Understand the taste of high-quality coffee and evaluate the thick bitter acid of a cup of fine coffee

Sumatra, Indonesia, Mantenin coffee, grown at an altitude of 750-1500 meters, Arabic-grown coffee beans, low acidity, a certain thickness, with herbal flavor aroma. On the coffee bottle body, the producing area, processing method and roasting degree are marked, and the four indexes of thick, bitter, sweet and sour flavor evaluation of fine coffee are marked with small squares ranging from 1 to 5.

Learn to taste a cup of fine coffee, starting with knowing what a fine coffee is.

The global trend of modern coffee has gone through three popular stages, the first stage is from World War II to the 1960s, instant coffee represented by cheap coffee popular; the second stage is from the 1960s to the beginning of this century, Starbucks represented by commercial coffee popular; the third stage originated in the 1970s and began to become a trend in the past decade, especially in Japan and South Korea has been greatly developed.

Fine coffee is the definition of coffee that guarantees high quality at every stage from seed to fruit to selection to roasting to extraction. For fine coffee, there is a 4321 theory, 40% of the quality of a cup of fine coffee lies in the variety, planting, processing method, 30% in the roasting, 20% in the brewing equipment used, 10% in the brewing technology.

This definition sounds a bit abstract. For ordinary consumers, there are three intuitive differences between fine coffee and commercial coffee-first, fine coffee is dominated by a single producing area, which will emphasize the origin and variety personality of coffee beans in the producing area, while commercial coffee is often beans blended from different producing areas, without emphasizing the variety of producing areas; Second, fine coffee emphasizes medium and light roasting to retain coffee flavor personality, while commodity coffee emphasizes deep roasting, roasting scorched fragrance covers up defects and also covers up differences between different coffee beans; Third, fine coffee tends to drink black coffee extracted by hand infusion and hanging bag, and appreciate the flavor characteristics of coffee itself. Commercial coffee tends to make latte, mocha, macchiato, cappuccino and other coffee drinks with sugar, milk, chocolate, cream and milk foam, without emphasizing the taste of coffee itself.

In fact, a single production area, light roasting, hand brewing, black coffee is only the surface label of fine coffee, and the core is to drink its terroir, variety unique aroma and different thickness, bitterness, sweetness, acidity brought taste personality, from planting to processing to brewing requirements, are to show the coffee high quality taste.

unique terroir

Located in the coffee belt of 25° north and south latitude, there are Africa, Central and South America, Asia, etc. Different geographical conditions, climate, soil, altitude and coffee bean varieties will give coffee different flavor characteristics. For example, Ethiopia in West Africa, the birthplace of the famous Arabica coffee beans, with an altitude of more than 1500 meters, has a high sweetness and high acidity, and is fresh, natural, floral and fruity.

Minas, Brazil, South America, foothills small slope ups and downs, dry and wet season obvious, day and night temperature difference, coffee bean varieties for bourbon and other varieties. The coffee beans produced have a full thickness, mild texture, relatively low acidity and medium-high sweetness, with a nutty aroma.

Sumatra, Indonesia, Mantenin coffee, grown at an altitude of 750-1500 meters, Arabic-grown coffee beans, low acidity, a certain thickness, with herbal flavor aroma.

Yunnan Pu 'er spans subtropical and tropical climate zones. The terrain is mainly mountainous and sloping. The coffee garden has sufficient sunshine, abundant rainfall, large temperature difference between day and night, and many dry and hot mountain valleys, which bring medium and low acidity to coffee, low bitterness, and aroma of red dates and Pu' er tea.

Fine coffee emphasizes different terroirs to bring different coffee flavors, thus emphasizing the traceability of coffee beans. The source of fine coffee beans will be accurate to countries, producing areas, sub-producing areas, manors and even plots, while commercial coffee often achieves a neutral and popular taste through blending.

hand picked

Manual picking is a heavy workload for large coffee plantations, mechanical automatic picking will greatly improve efficiency, especially in plain areas, but the machine will also pick the green beans, resulting in uneven quality of the whole batch, some fine coffee plantations will use color sorters to screen out the green beans, but this means that the yield is greatly reduced, and commercial coffee used for blending mass production is less concerned about the presence of green beans.

Real fine coffee estates are hand-picked to ensure that each is a ripe red fruit, and the seeds of mature coffee fruits have been enriched with enough coffee characteristics without astringent taste.

Exquisite processing

The process of removing the peel and pulp from the coffee fruit, fermenting, removing pectin, and shelling the coffee beans to obtain the green coffee beans is called processing, which usually includes washing, semi-washing, honey treatment, and solarization. There is also a special method called Sumatra wet planing.

The washing method is to remove the peel and pulp in the process of water, ferment for about one day to remove pectin, and then dry. This treatment method is suitable for coffee beans with high acidity and fruity aroma such as Ethiopian yejia sherphine, which can maintain cleaner fruity and bright acidity.

Semi-washing method is to remove the peel pulp in the process of water, but not to ferment to pectin, but to use mechanical friction method to rub the pectin layer, and then dry. The texture of this treatment is very pure, but the retention of fruit acids is not as good as that of water washing.

