Boutique coffee-eight steps to turn the new coffee flavor wheel

The new version of Coffee Flavor Wheel, a new tool for cup testers, brings together the efforts of the American Fine Coffee Association and the world coffee research. As a tool, it must be very intuitive, easy to use, and very easy for users to use to analyze and describe coffee.

Here are eight little Tips that use the new coffee flavor wheel step by step from beginner to advanced:

Step 1: feel it carefully and accept it completely

The new flavor wheel looks very beautiful, just like the best coffee. It visually presents the comprehensive and ever-changing flavor of coffee.

In the beginning, what we need to do is to get all these words into your mind and absorb them. You may see some flavors that you are not familiar with, it doesn't matter, we can solve this problem in the future, and from now on, you just need to marvel at the infinite possible flavor complexity of coffee.

Step 2: drink coffee, drink coffee, and drink coffee!

Coffee flavor wheel can be used not only for daily coffee tasting, but also for professional cup testing. But in two different situations, the key is that you need to feel the various sensory experiences of the coffee in your mouth.

Every step of preparing the coffee carefully is very important because you must pay attention to the different performance of each stage of the coffee: the dry aroma of the coffee powder (fragrance) when it is freshly ground, the aroma (aromas) when the hot water hits the powder layer of the coffee, and the flavor that fills the mouth when you sip the coffee.

We combine the sensory experience of smell and taste to define flavor. The flavor wheel completely and uniformly classifies the flavor into each flavor characteristic, which includes the subdivision from the basic flavor (which can only be felt on your tongue) to the aroma of coffee (aromatic hydrocarbons, etc.) (taste that can only be smelled by your nose).

However, most flavors come from mixed sensory experiences at the same time: for example, the acidity of lemon, as well as its unique aroma, are reflected in the same object, or a syrup that may have both sweetness and bitterness. and other aroma characteristics.

In the same way, we put this sensory experience into coffee, and we now feel the mixed taste in the same way and begin to learn to distinguish. At this time, you can combine the flavor wheel to try to distinguish.

Step 3: start from the "heart"

The original intention of our design is to hope that the quality and testing personnel can start from the innermost circle and move forward step by step. The most common flavor descriptions are close to the center, and the more outward they are, the more their features are subdivided. The tester can stop at any lap at any time, but there is no doubt that the further we go, the more detailed our description of the flavor characteristics will be.

For example, a tester may come across a coffee bean from Ethiopia that has a fruit flavor. At this time, we can turn our attention to the "fruit" section of the flavor wheel. This will give the tester more choices. Will the fruit taste be more like berries, dried fruits, or citrus fruits? Or is it more like other fruits? At this time, if the tester chooses the flavor of "citrus", they can describe it in more detail: is it "grapefruit", "orange", "lemon" or "lime"? As long as our tester has completed a definition of flavor, he can continue to return to the center of the flavor wheel, starting with another flavor, from the inside out, until he feels that the flavor of the whole coffee has been fully recorded.

These are the basic functions of the coffee flavor wheel, which is only a very simple way to use it. The more far-reaching significance of the flavor wheel is that it enables the testers to get more professional guidance, progress and progress in the senses and tests.

Step 4: read that coffee sensory dictionary.

The latest coffee flavor wheel is based on the World Coffee Research Sensory Lexicon Coffee sensory Dictionary.

A series of flavor items in the dictionary are designed to establish a set of standards that enable sensory-trained cup testers to set up a review group, evaluate coffee, and analyze coffee scientifically.

Although most of you who use the new flavor wheel will not receive the systematic training described in the dictionary, this does not prevent us from using the dictionary to define each flavor item on the flavor wheel. Each flavor has a clear definition and its standard reference, which means that we can find these references from life to accurately calibrate our sensory impressions of it and clearly subdivide these flavor items.

Moreover, we highly recommend using coffee sensory dictionaries with flavor wheels, and we agree that this is the most effective way to use flavor wheels. As mentioned earlier, users can quickly find the exact definition of flavor and the way to calibrate it in combination with this dictionary.

This dictionary is a descriptive analysis tool for sensory review group through relevant training, but it can also provide a lot of information and resources for many professional quality testers. Although there will be some technical and chemical descriptions that we are not familiar with, the dictionary will provide a detailed explanation of the relevant flavor items and its calibration reference.

