How to Taste Coffee

Phenomenon

You buy a highly rated bag of beans. The label says: jasmine, citrus, honey.

You brew a careful cup and take a sip. What you taste is: coffee, a bit sour. No jasmine, no honey. A friend tries the same cup, says "it's a bit like black tea", then frowns: "I still prefer dark roasts."

Is your palate broken, or is the label wrong? And if your friend dislikes it, does that mean these beans are not that good after all?

Variables

"Tasting" is more complicated than it looks. A single sip uses at least all of these at once:

Some things that are not in the cup also change what you taste: the coffee's temperature, what you just ate, what you drink it from, what you read beforehand, and whether you taste one cup alone or two side by side.

Experiment

The first experiment you can do right now. Pinch your nose, take a small sip of coffee, hold it in your mouth, then let go of your nose.

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While your nose is pinched, what can you still taste? What happens the moment you let go?

Your prediction

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The second experiment. Brew two cups of the same coffee and add a little extra hot water to one. First taste just one of them and try to write down its flavors. Then put the two side by side and answer four questions: which is sweeter? Which is more acidic? Which has more body? Which has the longer aftertaste?

Write down your prediction before reading on

Which is easier — writing down flavors, or answering those four questions? Will your answers be more consistent?

Your prediction

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Observation

With the nose pinched, most people are left with only a few things: some sourness, some bitterness, maybe a little sweetness, and the texture in the mouth. The "coffee flavor" almost disappears. The moment you let go, it rushes back.

That is because when you swallow and breathe out, aroma travels from the back of the mouth into the nasal cavity and is picked up by smell Confidence: [Established Mechanism], and we experience it as something "tasted in the mouth". Much of what people call "taste" in everyday life actually comes from smell Confidence: [Strong Evidence].

In the second experiment, describing a single cup is usually hard and the words come out vague; with two cups side by side, "which is sweeter, more acidic, heavier" is usually much easier to answer, and the answers are more consistent Confidence: [Rule of Thumb]. Sensory research relies heavily on comparisons like this, rather than asking people to describe things out of thin air.

Model

"Taste" is several channels combined

In a sip of coffee, at least three channels are working at once:

• Taste on the tongue: the basic tastes — sweet, sour, bitter, salty and savory (umami) — are detected by taste receptors on the tongue and in the mouth Confidence: [Established Mechanism].
• Smell in the nose: floral, fruity, nutty, caramel, smoky… almost every "it's like…" flavor travels this way.
• Touch in the mouth: body is the weight of the texture; the drying, puckering feeling is usually classed in sensory research as touch rather than a taste Confidence: [Common Practice].

Then add time: from the first sip, to swallowing, to the aftertaste, each stage highlights something different.

Six dimensions, linked back to brewing

Each of the six dimensions above links back to variables you have already met. The links below are clues for troubleshooting, not conclusions Confidence: [Rule of Thumb]:

Sweetness deserves one more note: how much of the sweetness we taste in black coffee comes from sugar, and how much from associations triggered by aroma, is not yet settled Confidence: [Open Question].

Perception first, vocabulary second

Now back to the "jasmine, citrus, honey" on the label.

Those words are analogies: they do not mean jasmine was added, only that certain aromas reminded tasters of jasmine. So that people use words consistently, the industry shares a set of tools: World Coffee Research's Sensory Lexicon gives more than a hundred flavor, aroma and texture terms each a reference and an intensity Confidence: [Common Practice], and the Coffee Taster's Flavor Wheel groups and layers those terms by how similar they are Confidence: [Common Practice].

These tools are useful, but they are the second step. The first step is perception: answer comparison questions like "sweeter or more acidic, heavier or thinner" first, then go looking for words. Start with broad words (fruity, floral, nutty, chocolate) and narrow down once you are sure Confidence: [Rule of Thumb]. Not finding "jasmine" is perfectly normal — it is a very specific word that takes practice and references.

