To boutique coffee beginners how to drink individual coffee how to appreciate boutique coffee

Why can't I taste so much fruit (chocolate, nuts, cream)?

I often see coffee beginners post similar questions. For example, why can't drink citrus flavor, why can't drink nutty flavor, chocolate flavor and so on.

As a result, some coffee diners will lose confidence in coffee, come to the conclusion that "coffee is very bad," and shut it out, thus missing out with the fine coffee culture, while some serious diners repeatedly modify the brewing parameters. in this way, they expect to be able to brew out the taste in the "mind", but ignore the principle of "quality change" in philosophical common sense.

The so-called principle of mutual change of mass means that there will be no essential change in the taste of the extracted coffee liquid within a reasonable range of brewing parameters. So if a correct extraction fails to boil the flavor you want, my advice is: don't worry about it for a while.

In view of such a wide variety of flavor names, I suggest that you don't need to pay too much attention to them. The reasons are as follows:

1. Ordinary coffee diners (especially beginners) don't have such professional noses and taste buds. These flavor names come from SCAA coffee flavor wheel. On the one hand, carding the flavor spectrum of coffee can better describe and define the flavor of coffee, on the other hand, it is conducive to the establishment and development of cup testing system. However, for entry-level coffee diners, the requirement is too high.

To give a simple example of the SCAA flavor wheel, the chocolate aroma reflected in Mena's reaction includes "Swiss chocolate, dark chocolate and Bakers chocolate". If it is not specially trained or has a high level of taste, which beginner player can really tell the difference between these three chocolate flavors?

two。 The description of flavor contains subjective factors. I think the sour taste of this bean is more exciting, but he thinks it is more mild. It is as if people with heavy taste always feel that they are not happy without spicy and salt when cooking, while Xiao Qingxin likes to be gentle and elegant. When drinking coffee, diners often lose confidence in their ability to taste because they can't drink a certain taste, but it's not necessary. Although everyone has different degrees of sensitivity to taste, there is generally not much difference. At this time, we should decisively give up the taste in the "mind".

3. The popularity of coffee diners leads to the intentional behavior of coffee bean roasters. I have personal experience on this point. There are as many as five or six kinds of Kenyan baked beans sold in a coffee Taobao bakery (whose name I won't mention). There are as many as five or six kinds of Aromas. Once in a chat, he replied, "write more and appear more professional, and consumers will buy it more." Obviously pretending to be forced, in fact, his baked products are already very good, but in order to "appear more professional", the intentional description of the flavor is not only the helplessness of consumers, but also the helplessness of bakers. However, this is undoubtedly a vicious circle, and the final result will only raise the entry threshold for boutique coffee and lose a large number of potential consumers for nothing.

Let's start with bitterness, which should be the first perception of coffee liquid by most people: coffee is bitter. I also admit that coffee is indeed bitter. No matter what baking techniques bakers use to inhibit the production of bitter substances, ordinary people will feel very bitter because the taste buds are very sensitive to bitterness. To deny the bitterness of coffee is to deny the taste of coffee itself.

But does it taste bitter? This is a matter of opinion. Just like the spicy taste of liquor, once I drank with my friends, and I casually said that it would be nice if the liquor had no spicy taste. My friend replied, "then maybe not so many people like to drink spirits." this made me stop talking for a moment. Admittedly, as one of the flavors of coffee itself, bitterness is the greatest charm of coffee.

Beginners can try to distinguish between the severity of bitterness, ordinary bitterness and bitterness when tasting the bitterness of coffee. With the improvement of the recognition of bitterness, try to distinguish the subtle flavor in bitterness.

In addition, sour taste, which shines brilliantly in the third wave of boutique coffee, is now prevalent in light roasting, which is directly related to the expanding "eosinophilic" group. I am not keen on sour taste, but I have to say that coffee with a little sour taste can make it more lively and more complex.

When tasting the sour taste of coffee, beginners should not pay too much attention to the name of the specific sour taste, but should learn to distinguish between uncomfortable acid, irritating acid, strong acid, dead acid and refreshing acid.

As for sweetness, I used to remember that there was a post in the post bar with the key word "sweet to Cry", which eventually led to a group of players competing to buy the same coffee beans. Later, some friends wrote to me privately, asking why I didn't have the feeling of "sweet to Cry" when I tasted it. My answer is: the feeling in the post is too subjective. I'm sorry, you've all been "tricked".

When it comes to the sweetness of coffee, diners had better calm down and ask themselves, what kind of sweetness do you want? Is it the full-bodied sweetness of honey, or the refreshing sweetness of Sugar cane juice, or the kind of sweet aftertaste of black sugar? If you want the above three and want the feeling of "sweet to cry", I'm sorry, you'd better go straight to the supermarket to buy honey, Sugar cane juice and black sugar sauce.

SCAA Flavor Wheel does not describe sweetness too much: "slightly sweet, mildly sweet". The sweetness of coffee, more like a kind of embellishment, is really very subtle. Although sweetness only plays the role of icing on the cake, but do not underestimate it, coffee with a beautiful sweet taste can often play a "finishing touch" effect, which is one of the reasons why roasters try their best to improve roasting.

Some coffee lovers like to talk about "Huigan", and I don't attach much importance to this attribute. Take a sip of traditional Chinese medicine and drink cool white to bring back Gump than coffee will come much faster. So there is no need for diners to worry about why my coffee is not sweet, or why it is so weak.

Finally, speaking of salty taste, I am also very insensitive to salty taste. Just refer to the description of SCAA Flavor Wheel:

1. A soft taste

two。 A neutral taste

3. Miscellaneous odor

4. Astringent taste