Welcome to For The Love of Coffee! A weekly blog about all things coffee exclusively for the staff of Vienna Coffee.

This week’s blog will focus on how we experience coffee with all 5 of our senses, and specifically our sense of taste. Why do we perceive particular flavors of other food or substances in the coffee that are clearly not there (ex. blueberries, hazelnut, wood, spices)? What is the connection between our pallet and our brain which interprets the flavors we experience?

It’s a fascinating subject, grab a cup of coffee and let’s jump right in!

Coffee has over 800 distinctive aromatic flavors and aromas. These chemical compounds are interpreted by our brains as smells and flavors. Some of the compounds we perceive as pleasant and good, and some as not so good. The key to producing a great cup of coffee is to pronounce the good flavors and diminish the unpleasant ones. Here at Vienna, we do this through careful sourcing of green coffee, precise roasting protocols, cupping to check for defects, and proper storage of roasted coffee.

We experience coffee with all 5 of our senses. We hear coffee as it is brewing in our coffee maker at home, or being prepared at our favorite cafe’. We see the coffee as we are brewing it and perceive its potential strength based on how dark it appears. We touch the hot coffee mug and it fills us with a warm rush of anticipation for the delight we are about to experience. We smell the coffee and it reminds us of all of the wonderful coffees we have tasted before (or perhaps some of the less-than-wonderful). We taste the coffee and our tastebuds go crazy with all the various perceptions like body, acidity, flavor, sweetness, bitterness, and any number of flavors we have tasted in the past.

Let’s focus on coffee’s flavor. There are 5 distinct regions on our tongue that help us to identify bitter, salty, sour, and sweet. There is also a more recent addition by food researchers to the flavors perceived called Umami.

When you taste coffee you are perceiving hundreds of flavors and aroma compounds all at once. You will automatically compare in your mind the coffee you are currently tasting with those you have tasted in the past and determine if the coffee tastes good, bad, or just different. You may also perceive subtle, or perhaps pronounced flavor “notes” which are tastes that remind you of flavors you have experienced in the past while drinking or consuming other foods. With such a vast array of coffee profiles to choose from these days, there is no telling exactly WHAT flavors you will taste when trying a new variety or roast degree of coffee. Some of the more popular lighter-roasted coffees these days taste more like tea to me, and the recent advent of “anaerobic” coffees (coffee made with beans that have gone through a fermentation process) are truly unique from any coffee profiles I have tried in the past!

Below is the Coffee Taster’s Wheel. It is a tool developed by the Specialty Coffee Association to help one determine the flavors which are being perceived when tasting coffee. It starts out in the middle circle with more basic flavor categories and works its way out to the outer circle where more nuanced flavors are highlighted. We have a large wall hanging up in the coffee lab of this image if anyone would like to see and study it more closely.

I also recommend a coffee tasting app that I sometimes use which is a handy way to help you determine coffee tastes while enjoying your favorite beverage. It is called the Coffee Taster’s Flavor Tree and is available as a free download from the Google Play store. If interested, you can download it by clicking on the image below. I should note that this exercise is only good for tasting black coffee. If you like your coffee with cream & sugar, you will cover up most, if not all of the subtle flavor notes present in the coffee.

I hope you all will take to time to fully embrace all that a good cup of coffee brings to all of your senses, and learn to identify and appreciate the almost limitless flavors and aromas that can be enjoyed from this wonderful, beautiful and never-ending experience we call coffee!

It’s a GREAT day for coffee!

~Matt~