How to Decipher Flavor Notes on Our Coffee Bags
Every coffee drinker has a pretty good idea of what coffee smells and tastes like. But with so many coffees available to drink, how do we decide what we like and what to drink? There are many subtleties to be found in coffee, and roasting companies will use flavor notes to describe how a coffee tastes to help folks in the coffee selection process.
When we evaluate coffee samples, we write down tasting notes that stand out to us. The samples are roasted significantly lighter so that we can pick up the most delicate flavors. This gives us the opportunity to make more accurate evaluations and allows us to see potential in a coffee. However, once we choose a coffee to purchase, our R&D doesn’t stop there. We then do additional sample roasts that are more developed and closer to how we anticipate it will perform in our production roaster. We repeat this process several times, taking note of the observations made during roasting, and writing down flavor notes we pick up every single time. Once we find a roast profile that we like, we set our flavor notes.
On our coffee retail bags, our flavor notes can be found underneath the name of the coffee. The Honduras Maria Adela Catracha has flavor notes of creamy plantain, vanilla, and cocoa powder.
Dependent on roast level, brewing method, and age, there is an endless amount of flavors that can be found in a coffee. We narrow it down to three notes that we find as the most prominent during R&D. Identifying flavor notes is a fun process for us, but we also take it pretty seriously and try to be as accurate as possible. Furthermore, we set our notes in a specific order.
The first flavor note is used to describe the sweetness and acidity of the coffee. We list this as the first note because these two attributes are often what people will notice upon first sip. This flavor note will often be a type of fruit or a sweet treat.
The second flavor note describes the body and texture of the coffee. We often notice this after we pick-up sweetness and acidity, when the coffee liquid has gotten into more parts of the mouth. Does the coffee seem tea-like or syrupy? Or is it creamy and dense like nuts, or sticky like a dried fruit?
The third flavor note describes the aftertaste, or the lingering flavor that settles once you’ve had a sip. This last flavor note can be more of a wild card, since any flavor attribute can stand out through the end. Sometimes, floral and herbal flavor notes become more present more in the aftertaste.
Is it possible to pick up on these tasting notes in a different order? Yes! Is it possible to pick up on different flavors? You bet! Is it possible to taste more than three flavors at once in a coffee? Absolutely! Our culture, environment, and experiences influence how we taste and describe coffee, and your memory of how a particular food tastes may be different from someone else’s memory. At the roastery, we spent a lot of time tasting coffee together and calibrating our language, and for good measure, there are a few of us who taste the new coffees together before finalizing our notes.
Wind & Sea is the coffee blend that we serve on drip at all of our cafes. This coffee has a sweetness and brightness similar to an orange, a silky & creamy texture similar to milk chocolate, and a sweet, sticky finish similar to nougat.
If you’re looking to expand your coffee vocabulary or are having a difficult time finding specific flavor notes, see if you can identify one of the following broader tasting notes: Nutty, chocolatey, spicy, fruity, floral. From there, you can try to narrow it down even more. For example, if you pick up any fruitiness in a coffee, what kind of fruit are you tasting? Is it citrus, or a berry? If it’s citrus, is it sweet like an orange, or tart and a little bitter like a grapefruit?
If you’re still having trouble, fear not. Being able to identify flavors requires time and practice, and if you’re able to identify a broader tasting note, that’s still an accomplishment! If you continue tasting on a regular basis with other people and talk about your experience together, your palate will slowly start to pick up more nuances and you’ll be able to recognize flavors more quickly. This practice will help build your coffee vocabulary in no time. All you have to do is just keep drinking coffee!
