans at various stages, such as excessive fermentation, moldy taste, sack taste and so on. The author will not skip some self-evident simple flavor words, such as rich, floral, palatable, yellow cream-like, and other similar words and so on.

The first three flavor words introduced are almost universal and will be mentioned when evaluating the characteristics of coffee beans all over the world: Acidity, Body (commonly known as mellow or taste in Chinese), and wet aroma (Aroma). These are the most basic words to evaluate the flavor of coffee beans. If you don't use these three words, you can't start to evaluate the flavor of coffee beans. Following these three words, the relative face is not so common, for professional cup tests in different regions, there may be different nouns to represent. With the increasing number of flavor-related words, the author here integrates the old flavor description words for you, and borrows the new words from red wine and other tasting terms, hoping to be helpful.

Acidity (Acidity/Acidy): one of the most important items in coffee tasting, and usually the most misunderstood word. The acidity of coffee is not the acidity or sour smell of acidity and alkalinity, but describes a lively, bright flavor, which is somewhat similar to the dryness of wine tasting. The lack of acidity of coffee beans is tantamount to being lifeless and tastes empty and boring. Acidity has many different characteristics, which are the main basis for distinguishing coffee beans from different places, such as coffee beans from Yemen and coffee beans from East Africa (such as Kenya and Zimbabwe). Its acidity is characterized by an impressive fruity aroma and a red wine-like texture. The deeper a coffee bean is roasted, its acidity decreases, but if a coffee bean with high acidity is roasted deeply, it will show more sharpness and irritation.

Body/Mouthfeel: stickiness refers to the weight of coffee soup to the mouth, while taste refers to the texture of coffee soup to the mouth, like the following words: yellow cream, sand, grease, smooth, thin, watery, non-greasy, or astringent. Stickiness is actually a feeling, and although it is related to the amount of solid particles dissolved in water, it is more difficult to distinguish the degree by "quantitative" method.

When a coffee bean is roasted to a medium brown or dark brown baking point, the stickiness in the cup will be increased, and the taste will be more round and fatter. But if the coffee beans are roasted to a deeper level, such as Spanish roasting or French deep roasting, the consistency will be reduced and the taste will become fat-free and sand-like.

Wet aroma (Aroma): although the term seems easy to understand, when it comes to the performance of wet aroma, you have to discuss it with the depth of baking. At very shallow baking depth, the wet aroma is completely undeveloped, while under moderate to moderate baking, the performance of wet aroma reaches the peak, but under very deep baking, the wet aroma becomes simple and weakened. For professional coffee tasters or cup testers, the difference in the wet aroma of coffee is sometimes more obvious and easier to distinguish than the taste tasted in the mouth.

Complexity (Complexity): this is another easy-to-understand and practical word. A high complexity coffee bean, its acidity and sweetness and other strong flavor fusion, match very skillfully. Usually we can no longer feel the complete flavor of coffee for the first time, it appears layer by layer, not all at the same time. There is no doubt that the complexity now reaches the highest point in the range of "medium baking-medium-deep baking-general Espresso-style deep baking", but the complexity of the last one is somewhat different from that of moderate baking, because the complexity elements that make up the two have changed slightly. Most of the recipes on the market are mixed with coffee beans, which are currently designed to increase the sense of complexity.

Depth / hierarchy (Depth/Dimension): depth refers to the strength to promote the flavor of coffee and the length of the final rhyme. The term is a bit ambiguous and a little too subjective, but this performance can only be known by cup comparison when many coffee beans are tested side by side at the same time. You will find that among the many coffee beans, there are always one or two coffee beans that have a very far-reaching, scalding aftertaste, while the flavor of most other coffee beans is only in the upper jaw and dissipates before the aftertaste.

Unique flavor performance of producing area / unique flavor performance of tree species / flavor characteristics of tree species (Origin Distinction/varietal Distinction/Varintal and Character): these words usually appear only when they are carried out according to the professional cup test procedure. All the coffee beans are roasted to a fairly close cup-measuring shallow roasting, and tasted in a cup-testing way, at this time you can feel the differences between different producing areas and different tree species. For example, Kenyan coffee beans have a strong dry taste with berry-flavored acidity; Costa Rican coffee beans have constant acidity and clear balance; Isabiya snow coffee beans have a very exaggerated floral and citrus flavor; Sumatran coffee beans made by traditional treatment have a low-key flavor and a malt-like rich feeling. But some coffee beans do not have unique flavor characteristics at all, but this does not mean that they are not good or boring coffee beans. If a variety of flavors are strong but well balanced, and there is no particularly preemptive flavor, then this kind of coffee beans may be called "classic caffeine", because this kind of coffee beans can always play a role in complementing a certain position in the formula. but it can't compete with coffee beans with a unique character.

Strictly speaking, the term "unique flavor of tree species" is somewhat confusing, because the vast majority of coffee beans on the market are marketed as "producing area names" rather than botanical "tree species names". Therefore, the correct term should be "producing area flavor uniqueness" (Origin Distinction/Growing-rngion Distinction). In the world of coffee, the word "unique performance of tree species" is not as arrogant as it is in the world of wine. No matter what we call it, to taste this unique flavor, the best performance point is in the light to moderate baking depth, the deeper the roast, the more the essential flavor of coffee beans dissipates. Of course, to the very deep drying stage, it is almost impossible to detect the unique flavor of the producing area.

Balance: this is also a word that is easy to understand. This word mainly refers to a strong acidity, but not too wild and unruly, sometimes in the consistency, while there is no destructive defective flavor.