today we're going to talk about how to
taste coffee how to break apart their
sensations of taste to understand what
it is you like what you don't like and
to begin to learn to describe what it is
that we're tasting now this is the sort
of second part and the first part was
how to set up a simple cupping home if
you haven't watched that video yet go
and watch that video because setting up
some sort of comparative tasting is
absolutely essential to be able to
develop your sense of taste and really
progress quite quickly
here I've got two different coffees
that's enough but having three or four
or five would be even better now today's
video is going to be a lot of talking
I'm gonna have to talk through a bunch
of different taste characteristics
there's going to be a bunch of opinion
in there too but but it's not a very
practical video I'm gonna taste some
coffee but I'm mostly I'm gonna talk to
you so the first thing I want you to do
is check the description of this video
the first link is a link to a PDF and
that's PDF that is a kind of cupping
form that I think is really helpful and
this form was developed by sorrel asana
prufrock training with a little help
from Evelyn reproof rock and a tiny
little bit of help from me too there are
loads of different cupping forms in our
industry but lots of them are focused on
really specific things that aren't
particularly relevant to what we're
doing here you can look at say the cup
of excellence covering form that is a
complicated sheet that's really designed
to help you rank an enormous number of
raw coffees a roaster may have a
different form that they use to assess
their roosts because they're not really
looking at the raw coffee anymore
they're looking at the success of the
roast here this is a guide to help us
sort of take notes and record what we
like what we don't
to better understand whether we like a
coffee in front of us or whether we
dislike it what it is that we like what
it is that we don't like that can help
us choose better in the future
buy coffee better in the future
communicate with others what we like and
what we don't like and it's fun to
develop your sense of taste so what I'm
going to do is guide you through each of
the sections
the categories of taste on the
scoresheet and the first one is aroma
smell how good does this coffee smell
now it's not really a key part of
tasting but it is a part of why we love
coffee when you grind a coffee when you
brew a coffee there'll be a whole host
of aromas that are delightful now one of
the key things about this sheet is the
use of two individual scales one for
intensity and one for quality you can
have a coffee that smells incredibly
strong and smells fantastic that would
score high on both fronts you can have a
coffee that that doesn't smell that
intense but it does smell Pleasant or
you can have something that smells
intensely awful you'd want to be able to
record that on two different scales so
that's why it's like that a lot of
coffee sheets just use one scale that I
find a little bit confusing am I
supposed to rate intensity or quality
here you've got two scales use them both
now aroma isn't the most important thing
but it is a huge part of why coffees
enjoyable and if there are specific
aromas that you catch it's a good place
to note them down but don't worry too
much if you can't put your finger on an
exact aroma let's talk about acidity
acidity is by far the most complicated
controversial difficult problematic
aspect of coffee coffee professionals
love acidity and coffee and it happens
for a whole host of reasons and often it
ends up being a little bit of a
disconnect between them and a wider
audience who may be friends the idea of
sour coffee to be unpleasant
now acidity is just one of the best
parts of the food that we eat and drink
it provides that kind of freshness that
Christmas to fruit it gives that
beautiful contrast to rich fattiness
it's a wonderful thing but we don't
think about it that much most of the
time now you'll perceive acidity around
the sides of your tongue it's actually
detected all over your tongue but you
sort of feel it along the sides there
and in coffee it can be a really good
thing or it can sometimes be a really
bad thing because acidity well in
English we have two words read we have
acidity we have sourness and sourness
has a kind of negative connotation
acidity can be
not many people enjoy drinking lemon
juice it's too sour it's too acidic but
lemonade's fantastic a good sort of
fresh crisp green apple is fantastic
acidity if you'd like sour candy you
love acidity it's a wonderful thing but
you want it to be a positive acidity of
fresh acidity you want it to feel bright
and crisp and fresh and not harsh and
sour so when you're assessing acidity
the easiest way to do that is back to
comparative tasting does coffee a feel
more acidic than coffee be right at just
a quantity assessment first and then
secondly well which acidity do I enjoy
more which one feels nicer which one
leaves my tongue feeling good which one
maybe leaves it feeling a little sort of
dried out which one's making me salivate
these are a kind of nice ways to begin
to assess acidity one quick note there
is quite a common phenomenon in the
general population which is called
bitter sour confusion where a lot of
people especially when tasting sour
coffee will describe it as bitter
because it's unusual to most people to
