The skill of tasting coffee and drinking coffee

Coffee flavor is the most important part of the color, aroma and body, and it is also the most controversial part. The same cup of coffee, different people may feel different about its taste. The taste in coffee I personally like to divide into three parts: sour, bitter and flavor. Acid and bitter are the two main flavors of coffee. The balance between acid and bitter reflects the quality of a cup of coffee. Generally, only one taste will be dominant in one of the three stages of upper mouth, middle taste and aftertaste. In most cases, it will be bitter or sour, but different tastes will be dominant in different stages. For example, a cup of coffee may be bitter in the upper mouth, but it becomes sour in the lower mouth. This is normal, but it doesn't happen that a cup of coffee is bitter and sour.

bitter taste

Bitterness is our most common understanding of coffee, generally my personal favorite bitterness is soft and fragrant bitterness, without burning and irritation, pleasant bitterness will also bring a good return to sweet, and offensive bitterness will bring a burning taste. Therefore, when we drink coffee, we must change a point of view: coffee is bitter enough to be strong enough. In fact, these are two unrelated concepts, but it is precisely because most Chinese people hold such views that coffee beans in China are generally roasted very deeply, and coffee shop owners also like carbonized coffee beans, so that they can use as few beans as possible to extract as large a cup of coffee as possible.

sour

Elegant acidity is one of the important characteristics of high quality coffee. Acidity can give coffee a richer taste and make coffee taste rich. Pleasant sourness brings a bright aroma and refreshing taste, and offensive sourness brings astringency and intense irritation. Most Chinese people don't like sour coffee. In fact, the main reason is that to reflect the elegant sour taste of coffee, not only high-quality coffee beans, but also experienced roasting and perfect extraction are needed. These three points are very scarce in China, so few Chinese people are really lucky to appreciate the sour taste of coffee.

flavor

Flavor refers to some particular taste of coffee, which may be positive or negative. For example, with cocoa flavor, red wine flavor, blueberry flavor, rubber flavor and so on, although similar flavor does not rule out the inherent formation of beans, but I personally think that more may be acquired factors, there are many times we will consciously add some spices when roasting, so that coffee beans have a special flavor. Tasting coffee tastes requires a lot of drinking experience, and it takes many trials to distinguish different tastes.