What’s in your cup?

By Melita Ferarro, Training Manager

Coffee is a lot like wine. Where the beans grow, how they’re roasted, the method used to brew them… it all impacts that final, delicious cup. Now, we could get scientific and talk for hours about brew ratios, TDS (Total Dissolved Solids), water quality – everything from the coffee farm through to that first morning sip – but let’s stop for a minute and smell those proverbial coffee beans…

Playing around with different coffees (single origins, blends), brew ratios, grind size and water temperatures to see what these changes may bring to the smell, taste and feel you experience is all part of the romance. Let’s break down exactly what you are experiencing when enjoying your daily brew.

SMELL

Humans can identify more than 10,000 different smells. Think back to when you may have experienced a head cold and congestion; things taste different because of the close relationship of taste and smell. During a head cold your sense of taste is still working, but unfortunately, your sense of smell not so much, ultimately altering the way things taste.

Pro Tip: the “fragrance” of coffee refers to the aroma of roasted coffee prior to brewing and will be at strongest when the beans are freshly ground. When we talk about “aroma”, this refers to brewed coffee and to airborne soluble solids.

TASTE

The four main components  of taste include sweet, salty, sour and bitter, with a fifth honourable mention going to savoury, or umami.

If you prefer your coffee to be milk based (latte, flat white, cappuccino), then tasting black coffee or cupping coffee may seem quite bitter as there is no milk or other ingredients masking any of the elements of the coffee. However, when it comes to coffee, sourness and bitterness are not always negative characteristics. These are natural elements that can be found in coffee and help to bring a coffee’s ‘character’ to the fore.

Pro Tip: Acidity is the ‘brightness’ or ‘zing’ the coffee delivers and can sometimes even be a feeling such as a warming, or a tingling on the palate. Imagine biting into a lemon and the feeling that brings. The finish is the residual aftertaste. This could be fleeting or lingering, and with specific flavours found in the coffee.

FEEL

Here we are not just talking about the warm fuzzy ‘feeling’ your morning caffeine hit may bring, but what foodies call “mouth feel”. Think of full-cream milk versus skim milk, and how different they feel on your palate. One leaves a creamy coating on the palate, whilst the other is light and watery.

Pro Tip: In coffee – again, as in wine – we refer to this mouth feel as body. It could also be described as the heaviness or viscosity whilst drinking the coffee.

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