describe a coffee as sour so sour bitter
confusion is pretty normal
again if you're perceiving it strongly
down the sides of the tongue if it's
causing a little bit of salivation it's
likely to be acidity now I've come
across a bit of confusion quite a lot in
my professional life typically it
happens someone like a restaurant where
Dinah was sent back and espresso for
being too bitter and that shot was
definitely not ever extracted the
machine is nice and clean the roast is
not dark how is that a bit a shot you
can a tear your hair out chances are it
was just a very sour shot and this
bitter sour confusion of play and that's
the language that someone will reach for
to describe what they don't like let's
talk about sweetness now generally in
our day-to-day lives when we talk about
sweetness we're probably referring to a
simple sugar or a sweetener designed to
replicate the sweetness of a simple
sugar something like sucrose which is
table sugar or fructose found in fruit
that kind of very obvious very sweet
sweetness now there is no simple sugar
in coffee coffee is not naturally sweet
in that way at
any point you can tell us because if you
take a cup of coffee and you add even
the tiniest amount of just table sugar
to it you can immediately tell that
coffee is sweet in a whole other way so
here when we talk about Swinton coffee
it's it's actually a much more
complicated more complex kind of
definition of sweetness
you know what sweetness tastes like I
know a sweetness tastes like and so for
many people when they taste coffee for
the first time they're like well that's
not that's not at all sweet but
sweetness in coffee tends to be this
kind of slightly complicated composite
of a whole host of different things
acidity can add to sweetness in a funny
way it can kind of highlight that it'll
be about the kind of flavors and aromas
that the coffee conjures it'll be also
about the kind of texture that the
coffee gives sweetness generally comes
from ripe fruit when the coffee was
grown and harvested it comes from good
processing and good roasting and ideally
good brewing as well so that there's no
doubt that some coffees definitely feel
sweeter than others but don't go looking
for a traditional obvious sweetness it's
a different kind of thing and it is much
harder to quantify but as you're back
and forwards between coffees and you
think about them which one feels sweeter
to you which one feels more complex more
more whole so the next key
characteristic of coffee that I want you
to assess is body right and this is a
kind of a funny word we could use
texture or mouthfeel
none of them are fantastic and it's a
really key characteristic of coffee that
I feel is not really been embraced by
the kind of modern specialty coffee
movement it feels like a classic kind of
second wave thing to talk about texture
whereas we really just want to talk
about flavor but the texture the
mouthfeel the body of a coffee how it
feels in your mouth is so important you
obviously could tell the difference
between skim milk and whole milk right
that there's a huge textural difference
there one feels thin one feels rich and
full thats the kind of thing I want you
to think about here is this coffee light
and almost like tea or is it kind of
heavy and full and rich and almost chewy
like
it's a very nice point to compare two
different coffees like which one feels
bigger richer fuller now you can have
coffees that have a lot of mouthfeel but
you may not like that mouthfeel at the
most extreme end robusta as a species
that if you taste that that will have a
ton of body and texture but it's not a
particularly enjoyable one to me anyway
some people certainly like it more than
I do and that's okay but it's certainly
one to consider
now when it comes to assessing the sort
of texture or the mouthfeel of a coffee
it's where I actually really prefer to
use cupping as a brew method if you say
use a paper filter that tends to sort of
homogenized mouthfeel and quite a
frustrating way it's much harder to
discern between small differences in
mouthfeel
with paper filtered coffee with a
cupping where there's no filtration
light delicate copy still feel very
light and delicate heavier richer fuller
coffees definitely feel that way too so
that's why I'm a big fan of the cupping
method to help develop language around
coffee tasting so the last category to
talk about in this section is finish and
that's really what are you left with
after swallowing that coffee right like
does that feel good does that feel bad
is it a harsh unpleasant finish do a
whole bunch of pleasant flavors slowly
develop and sort of build over time what
are you left with is it a nice taste or
a bad taste
do you like the aftertaste or not right
some coffees will almost disappear right
now you'll swallow and you'll be left
with really kind of nothing there
that would be scoring low on both
quantity and for me on quality as well
there might be a brief finish where it's
lovely for a second but then goes away
it's quite a tricky thing to do if
you're tasting multiple coffees it needs
a little bit of patience because you
constant to go back and compare and
contrast so take your time here you can
taste coffees all the way down until
they're pretty much room temperature so
there's no rush here you've got at least
13 minutes to do so but don't keep
bouncing backwards and forwards when you
want to score this taste it let it sit