The honey treatment is the same as the first part of the semi-washing method, except that the pectin layer is not removed, but dried directly with pectin. This treatment maintains the sweetness of the coffee beans and the flavor of ripe fruit, with a clean taste, and is used more in Costa Rica.

Sumatra wet planing method is the washing method in the early stage of small agriculture. After making wet raw beans with shells, they are transported to the treatment plant. In this process, there will be secondary fermentation, and then drying and shelling will be carried out in the treatment plant. This treatment will preserve and enhance the earthy, herbal aromas of mantelin.

Sunlight method is coffee red fruit after harvest directly in the sun drying, and then fade the outer layer, this method can be very good to maintain the sweetness of coffee and coke, has a good thickness, suitable for such as Brazil Minas high sweet, low acid, mellow coffee beans.

Considering the cost and difficulty, the cost of washing and honey treatment is relatively high, and the solarization method is relatively simple and low risk. Fine coffee, especially the fine coffee that emphasizes the individuality of the producing area, adopts washing and honey treatment more, while commercial coffee adopts solarization more. More extensive instant coffees use unsorted sunlight, which mixes broken beans and impurities.

Light baked and fresh

Roasting is a very important part of maintaining the characteristics of coffee varieties. Fine coffee tends to be lightly or moderately roasted, and it is roasted in a small oven. It is convenient to check the overall quality at any time when roasting beans and make adjustments. Commercial coffee is usually dark roasted and roasted in large batches in large ovens. Deep baking can extend shelf life, allowing beans to be stored for a longer time, and sometimes preservatives are used to extend shelf life to 1-2 years. The shelf life of medium and light roasted coffee beans is short, and the fresh state can make some of the most valuable bright acidity and clean fruity fruits in some producing areas. This kind of fine coffee emphasizes freshly baked and freshly ground, and it is best to keep it within one month. So commercial coffee retailers can buy coffee beans from coffee roasters, while specialty coffee often buys green coffee beans directly and roasts itself. Roasting also has more personality.

Preparation and evaluation

In the process of coffee making and brewing, fine coffee tends to make black coffee extracted by water drop filtration, among which hand brewing is a common way. This is because the coffee slowly filtered with water and filter paper is easy to restore the original characteristics of coffee. Of course, the handmade ceremony and the intention for you are also the effect that fine coffee wants to present.

Among them, the stability of water temperature, water quality, time and method will affect the taste of brewing.

There is also the practice of making fancy coffee with fine coffee, but for fine coffee enthusiasts who desperately want to stick to the essence of coffee from planting, harvesting, processing to roasting and brewing, it feels a little worse, just like drinking a bottle of famous wine with Sprite Cola.

Commercial coffee is more often latte, mocha, cappuccino and other coffee drinks style, because not selected production area, variety blending, deep roast commercial coffee has no distinct variety personality, no fruit, acidity, sweetness and complex aroma, the main taste is burnt fragrance, fat fragrance and can not produce pleasant bitter taste, so inevitably need some lubrication and blending.

Co-founder of NeverCoffee

Chatting with Liu Zuofei, founder of NeverCoffee, an Internet coffee brand dedicated to the development of affordable fine coffee, he said that fine coffee is of high quality, small in quantity and small in number, so the price is inevitably high, which further limits the promotion of fine coffee and makes it difficult for some fine coffee shops to become popular or even sustainable.

Fine coffee wants to be popular, one is to ensure the quality of fine coffee while making scale, the other is to guide and cultivate people's awareness of fine coffee, and consumption convenience, only to achieve a certain scale and radiation surface, the price of fine coffee can be civilian, only to know more about it, the price is easy, consumption convenience, fine coffee can be increased, forming a virtuous circle of cheap, fine coffee. In order to make specialty coffee available in large quantities and conveniently, NeverCoffee has developed ready-to-drink specialty coffee products.

NeverCoffee's chief barista Kang Jin is a certified member of the European Fine Coffee Association and a winner of many coffee competitions at home and abroad. He personally collects fine coffee green beans directly from the producing area, personally roasts them in a medium and light degree, develops equipment that simulates hand infusion and filtration, and uses non-thermal ultra-high pressure sterilization technology to fill PP triangular bottles of safe and heat-resistant baby bottle materials. Drinkers simply pop it out of the microwave and enjoy the same quality of specialty coffee as the coffee master hand-brewed it for you.

On the coffee bottle body, the producing area, processing method and roasting degree are marked, and the four indexes of thick, bitter, sweet and sour flavor evaluation of fine coffee are marked with small squares ranging from 1 to 5. Six varieties have been developed, namely Brazilian Minas, Ethiopian Yejia Shefei, Sumatra Mantenin, Honduras Marcala, Yunnan Erhai and "Tremor" mixed with Minas and Mantenin. Each variety has a description of the aroma characteristics, such as the description of Yega Shefi is like this-

The description of Mantenin, who is not a personal favorite but has a lot of fans, is this--

In addition to several evaluation indicators of thick bitter acid, professional coffee tasters will also evaluate coffee dry aroma, wet aroma, cleanliness, balance, consistency, aftertaste and other aspects when conducting cup test on fine coffee quality.

Source: Sohu Eat and Drink