Good Afternoon!
Sorry for my absence, I had some mental health struggles to attend to this week, but I'm back and doing well! Always take time for self care!
I'm starting this two part-er with my tasting notes for Rwanda Abakundakawa! It is a washed single origin Rwandan coffee, (more information on the different types of coffee origins in future posts, but for the sake of information, it means it is from a single processing station that services multiple farms, in this case, but can be from a single farm, or even a single section of a single farm for micro lot coffees)
This coffee has a medium acidity, but I personally taste a brightness without an acidic bite. The professionals note grapefruit acidity with caramel and chocolate notes coming in on the back, and I tend to agree, although I get less caramel flavor and more the smoothness of flavor.
I wanted to break my weekly posts into three sections, the first of the week being my personal thoughts and feelings about coffee in general, or a specific coffee, or whatever personal thoughts I'm inspired to divulge with a cup of coffee present; followed by a more technical post mid week, and a blended ( get it, coffee humor) toward the end of the week, wrapping up the week. This week that didn't happen, because I had a bout of anxiety followed by some physical struggles that can happen after a particularly prolonged anxiety attack. But, we press on...
This week, I want to take you through the finer points of being an amateur coffee taster, and hopefully build up your knowledge so you can enjoy more of the world of specialty coffee.
So, how do you taste coffee?
My stock answer is, however you want!
Coffee is about personal preference, just like food, or wallpaper, or whether or not you like making left hand turns. There are, however, things you can do to make it easier to taste subtle nuances in coffee, and take coffee from fuel to flavor. My professional coffee background is a combination of coffee specific cafes and the wider restaurant world, so I tend to use terms that are interchangeable in those two worlds, but I also love to make coffee approachable to everyone; so I use outside the box terms like colors, times of day, visual terms, etc. to give everyone a better understanding of coffee flavors and characteristics.
Lets start with the most basic "How To" in coffee tasting. I learned to taste coffee using the Starbucks teaching model. It has recently (in the last 3 years) been made available to the general public using the Starbucks digital coffee passport, which I recommend to everyone getting into the specialty coffee world for the first time. They teach using two different 4 part techniques, which I have found blend together very easily to give you a more rounded profile of a coffee.
Step 1 Smell: This gives us the Aroma, kind of goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. When you smell something, it sends impulses to your brain, and because most of what you taste is directly connected to what you smell, and smells are the most strongly connected sense to the memory centers in your brain, it gives us a lot of background into what you are smelling. So go ahead, smell your coffee. The first thing professional tasters do is smell, and don't worry if your first response is "It smells like coffee". Try to empty your mind. Think of it as your morning meditation. A prayer to the gods of coffee. A clean slate to start your day. Maybe the smell reminds you of something. A favorite vacation, the way the windows fog up when you're baking rolls for Sunday dinner, the peace during a snowfall. This is the aroma of coffee.
Step 2 Slurp: This is done by literally slurping the coffee, with slightly puckered lips through the teeth, the same way your mom always told you not to. This sprays coffee across your whole mouth and allows you to connect the aroma with the second part of tasting, Acidity. Acidity is a very prominent part of a coffees profile. It can be described in any number of ways, from "sour" to "sparkling" depending on the quality of the coffee, the growing characteristics, and the preferences of the drinker. This also gets your mouth, nose, and brain ready for the next part of the tasting journey.
Step 3 Locate: Where does the flavor live? While it isn't completely true that the human tongue has specific regions for each type of taste receptor (taste bud), it is true that they live in concentrated groups across the surface of your tongue, and that makes it easier to identify flavors simply by locating where on your tongue and in your mouth the flavor lives. This is why "sour" flavors hit on the sides of your tongue, causing your mouth to pucker, and why sweet and savory flavors sit more heavily on the top of your tongue. There is a wealth of knowledge of how humans taste flavor, and I will expand on that later, don't fret. This also allows you to determine the Body of the coffee. Does it sit lightly and wash away quickly? Does it sit heavily, like a decadent dessert? Does it linger long after you swallow?
Now we add up the first six parts, Smell and Aroma, Slurp and Acidity, and Locate and Body, and end up with
Step 4 Describe: By taking steps 1-3, we can paint a complete portrait of this coffee, which gives us the final Flavor. Is this coffee a smooth experience start to finish? Maybe it smells differently than it tastes, or the body lingers longer than the smell. By going through these steps, you will slowly build up your base information about different coffees, and be able to move through the world of coffee with a better understanding of what you like and dislike. Building the knowledge base of how coffees from different parts of the world are similar and different, and make your morning (or afternoon, or evening) cup that much better!
So, to summarize: The action steps, Smell, Slurp, Locate, and Describe give us the tools to determine Aroma, Acidity, Body, and Flavor.
Happy Tasting!
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