Categorizing coffee taste
As a newcomer to the "coffee game" I was first intrigued by the flavor notes found on speciality coffee and then quickly disappointed. Roasters promote their products with specific types of fruit and sweets. Without the addition of artificial flavor notes these taste experiences are often left to the coffee enthusiasts fantasy. Even established Youtuber's from the coffee community openly doubt such flavor promotions.
Do not get me wrong is possible to get acidic citrus notes in your coffee and I even had tried coffee beans that had a volatile cake aroma. My point being that we can not expect to get a specific fruit taste from a combination of two bean types alone no matter how exclusive they may appear.
Wanting to get reproducible results in my pour-over brewing endeavours I decided to document my brewing process (recipe) early and write a detailed break-down and rating of the resulting taste. I noticed that the qualities of a cup would change as it cooled down, so I added my remarks to a little timeline starting with the first sip after pouring(~60°C), until the coffee was cooled down mostly (<20°C).
Here is a list of the attributes I settled with tracking:
- Roastiness / Smokiness (light, medium, strong, burnt)
- Acidity (light, medium, strong)
- Bitterness (light, medium, strong, extreme)
- Taste of density (watery, light, boggy/earthy)
- Other rare and faint taste notes (nutty, chocolate, honey)
I soon discovered that the right balance of acidity and bitterness will result in a cup that is highly "bingeable" like the correct mixture of carbohydrates, fat, salt and sweetness will create addictive fast food. I labelled this taste quality quaffable (süffig) and would soon add two variants of that to my findings: airy (luftig leicht) and full-bodied (vollmundig).
You will know when you hit that right combination of acidity and bitterness as the resulting cup would go down my throat like no caffeine drink I ever purchased and I would immediately crave more...
Now that we know which flavor notes we want to balance, let us have a look how different factors affect taste attributes when brewing coffee.
