Understanding & Describing Coffee
Coffee Mouthfeel, Acidity & Balance. Describe Coffee Better
Following on from our School's notes about how to taste coffee and coffee cupping at home (experimenting with two different coffees and comparing), here we go a little further and explore tasting coffee if you're, perhaps, one who is looking to take their enthusiasm for coffee up a notch. That said, anyone learning how to properly taste, or better yet, describe the taste of the coffee you are drinking will allow you to get a better understanding of the types of coffee you actually enjoy, in which in due course will make it easier for you to select enjoyable coffees on a more consistent basis. As for all our coffee subscriptions, which you hopefully know as always tailored to everyone's specific flavour and processing preferences, the following may help you descide either which subscriptions you'd like to choose or which preferences you'd look to set within your account.
Understanding the flavour of coffee and communicating that to others can be a tricky business. Coffee can be very complex and incredibly diverse and whilst GUSTATORY exists for numerous reasons - '...the coffee industry is in a global sustainability crisis. We exist to widen the conversation' -, another is making speciality coffee more accessible. You’ve probably noticed that bags of speciality coffee will often have tasting notes listed on the front; words such as chocolate, raisin, caramel etc. Well...
Coffee is tasted utilising two of our senses, the tastebuds in our mouth and via the olfactory bulb in our noses. Taste and smell are two different things, though they are combined and closely linked for most people. Those flavour notes on the coffee bags that we mention are there to better describe aroma and flavour reminders of the coffee, however, please don’t expect a coffee with apple notes to taste like apples - they are more an indicator into the type of flavour profile, more so than an actual flavour. With apples and when we eat an actual apple, if we were to describe that which we are eating, we may think of descriptor words like juicy, crisp, sharp etc and this would be a good assumption for the characteristics found in coffees with that flavour note. Flavour notes are 'notes similar to', not actual flavours.
So, how are these traits measured and what should we be looking out for? The common traits coffee roasters use and their coffee bags describe are sweetness, acidity, mouthfeel, balance and flavour:
1 Coffee sweetness
Sweetness is, as you’d expect, concerned with the amount of perceived sweetness within the coffee you’re drinking. Sweetness is a universally understood characteristic amongst both professionals and consumers and so we won't delve too far here. What we shall add, however, is do you notice just how sweet multinational coffee chains' coffees are? Yeah, wow, so many sugars.
2 Coffee acidity
Acidity can cause a bit of confusion to those who don’t taste coffee professionally or are just getting into the world of coffee tasting. We always think most people associate acidity with sourness and this would be an undesirable type of acidity. However, acidity can and is also be positive. Let’s take the apple note we first mentioned, in which apples would be characterised as acidic because the sharpness and juiciness of the apple leads to an attribute associated with freshness. The majority of us would say that’s desirable, we’ve all enjoyed an apple, right? It’s therefore important to keep this in mind because if someone was to describe a coffee to you as being quite high in acidity, then you shouldn’t always immediately think ‘sour’ and disregard it. Instead, give it a try and you’ll probably find it rather juicy and refreshing. High acidity is also a trait coffee professionals, generally speaking, find very desirable as acidic coffees are often very interesting and full of character.
3 Coffee mouthfeel
On the surface, this might be a self explanatory title but mouthfeel is all to do with the sensation of drinking the coffee. Some coffees have a very light mouthfeel, this would be described as almost tea-like and quite delicate. Other coffees are much richer and heavier and you would typically identify these by saying it’s a very ‘heavy cup’. Neither are necessarily better or worse, coffee mouthfeel is purely subjective and is merely a trait associated with different coffees. That being said, there is sometimes a correlation between mouthfeel and quality as lower quality coffees often have a heavier mouthfeel whereas good quality coffee may feel much lighter and more easily drinkable.
4 Coffee balance
To those new to tasting coffee, balance can be notoriously difficult to distinguish as coffee is complex and a single mouthful of coffee can have so much going on that picking out individual traits can be tricky. The easiest way to determine if a coffee is balanced is if there’s a sense of harmony in the coffee you’re tasting. A well balanced coffee should be pleasant and no single element should overpower another i.e overly acidic or overly sweet. If you do find that one trait is overpowering then this may lead to a coffee being unbalanced. Being unbalanced, again, isn’t necessarily a bad thing but we should really be aiming for coffees where every flavour, aroma or trait has room to shine.
5 Coffee flavour
Flavour isn’t just about distinguishing the subtle flavours and the aromas within the coffee itself, it’s also about whether you’re actually enjoying what you’re drinking. Just being able to say you’re enjoying drinking a particular coffee is a strong indicator that the flavour profile may be desirable. This is often a key point of frustration amongst those new to coffee tasting as often the vocabulary simply isn’t there to really enable the taster to drill into the individual flavours and complexities within a given coffee. There are so many factors that impact flavour, from the origin of the coffee, the roast method, even the brew and preparation. However, if you like what you’re tasting then that’s good enough because, coupled with some of the other traits mentioned, this can lead you down the path towards coffees you’re likely to enjoy again.
We’re only dipping our toes in the water here and speciality coffee is something that can really rise to scientific topics and debates, but hopefully this gives you a bit more insight into how coffee is tasted and described by professionals. All the coffee we each purchase (or at least, we would very much hope all are - its a given with speciality coffee, but who knows with supermarket or multinational coffee chains), has been through this consideration process numerous times by different tasters to establish its quality and its characteristics. Now you can hopefully start to understand all the terminology too.
GUSTATORY (adjective): curating excellence in taste.