Recently, the author is also translating this dictionary. In the course of hard work, I will send you resources in the near future. Please pay close attention! ]

Step 5: try the reference items in the dictionary

Each flavor item has a flavor reference item in the WCR ™Coffee sensory Dictionary, and these reference items are easily available in the supermarket or online. But please remember that the flavor reference can be eaten, while the aroma reference can not be used for food. You can taste (taste) and smell / smell (smell) these given references to guide you to identify these flavors in coffee.

The flavor reference items of many aroma categories are recommended to be packed in shot cups or bullet cups to facilitate the concentration of aromas. After each attempt, take notes and test the coffee according to the sensory memory bank in your mind.

Step 6: once again, start from the "heart" and return to the original heart

When we have the knowledge base of the coffee sensory dictionary in mind (even if there is only a memory of two flavor items), we can all start from the center of the coffee flavor wheel, starting with that particular flavor item.

Now, if we look at each flavor item, each item will have another adjacent item, but you will certainly notice that the "sequence" of each flavor item seems to have a different distance. If the "sequence" of the two flavor items is connected, it means that the research team in this book believes that the two flavors are closely related or very closely related.

What if there is a gap between them? This means that our researchers think they will be less connected. If we further look from the inside to the outside, the greater the distance between the gaps of flavor items, the less their correlation and the greater the flavor differences, so from the inside to the outside, the similarity and correlation between flavors will become weaker and weaker.

Figure: from the inside to the outside, if there is no gap between the two flavor items, it means that their relationship is very close, there is a small gap, the relationship will be slightly weaker, and the larger the gap means the less the connection, the weaker the relationship.

For most people, this is very helpful to calibrate their concept of a certain flavor. For example, we don't think that oranges in citrus fruits will taste like pears from other fruits next door. It is also very useful for users to build their taste memory bank to create a systematic description.

Step 7: it's your turn to describe it in the words you've learned.

The greatest significance of the new flavor wheel is that it can provide a unified common language for coffee testers. This is quite meaningful, no matter where you are from, the United States, China, India, or even the bird country, as long as we are familiar with this taste wheel and dictionary, we can communicate without barrier on coffee, except for language [laughter].

In other words, employees in the industry can use these tools to jointly study and learn about coffee and exchange files with each other, so that we can communicate with the daily coffee sensory laboratories and stores without hindrance to the basic communication of even higher-end sensory information.

Many times we find that the more imaginative we are about coffee, the more difficult it is for us to use a common word to describe the flavor to other people. Therefore, the use of flavor wheels and coffee sensory dictionaries for unified communication will become the key for coffee practitioners to jointly study and improve coffee in the future.

Step 8: give you some color to see see-- use the color of the flavor wheel

In fact, many people ignore its color when using the flavor wheel, but when we design it, it is not colorful to look good (of course, this is also one of the reasons). Because our visual system has a strong connection with other sensory organs, most of the time our eyes will give us intuitive clues as to what it will taste like. Therefore, we often use some visual terms to describe coffee, such as "bright", "gloomy", or the intuitive reflection of "red" and "green" to you. Or, when it comes to orange, what fruit do you think of? Oranges, of course!

With the understanding of this aspect, we begin to pay attention to the color selection on the flavor wheel, trying to find out the sensory relationship between each flavor item and the related color, and choose that color.

With this, we can solve the problems that we coffee dogs often struggle with, for example:

"Oh, the egg hurts. It tastes like some kind of red fruit I've eaten before! But I can't remember the name. " At this time, witty you will know what to do, and we can look for the flavor we are looking for in the red "sequence" on the flavor wheel. Isn't it easy?

Sometimes, brown may lead us to the left side of the flavor wheel, and the flavor wheel may remind the tester that the brown area also contains the flavor of spices and cereals, and the tester may be able to go back to the cup test to determine if there are these flavors.

Write at the end:

In fact, more usage comes from you, me, and all the practitioners in the industry, whether you are a quality tester, a professional cup tester, a teacher, or a great sensory scientist, let's participate more in using this tool and explore more new technologies and ideas together!

Finally, after talking for such a long time, it is estimated that everyone should take a look at the flavor wheel and send a high-definition flavor wheel to everyone! At the same time, I wish you all a happy, happy and healthy New year, and good coffee along the way!

Compile / proofread: Hack

Original link: http://www.scaa.org/chronicle/2016/02/05/how-to-use-the-coffee-tasters-flavor-wheel-in-8-steps/