The Sensory Characteristics of Coffee

Coffee as the world's most complex beverage

Coffee can taste like peach, cinnamon, strawberry, and chocolate. A cup can be sour, sweet, bitter, and salty. A sip of coffee can feel velvety or syrupy.

We often talk about the taste of coffee when we try to categorize the abundance of aromas that a good cup of coffee brings.

When you start to delve deeper into coffee, it takes a little practice to discern individual characteristics of a good coffee. In well-processed and gently roasted coffee, a diverse number of aromas are present. Over time, you can learn to distinguish and name them, thereby uncovering the various nuances of this complex beverage.

For us, the journey of good coffee begins at its origin. The trade route of coffee beans should be transparent and traceable. Farmers in the country of origin must receive a fair share of the profit. You should be able to read information about the respective beans as precisely as possible. Good coffee beans always smell good! They have a homogeneous color and are characterized by little breakage. You can easily find this out by taking a look inside the bag.

For us, good coffee is characterized by a natural flavor profile, where the different taste notes and aromas, as well as body and texture, are well-balanced in the cup.

To perceive the flavor profile of a coffee, our "taste memory" is activated. This is unique to each person. By remembering historical sensory events, you can, over time, perceive and categorize a colorful world of aromas.

Taste is perceived on the tongue and is divided into sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami. Additionally, we can describe a mouthfeel, a haptic sensory impression, when we drink coffee. The sip can feel creamy and round, thick, or chewy. With coffee, we then speak of the body or volume of the beverage.

Everything else happens in the nose: The diverse aromas are absorbed via the olfactory center in the nasal and pharyngeal cavity. When we drink coffee, we perceive taste and aroma simultaneously. So, you can recognize a sweet taste in the drink and at the same time smell the aroma of blueberry and vanilla! And much more.

The most important factors for the complexity of coffee are the circumstances of the terroir, the varietal, and the processing. By ensuring responsible further processing of the beans, we can acknowledge the work of the farmers in the countries of origin. Through roasting and preparation of the coffee beans, we are able to present an individual story of the origin and activate the diverse aromas.

Finally, we can evaluate coffee sensorially and thus assess its quality. We notice differences and discover our preferences or dislikes. We can perceive the intensity of individual aromas and identify flaws in the processing to describe the characteristics of the beverage as precisely as possible.

At Kaffeekommune, we taste our coffees once a week. The ground beans are infused with hot water and sensorially evaluated in several steps. This type of coffee tasting is called "cupping." Aroma, taste, body, and acidity of the different coffees can be compared and determined. For the Kaffeekommune team, these tastings are an essential part of our work. They help us train our sensory skills and continually assess our own coffees. Ultimately, this allows us to get the best out of the coffee and advise our guests well.

As a guest of Kaffeekommune, we want to offer you the greatest possible transparency throughout the entire journey of the coffee bean until it lands in a cup in our shop. We also want to give you the opportunity to discover the complexity of coffee aromas and share this passion with us.

Authored by Elisabeth Gottschalk

Sources:

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