30 seconds a minute and really decide
how you feel there's one more category
left that I want to talk about which is
flavour but before that I just need to
tell you about
this video sponsor Skillshare is an
online community full of thousands of
classes covering all sorts of different
entrepreneurial and creative skills now
I'm a Skillshare Premium Member which
cost me ten dollars a month and it means
I have unlimited access to all of the
classes they have to offer for me that's
hugely useful I want to learn about
things that are relevant to my career
relevant to YouTube to making better
videos and there's tons of information
on filmmaking on there at the same time
there's lots of other things that really
just interest me that are just fun to
learn about I love being able to dip in
to say a quick night skills class and
pick up one or two things to take into
my everyday cooking
I think Skillshare is incredibly
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our flavor is undeniably the category
that gets people the most excited
because being able to accurately
describe the flavors of coffee makes you
feel like a pro the description of
flavor amongst professionals can easily
get frustratingly competitive people are
trying to call out the most specific
descriptor they can and I don't think
that's particularly helpful I would say
that there's a few key kind of groups of
flavors that are worth paying attention
to that will help you understand what
you like and what you don't like now
there are flavor wheels out there to
help you narrow down your your
descriptors to something quite precise
but I don't want you to feel like you
have to use a precise descriptor for it
to be accurate I get quite frustrated by
our industry's obsession with very
specific descriptors that are reliant on
whoever is tasting that coffee having
the same water brewing the same way from
the same batch that they tasted coffee
is a moving target and I think very
specific descriptors are probably
intimidating to some people frustrating
to others pretentious to others still so
let's just talk about some broad
characteristics so let's talk about a
kind of the fruity category of flavor
descriptors that people use now this is
just a personal theory thing but I would
say there are broadly speaking three
categories of kind of fruit descriptors
that you'll see in coffee at one end you
might see there's kind of fresh fruit
descriptors that cover things like
berries things like stone fruits things
like apples or pears and then in the
middle you might have what I might call
the kind of cooked fruit characteristics
things that are like jammy things that
are like kind of baked kind of pies or
that kind of stuff you'll see people
refer to sort of cooked fruits sometimes
and then on the other end there are
those kind of tropical through to kind
of fermented fruit flavors that are
really quite different to all of the
others that we've talked about
beforehand for me these are kind of tied
to acidity if you have a sort of medium
to high level of acidity in a coffee
you're probably going to want to start
hunting around for a fresh fruit
descriptor that's the time in the real
world where we get high sweeteners high
acidity is in fresh
and that's what your brain is probably
thinking about something in that
category is it very like is it grape
like is it kind of a Polly and fresh and
crisp that way
or is it maybe more like a plum or a
peach or something that kind of sweet
acidic combo in there if the coffee has
a little bit lower acidity then yeah I
would generally look for more of a kind
of cooked for a description I think
there's a really helpful sometimes
generally when you cook for it's down
you do diminish their acidity which is
why if you're getting that kind of aroma
and flavor of fruit but you want to
describe it well I think I think cooked
fruits are a good place to go
on the other end you've then got
categories like kind of tropical fruits
or some slightly fermented wild kind of
things there it can cover things like
strawberries even though that really
should sit right in this end for that
kind of aroma of strawberries is often
common in things like naturally
processed coffees or you might have
coffees that have had a much longer
fermentation that's kind of skirted
things getting a little too wild and you
might you know use descriptors like
mango or pineapple for those kind of
coffees generally speaking this category
of flavor is a little bit of a love-hate
thing with both consumers and
professionals you know some people
really love naturally processed coffees
that have these kind of characteristics
some people really really really hate
them now there is one category of flavor
that if I was being fancy I would call
the kind of my yard and caramelization a
family of flavors I'm being less fancy I
would say it's the things that have gone
Brown and are now delicious category
this would include things like count of
caramels or chocolate or toast or
biscuits or things that got baked things
that have been roasted in a delicious
and kind of sweet way Coffee undergoes a
whole host of very similar reactions to
other things that are roasted or baked
and so using those kind of words I think
of very good descriptions of coffee
typically you might want to be trying to
describe the particular kind of
sweetness that a coffee has right is it
more like a kind of maple syrup is it
