What's the difference between the taste of fine coffee and ordinary coffee?

Why are some coffees called superior coffees? What's so good about it? Friends who have just come into contact with coffee often feel confused.

To understand the above problems, we should start with the taste of coffee.

Some people say that coffee is bitter, while others say that coffee is either bitter or sour. So what does coffee taste like? I refer to the statement in Teacher Han Huaizong's Fine Coffee Science: Coffee has four flavors: bitter, sour, sweet and salty. This should be an authoritative statement.

Among the four flavors, bitter taste and sour taste are the most familiar, so they become the representative flavors of coffee, while sweet taste and salty taste are not so obvious, but actually exist.

Talk about sweetness. The sweetness of coffee is not obvious, not as sweet as honey. Its sweetness is sandwiched between sour taste and bitter taste, so you have to savor it carefully and experience it slowly. Generally speaking, high-quality coffee has high sweetness, while low-end coffee generally has low sweetness. Drink more fine coffee. Compared with low-end coffee, you will feel sweet. I have drunk coffee with obvious sweetness in China: Siddhartha, honey kiss and Panama Rose Summer, which is mainly flowers and partially dried.

Except the salty taste. It also exists. From my personal experience, I once caught a cold and my tongue taste buds were dull. I took a sip of cold Ye Jia Xuefei, and it felt sour and salty. Another time, I drank a cup of cold coffee in the hotel, which tasted very salty. But it is so inconspicuous that ordinary people can ignore it. No coffee is famous for its salty taste.

Although there are four flavors of coffee, these four flavors are not the basis for judging the quality of coffee.

According to the encyclopedia of coffee professional knowledge, the main basis is aroma-aroma that can be felt by both tongue and nose.

The stronger the aroma, the more advanced the coffee.

I think the word "taste" is easier to understand than "fragrance". In other words: a cup of coffee, if its flavor is better and richer, is more high-end.

If you still feel a little abstract, let's take a look at the coffee grading process-"cup test".

In the industry, if you want to seriously evaluate a coffee, then you must have a cup test. Everyone who takes part in the cup test will measure a cup of coffee according to the following points.

As you can see, a good cup of coffee is not easy. Must be all-rounder: the taste is fragrant enough, pure enough, sweet enough, sour enough, full-bodied, rich in flavor and sweet and lasting in aftertaste ... this is really not easy. In reality, there are not many coffees that get high marks in every item. But it doesn't matter, as long as the final score exceeds 80 points, it is also a boutique coffee.

There is a detail that needs attention: the sweetness and acidity in the four flavors of coffee correspond to the evaluation indexes. The so-called sweetness refers to the sweetness of a cup of coffee; The so-called acidity consists of two sub-indexes: strength and quality. This requires a cup of coffee that is not only sour, but also sour. For example, acetic acid is not a good acid, and the concentration of acid is not high, while citrus acid is a good acid. If the acid is obvious, the score is high. On the other hand, bitterness and saltiness are not evaluation indexes.

So just look at the taste, if a coffee is pure and balanced in sweet and sour, it is relatively easy to become a high-end coffee; If a coffee is only bitter but not sour, or too sour, it is easier to become a low-end coffee. Of course, the final result depends on the quality and strength of various flavors of coffee.

From my own experience, I talk about the difference between high-grade and low-grade coffee, which is bitter, sour, sweet and salty.

Let's start with the salty taste. In fact, we can ignore the salty taste, because its existence is too low.

As for the sweetness, it is easier to make it clear: generally speaking, the better the coffee, the higher the sweetness. I said it before, so I won't go into details.

For sour taste. Low-end coffee may lack sour taste, such as ordinary Robusta coffee beans, which have obvious bitterness and feel bitter but not sour in the mouth. Other low-end coffees are very acidic, but they are "bad". For example, some coffee in Kenya has the taste of "phosphoric acid", which can make people's five senses shrink into a ball if swallowed. The acidity of fine coffee is the acidity of fruit, and it tastes much better. For example, the sun-dried Yejafi smells like citrus, and the washed Yejafi smells like lemon. These are all delicious sour flavors. Also famous for its sour taste are Siddhartha, Colombia and Guixia. Of course, the sweetness of these coffees is also higher than that of low-end coffees.

Let's talk about bitterness first (the following is controversial, only personal opinion). We always say that this coffee is bitter and that coffee is bitter, but it is actually very general. We still have to distinguish how bitter it is. The bitterness of low-end coffee is the kind of inferior bitterness, specifically, it may be the bitterness of mud, smoke, glue, skin and mold; The bitterness of fine coffee can be said to be "bitter" without these inferior tastes. The most typical one in this respect, I think is American Kona coffee. Kona coffee has a unique "volcanic ash" flavor, which is actually a bit "bitter" with a taste of earth. But ah, if we simply and rudely say that it tastes "a little bitter", isn't that confusing it with the bitterness of low-end coffee? How can I stand it! In fact, Kona coffee is delicious: it has high sweetness, full aroma and fresh taste, just like a small spring stream-with this indescribable "volcanic ash" or "bitter" taste. In order to let more people know its taste, I have to use "sweet with bitter", or "less bitter" or "good bitter" to describe it; And some people directly say that this is just a flavor, not bitter.

Once again, we heard someone say that so-and-so coffee is completely "bitter". What happened? Didn't you say that all coffee has a bitter taste? My understanding is that if the acid base, high sweetness and bitterness of a fine coffee are well covered, we will call it "no bitterness" directly. For example, as mentioned before: honey kiss, mainly flowers, summer of roses. But if you say "no pain" to a beginner, it is actually misleading. I once made a pot of rose summer for a friend whose coffee was still young. He said that the first bite was still a bit bitter. How can it be said to be "bitter"? In his mind, only real fruit juice is "bitter", and the summer of roses is just a bit like fruit juice, but it is still bitter. In fact, maybe he is right, too. But I really can't bear to call Rose Summer Bitter.

Coffee lovers, I hope the above information will help you taste coffee!