Why should we learn to taste the coffee?
Coffee is not just coffee. It evokes feelings and almost everyone has an opinion about it. Coffee has dozens of flavors and by learning more about tasting you can provide interesting experiences for your customers.
The benefits of coffee knowledge
Knowing how coffee tastes is as important as knowing how food tastes. It is easier for you to pair coffee with pastries and other foods.
It is easier to guide your customers to choose the right coffee. You can go beyond customers expectations with your coffee knowledge.
Your employees can get interested in the coffee’s flavors and quality.
Coffee characteristics
The three major characteristics we can find from coffee are sweetness, bitterness, and acidity.
Differences between taste and flavor:
taste is sweet, sour, umami, salt, bitter.
flavor is combination of taste and smell and other different senses as temperature and mouthfeel.
How can we learn to taste the coffee?
Getting started
The easiest way to learn to taste different flavors, is to taste at least 2 coffees side by side.
Start with light roasted and dark roasted coffee.
Make sure coffee has cooled down – too hot coffee can taste bitter AND you will burn your tongue.
Tips
The context always effects the taste of coffee. From red mug coffee tastes different than from wine glass.
Aroma is one of they key indicators to get to know your coffee. It gives you a hint how your coffee would be like.
Compare
To get better at tasting coffee: taste everything with extra thought.
Is apple acidic or is it sweet?
How does cashew nut taste like?
Start with coffee that you know how it should taste like. It is easier to find tasting notes when you know what you are looking for.
What you can try to find from coffee
Roast level. Darker roasted has dark chocolate and nutty flavors. Light roasted has fruitier and sweeter flavors.
Acidity. You feel it in the side of your tongue.
Bitterness. Coffee is naturally bitter, but the bitterness should be balanced.
Body. Does coffee feel heavy, juicy, velvety? Or tea-like (disappears easily after sipping like tea)
Specific tasting notes. You can try to identify what kind of fruitiness you find – berries or citrus? Our Paulig Flavor Wheel will guide you to find the right taste profile.
Full solution
Professional coffee knowledge from Paulig PRO
Paulig PRO offers the ideal coffee setup for your business, whatever you might need. Our solutions include a wide selection of coffee, coffee machines but also tea, hot choco drinks, and everything else that’s necessary to create premium coffee experiences. Our coffee experts arrange barista training's that help you improve your skills and knowledge, no matter what level you’re starting at.