Introduction to Coffee: Understanding and Identifying Flavor Profiles

I'll be attaching some great resources to use, so make sure you read to the end!

It's always daunting when first-time coffee students want to enter into the world of coffee. Heck, I feel like even coffee veterans get stifled when participating in some coffee tastings ("cuppings") - I know I do. I think this post makes a great segue into one of the most important skills for a coffee roaster to have when tackling new samples or testing out specialty coffees.

Understanding and identifying flavor profiles seems like a foreign language to most let alone having to describe them.

The greatest thing about doing cuppings is that it's always a trial-and-error process and there's never a wrong answer. Just always a new way to describe it.

I remember my first time doing a tasting for coffee: it was during the beginning of my coffee journey when I was working as a barista at Starbucks back in 2016. My coworkers, the coffee master at the time, and I were all standing about on a slow day. We all had started our training sessions during that time and I was eager to learn my role. The coffee master had espresso-sized disposable cups prepped with cups-of-joe. Each newbie took theirs's; I received mine last. I glanced around the circle of other like-minded individuals who were also anxious when watching the coffee master explain the process of a tasting.

"We're gonna start off with smelling the aromas off of the coffee before we taste it, so cover half of the cup with your hand, and keep your nose close to the lip. Take sniffs and describe what you smell." She started to demonstrate.

"Seems easy enough". I thought.

As we all did as instructed, people seemed to have immediate inklings to the scents they were getting.

"Coffee. Chocolate. Fruit. Green pepper." Some threw out far-fetched responses like, "Grapefruit, brown sugar, tobacco". I observed in silence, absorbing the information.

I was the only one who hadn't said anything. I was too scared.

---

Fast-forwarding to the present day, I have been able to lead successful cuppings for the new coworkers who I work with at my current job. It was all a progression to get to this point. In the coffee industry and in life, it's all about the journey - it's everything.

So how do we get a point where we're no longer intimidated by the approach of describing coffee? By understanding key words or adjectives to describe sensations and tastes.

How do we do that? With getting comfortable with our taste buds.

Our tongue has 2,000-8,000 taste buds and within those taste buds are where we experience the 4 main flavor profiles for all foods, wine, and coffee.

(A great resource for more information on that is in the book "Salt Fat Acid Heat" by Samin Nosrat)

1. Bitter

2. Sour (or Acid)

3. Salt

4. Sweet

Each of these senses play an essential role to identifying flavor profiles.

I could continue going down this rabbit hole of spilling information on different acids and such but we can save that for another post.

Once you become aware of what the names of the receptors are and where they're located, next is to put them to practice. The best way to do that is to eat the foods that target those areas. See below for a small practice round!

Bitter

Try eating a citrus fruit to experience where the fruit lingers around the tongue. Most likely, your tongue will pick up on the bitter sensations. Another common bitter is - you guessed it! - coffee!

Sour (Acid)

Try eating a sour candy to experience for sour tastes. It's common to salivate more when eating and experiencing sour foods.

Salt

Try eating potato chips to experience where your tongue's salt receptors are. (grab a cup of water too while you're at it - have to stay hydrated!)

Sweet

Try eating chocolate to experience sweet tastes.

I'd like to add: being able to easily identify these individually may or may not take more practice for others depending on the kind of diet you have. It doesn't hurt to eat diverse foods with the listed flavors regularly! Remember - balance is key to every dish you make!

Now that you have the words to the tastes, lets start to explore how that plays within coffee!

Most coffee production folk need to be able to identify and categorize specialty coffees within the 4 main senses to properly sample, roast, and market them. This will introduce the idea of Q Graders. Just as sommeliers are to wine; Q graders are to coffee. The individuals who partake in the testing to become one go through multiple sensory driven evaluations and, once graduated, are able to grade green coffee for quality control. This used to be a standard requirement in the coffee industry for people interested in production, however, it is not so much anymore. The main objective of using that information is to educate the producers into creating a better quality product and delivering that to the customer.

Coming full circle, we can use all the knowledge we gained to start applying this to daily drinking of coffee. As much as this doesn't seem applicable towards gas-station or McDonald's coffees, it's always better to source local and support small business roasters!

Gradually when you get more comfortable with identifying the basic flavors, that's when the specifics come into play! Below is a "holy-grail" of ways to describing the different notes of flavors you can experience while drinking coffee: The Coffee Flavor Wheel". (Cue dramatic effects).

The way the wheel works is from inward to outward. We discussed the basic sensations on the tongue - once we incorporate that with examples, and instances of memory from experiencing the foods corresponding to them, we can start to apply that when stimulated on the tongue! It's all coming together!

What I have done is research some great resources to getting more comfortable with identifying these profiles and have attached them below! Feel free to use them whenever you need in any scenario (outside of coffee as well). These also make great discussions with others when doing coffee trips together! See if you guys can challenge each other and self-educate as well! When in doubt, always try and experiment!

• SCA (Specialty Coffee Association), "How to Use the Coffee Taster's Flavor Wheel in Eight Steps"

• World Coffee Research, "Sensory Lexicon"

• Counter Culture Coffee, "Coffee Taster's Flavor Wheel"

---

Should I continue more educational posts?

• Yes
• No

Any questions or discussions for more clarity, feel free to contact me or leave a comment down below!

#introductiontocoffee #partone #flavorwheel #cuppings #education #beginner