more like a caramel is it more like a
toffee people know the difference
between toffee and caramel and
way who knows I know one gonna be really
specific in this stuff it isn't helpful
because you'll end up chasing a thing if
one specific word pops into the back of
your brain
write it down keep it grab it it's
really useful when that happens but
don't feel you have to get that specific
for every single thing now it's
perfectly acceptable to write down
descriptors for things that you don't
like here as well if there is a
bitterness that you don't like if
there's a burnt list that you don't like
if there's a kind of rubbery flavor that
you don't like if it tastes like earth
or wood or mushrooms or vinegar or just
something unpleasant it's okay to pay
attention to the things that you don't
like as much as the things that you do
like now on this little score sheet
there is at the end a place for a score
now I'm not a huge fan of scores in
general but it is a nice place to kind
of summarize how you feel about a
particular coffee right like it just
give it an emotional score I think
that's okay
in coffee we score in a much more
structured way where there's lots of
different categories contribute scores
to a final score there's a useful for
some people they're a little problematic
for others here I just wanted to have
somewhere to make a note of your
favorites though the things you didn't
really care for and for the things in
between so I did just want to touch on
one final characteristic that isn't
really discussed in typical coffee
tastings or our coffee scoring sheets
that's bitterness now as an industry
we're not very comfortable talking about
bitterness because to us bitterness is
failure we think that one of the key
sort of selling points of specialty
coffee is that it is much much much less
bitter than commodity coffee than
commercial coffee but there's still some
bitterness there right there are
undeniably bitter compounds in every
single cup of coffee and it's okay if
you want to talk about that it's okay if
you like that
Firas bitterness is kind of a failure
it's a failure reverse ting it's a
failure of brewing we don't really want
to talk about it even if you like it and
I'll be honest it's true for me if I'm
doing a public tasting I really won't
talk about business until someone raises
the question but it's okay if you like
it it's okay if you want to take notes
I just wanted to explain why as an
industry we don't really talk about it
so go go and taste go and compare and
contrast take a bunch of notes don't
settle on anything until you've had a
chance to taste it right the way down
until it's cool you're gonna change your
mind about how you feel several times in
the course of one tasting that's totally
normal
taste coffee how to break apart their
sensations of taste to understand what
it is you like what you don't like and
to begin to learn to describe what it is
that we're tasting now this is the sort
of second part and the first part was
how to set up a simple cupping home if
you haven't watched that video yet go
and watch that video because setting up
some sort of comparative tasting is
absolutely essential to be able to
develop your sense of taste and really
progress quite quickly
here I've got two different coffees
that's enough but having three or four
or five would be even better now today's
video is going to be a lot of talking
I'm gonna have to talk through a bunch
of different taste characteristics
there's going to be a bunch of opinion
in there too but but it's not a very
practical video I'm gonna taste some
coffee but I'm mostly I'm gonna talk to
you so the first thing I want you to do
is check the description of this video
the first link is a link to a PDF and
that's PDF that is a kind of cupping
form that I think is really helpful and
this form was developed by sorrel asana
prufrock training with a little help
from Evelyn reproof rock and a tiny
little bit of help from me too there are
loads of different cupping forms in our
industry but lots of them are focused on
really specific things that aren't
particularly relevant to what we're
doing here you can look at say the cup
of excellence covering form that is a
complicated sheet that's really designed
to help you rank an enormous number of
raw coffees a roaster may have a
different form that they use to assess
their roosts because they're not really
looking at the raw coffee anymore
they're looking at the success of the
roast here this is a guide to help us
sort of take notes and record what we
like what we don't
to better understand whether we like a
coffee in front of us or whether we
dislike it what it is that we like what
it is that we don't like that can help
us choose better in the future
buy coffee better in the future
communicate with others what we like and
what we don't like and it's fun to
develop your sense of taste so what I'm
going to do is guide you through each of
the sections
the categories of taste on the
scoresheet and the first one is aroma
smell how good does this coffee smell
now it's not really a key part of
tasting but it is a part of why we love
coffee when you grind a coffee when you
brew a coffee there'll be a whole host
of aromas that are delightful now one of
the key things about this sheet is the
use of two individual scales one for
intensity and one for quality you can
have a coffee that smells incredibly
strong and smells fantastic that would