What you taste is changed by conditions

Change the conditions and the same cup can taste different:

• Temperature: the flavor changes as coffee cools. Cuppers taste again and again at different temperatures Confidence: [Common Practice] for exactly this reason.
• Expectation and context: one study found that people drinking the same latte from a white mug rated it more intense and less sweet Confidence: [Strong Evidence]. The flavor notes you read beforehand also shape what you look for.
• The person: people's sensitivity to bitterness varies genetically Confidence: [Strong Evidence]. The bitterness of the same cup may not be the same amount for you and your friend.

So when you seriously compare two cups, keep everything else as equal as possible: the same cups, the same temperature, and ideally without knowing which is which.

Preference and quality are two questions

Finally, the central question of this chapter.

Preference asks: do you like it? There is no right or wrong here Confidence: [Preference]. Research keeps finding that consumer tastes are spread over a wide range and split into clearly different groups Confidence: [Strong Evidence]: some like intense and bright, others soft and low in acidity.

Quality asks: how good is this coffee in itself? That is harder to pin down than preference, but it is not purely subjective:

• Some problems most trained tasters would call defects Confidence: [Rule of Thumb]: moldy, earthy, stale, or off flavors from fermentation gone wrong.
• A specialty coffee score is a judgement by trained people under standardized conditions. It reflects a shared set of standards within the industry, not an objective number independent of people Confidence: [Common Practice].
• The industry itself is separating the two: the Specialty Coffee Association's new assessment method splits "describing what the coffee has" and "the taster's overall impression of its quality" into two separate forms Confidence: [Common Practice].

Put together: disliking a coffee does not mean it is low quality; a high score does not guarantee you will like it. Both questions are worth asking — just do not use the answer to one to answer the other.

Transfer

Next time you taste your own coffee, try this order:

1. Smell: first the dry grounds, then the brewed coffee.
2. Taste twice: once while hot, again after it cools a little.
3. Compare: if you can, put it beside the previous cup or another one and answer "sweeter, more acidic, heavier, longer aftertaste".
4. Name: only then look for words — broad first, then narrower.
5. Ask separately: do I like it? Does it have defects?

Comparative language works better with other people too. Telling a barista "a bit more body, a bit less acidity" is far easier to act on than "make it taste better". And when you want to fix a cup, these sensations are exactly the way into the troubleshooting table in Chapter 24.

Misconceptions

"I dislike it, so it is low quality." Preference and quality are two questions. You can dislike a bright light roast while recognizing that it is clean and free of defects; and you can enjoy a cup that is far from perfect.

"If I can't taste the notes on the bag, my palate is bad." Flavor notes are analogies, and often very specific ones. Start with comparisons: which cup is sweeter, which more acidic. Vocabulary comes with practice, and it needs references.

"Tasting coffee is a gift; ordinary people can't learn it." People do differ in how sensitive they are to some tastes, but the skills of comparing, recording and finding words can mostly be improved with practice Confidence: [Rule of Thumb].

Real Lab

Here is one way to do it:

1. Ask someone to prepare three cups of coffee for you: two exactly the same, and one that differs in one way — for example, a little extra hot water, or a different coffee. The three cups must look identical, and should be at about the same temperature.
2. Have them mark the bottoms and shuffle the order while you are not looking.
3. Taste the three in turn, and you must pick the one you think is different, even if it is a guess.
4. Do several rounds, reshuffling each time.

By pure guessing, you pick the right cup one time in three. This "find the odd one out of three" method is a standardized sensory test Confidence: [Common Practice] used to decide whether two samples differ in a way people can actually taste. If over several rounds you do clearly better than one in three, the difference is one you can taste.

Once you get it right, take the second step: how exactly is the odd cup different? Answer the comparison questions first — sweeter or more acidic, heavier or thinner, longer or shorter aftertaste — and only then look for words.

Check Your Model

Predict. The "different" cup of the three only has a little more water than the other two. Before you start, write down: do you think you can find it? If so, which dimension are you most likely to notice it in?

Diagnose. A friend says: "This coffee scored over ninety, but to me it is sour and thin. Scores are a scam." What might they be missing? What would you suggest they do first?

Explain. In your own words, explain to a friend why the "coffee flavor" almost vanishes when you pinch your nose — and what that has to do with "perception first, vocabulary second".