score high on both fronts you can have a
coffee that that doesn't smell that
intense but it does smell Pleasant or
you can have something that smells
intensely awful you'd want to be able to
record that on two different scales so
that's why it's like that a lot of
coffee sheets just use one scale that I
find a little bit confusing am I
supposed to rate intensity or quality
here you've got two scales use them both
now aroma isn't the most important thing
but it is a huge part of why coffees
enjoyable and if there are specific
aromas that you catch it's a good place
to note them down but don't worry too
much if you can't put your finger on an
exact aroma let's talk about acidity
acidity is by far the most complicated
controversial difficult problematic
aspect of coffee coffee professionals
love acidity and coffee and it happens
for a whole host of reasons and often it
ends up being a little bit of a
disconnect between them and a wider
audience who may be friends the idea of
sour coffee to be unpleasant
now acidity is just one of the best
parts of the food that we eat and drink
it provides that kind of freshness that
Christmas to fruit it gives that
beautiful contrast to rich fattiness
it's a wonderful thing but we don't
think about it that much most of the
time now you'll perceive acidity around
the sides of your tongue it's actually
detected all over your tongue but you
sort of feel it along the sides there
and in coffee it can be a really good
thing or it can sometimes be a really
bad thing because acidity well in
English we have two words read we have
acidity we have sourness and sourness
has a kind of negative connotation
acidity can be
not many people enjoy drinking lemon
juice it's too sour it's too acidic but
lemonade's fantastic a good sort of
fresh crisp green apple is fantastic
acidity if you'd like sour candy you
love acidity it's a wonderful thing but
you want it to be a positive acidity of
fresh acidity you want it to feel bright
and crisp and fresh and not harsh and
sour so when you're assessing acidity
the easiest way to do that is back to
comparative tasting does coffee a feel
more acidic than coffee be right at just
a quantity assessment first and then
secondly well which acidity do I enjoy
more which one feels nicer which one
leaves my tongue feeling good which one
maybe leaves it feeling a little sort of
dried out which one's making me salivate
these are a kind of nice ways to begin
to assess acidity one quick note there
is quite a common phenomenon in the
general population which is called
bitter sour confusion where a lot of
people especially when tasting sour
coffee will describe it as bitter
because it's unusual to most people to
describe a coffee as sour so sour bitter
confusion is pretty normal
again if you're perceiving it strongly
down the sides of the tongue if it's
causing a little bit of salivation it's
likely to be acidity now I've come
across a bit of confusion quite a lot in
my professional life typically it
happens someone like a restaurant where
Dinah was sent back and espresso for
being too bitter and that shot was
definitely not ever extracted the
machine is nice and clean the roast is
not dark how is that a bit a shot you
can a tear your hair out chances are it
was just a very sour shot and this
bitter sour confusion of play and that's
the language that someone will reach for
to describe what they don't like let's
talk about sweetness now generally in
our day-to-day lives when we talk about
sweetness we're probably referring to a
simple sugar or a sweetener designed to
replicate the sweetness of a simple
sugar something like sucrose which is
table sugar or fructose found in fruit
that kind of very obvious very sweet
sweetness now there is no simple sugar
in coffee coffee is not naturally sweet
in that way at
any point you can tell us because if you
take a cup of coffee and you add even
the tiniest amount of just table sugar
to it you can immediately tell that
coffee is sweet in a whole other way so
here when we talk about Swinton coffee
it's it's actually a much more
complicated more complex kind of
definition of sweetness
you know what sweetness tastes like I
know a sweetness tastes like and so for
many people when they taste coffee for
the first time they're like well that's
not that's not at all sweet but
sweetness in coffee tends to be this
kind of slightly complicated composite
of a whole host of different things
acidity can add to sweetness in a funny
way it can kind of highlight that it'll
be about the kind of flavors and aromas
that the coffee conjures it'll be also
about the kind of texture that the
coffee gives sweetness generally comes
from ripe fruit when the coffee was
grown and harvested it comes from good
processing and good roasting and ideally
good brewing as well so that there's no
doubt that some coffees definitely feel
sweeter than others but don't go looking
for a traditional obvious sweetness it's
a different kind of thing and it is much
harder to quantify but as you're back
and forwards between coffees and you
think about them which one feels sweeter
to you which one feels more complex more
more whole so the next key
characteristic of coffee that I want you
to assess is body right and this is a
kind of a funny word we could use
texture or mouthfeel
none of them are fantastic and it's a
really key characteristic of coffee that
I feel is not really been embraced by
the kind of modern specialty coffee
movement it feels like a classic kind of
second wave thing to talk about texture
whereas we really just want to talk
about flavor but the texture the
mouthfeel the body of a coffee how it
feels in your mouth is so important you
obviously could tell the difference
between skim milk and whole milk right
that there's a huge textural difference
there one feels thin one feels rich and
full thats the kind of thing I want you
to think about here is this coffee light
and almost like tea or is it kind of
heavy and full and rich and almost chewy
like
it's a very nice point to compare two
different coffees like which one feels
bigger richer fuller now you can have
coffees that have a lot of mouthfeel but
you may not like that mouthfeel at the
most extreme end robusta as a species
that if you taste that that will have a
ton of body and texture but it's not a
particularly enjoyable one to me anyway
some people certainly like it more than
I do and that's okay but it's certainly
one to consider
now when it comes to assessing the sort
of texture or the mouthfeel of a coffee
it's where I actually really prefer to
use cupping as a brew method if you say
use a paper filter that tends to sort of
homogenized mouthfeel and quite a
frustrating way it's much harder to
discern between small differences in
mouthfeel
with paper filtered coffee with a
cupping where there's no filtration
light delicate copy still feel very
light and delicate heavier richer fuller
coffees definitely feel that way too so
that's why I'm a big fan of the cupping
method to help develop language around
coffee tasting so the last category to
talk about in this section is finish and
that's really what are you left with
after swallowing that coffee right like
does that feel good does that feel bad
is it a harsh unpleasant finish do a
whole bunch of pleasant flavors slowly
develop and sort of build over time what
are you left with is it a nice taste or
a bad taste
do you like the aftertaste or not right
some coffees will almost disappear right
now you'll swallow and you'll be left
with really kind of nothing there
that would be scoring low on both
quantity and for me on quality as well
there might be a brief finish where it's
lovely for a second but then goes away
it's quite a tricky thing to do if
you're tasting multiple coffees it needs
a little bit of patience because you
constant to go back and compare and
contrast so take your time here you can
taste coffees all the way down until
they're pretty much room temperature so
there's no rush here you've got at least
13 minutes to do so but don't keep
bouncing backwards and forwards when you
want to score this taste it let it sit
30 seconds a minute and really decide
how you feel there's one more category
left that I want to talk about which is
flavour but before that I just need to
tell you about
this video sponsor Skillshare is an
online community full of thousands of
classes covering all sorts of different
entrepreneurial and creative skills now
I'm a Skillshare Premium Member which
cost me ten dollars a month and it means
I have unlimited access to all of the
classes they have to offer for me that's
hugely useful I want to learn about
things that are relevant to my career
relevant to YouTube to making better
videos and there's tons of information
on filmmaking on there at the same time
there's lots of other things that really
just interest me that are just fun to
learn about I love being able to dip in
to say a quick night skills class and
pick up one or two things to take into
my everyday cooking
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our flavor is undeniably the category
that gets people the most excited
because being able to accurately
describe the flavors of coffee makes you
feel like a pro the description of
flavor amongst professionals can easily
get frustratingly competitive people are
trying to call out the most specific
descriptor they can and I don't think
that's particularly helpful I would say
that there's a few key kind of groups of
flavors that are worth paying attention
to that will help you understand what
you like and what you don't like now
there are flavor wheels out there to
help you narrow down your your
descriptors to something quite precise
but I don't want you to feel like you
have to use a precise descriptor for it
to be accurate I get quite frustrated by
our industry's obsession with very
specific descriptors that are reliant on
whoever is tasting that coffee having
the same water brewing the same way from
the same batch that they tasted coffee
is a moving target and I think very
specific descriptors are probably
intimidating to some people frustrating
to others pretentious to others still so
let's just talk about some broad
characteristics so let's talk about a
kind of the fruity category of flavor
descriptors that people use now this is
just a personal theory thing but I would
say there are broadly speaking three
categories of kind of fruit descriptors
that you'll see in coffee at one end you
might see there's kind of fresh fruit
descriptors that cover things like
berries things like stone fruits things
like apples or pears and then in the
middle you might have what I might call
the kind of cooked fruit characteristics
things that are like jammy things that
are like kind of baked kind of pies or
that kind of stuff you'll see people
refer to sort of cooked fruits sometimes
and then on the other end there are
those kind of tropical through to kind
of fermented fruit flavors that are
really quite different to all of the
others that we've talked about
beforehand for me these are kind of tied
to acidity if you have a sort of medium
to high level of acidity in a coffee
you're probably going to want to start
hunting around for a fresh fruit
descriptor that's the time in the real
world where we get high sweeteners high
acidity is in fresh
and that's what your brain is probably
thinking about something in that
category is it very like is it grape
like is it kind of a Polly and fresh and
crisp that way
or is it maybe more like a plum or a
peach or something that kind of sweet
acidic combo in there if the coffee has
a little bit lower acidity then yeah I
would generally look for more of a kind
of cooked for a description I think
there's a really helpful sometimes
generally when you cook for it's down
you do diminish their acidity which is
why if you're getting that kind of aroma
and flavor of fruit but you want to
describe it well I think I think cooked
fruits are a good place to go
on the other end you've then got
categories like kind of tropical fruits
or some slightly fermented wild kind of
things there it can cover things like
strawberries even though that really
should sit right in this end for that
kind of aroma of strawberries is often
common in things like naturally
processed coffees or you might have
coffees that have had a much longer
fermentation that's kind of skirted
things getting a little too wild and you
might you know use descriptors like
mango or pineapple for those kind of
coffees generally speaking this category
of flavor is a little bit of a love-hate
thing with both consumers and
professionals you know some people
really love naturally processed coffees
that have these kind of characteristics
some people really really really hate
them now there is one category of flavor
that if I was being fancy I would call
the kind of my yard and caramelization a
family of flavors I'm being less fancy I
would say it's the things that have gone
Brown and are now delicious category
this would include things like count of
caramels or chocolate or toast or
biscuits or things that got baked things
that have been roasted in a delicious
and kind of sweet way Coffee undergoes a
whole host of very similar reactions to
other things that are roasted or baked
and so using those kind of words I think
of very good descriptions of coffee
typically you might want to be trying to
describe the particular kind of
sweetness that a coffee has right is it
more like a kind of maple syrup is it
more like a caramel is it more like a
toffee people know the difference
between toffee and caramel and
way who knows I know one gonna be really
specific in this stuff it isn't helpful
because you'll end up chasing a thing if
one specific word pops into the back of
your brain
write it down keep it grab it it's
really useful when that happens but
don't feel you have to get that specific
for every single thing now it's
perfectly acceptable to write down
descriptors for things that you don't
like here as well if there is a
bitterness that you don't like if
there's a burnt list that you don't like
if there's a kind of rubbery flavor that
you don't like if it tastes like earth
or wood or mushrooms or vinegar or just
something unpleasant it's okay to pay
attention to the things that you don't
like as much as the things that you do
like now on this little score sheet
there is at the end a place for a score
now I'm not a huge fan of scores in
general but it is a nice place to kind
of summarize how you feel about a
particular coffee right like it just
give it an emotional score I think
that's okay
in coffee we score in a much more
structured way where there's lots of
different categories contribute scores
to a final score there's a useful for
some people they're a little problematic
for others here I just wanted to have
somewhere to make a note of your
favorites though the things you didn't
really care for and for the things in
between so I did just want to touch on
one final characteristic that isn't
really discussed in typical coffee
tastings or our coffee scoring sheets
that's bitterness now as an industry
we're not very comfortable talking about
bitterness because to us bitterness is
failure we think that one of the key
sort of selling points of specialty
coffee is that it is much much much less
bitter than commodity coffee than
commercial coffee but there's still some
bitterness there right there are
undeniably bitter compounds in every
single cup of coffee and it's okay if
you want to talk about that it's okay if
you like that
Firas bitterness is kind of a failure
it's a failure reverse ting it's a
failure of brewing we don't really want
to talk about it even if you like it and
I'll be honest it's true for me if I'm
doing a public tasting I really won't
talk about business until someone raises
the question but it's okay if you like
it it's okay if you want to take notes
I just wanted to explain why as an
industry we don't really talk about it
so go go and taste go and compare and
contrast take a bunch of notes don't
settle on anything until you've had a
chance to taste it right the way down
until it's cool you're gonna change your
mind about how you feel several times in
the course of one tasting that's totally
normal