Coffee Roasting and Tasting – It’s Still the Nose and the Tongue

I’ve been experimenting with different roast profiles.

I gave my popcorn-popper-roasted Sumatra coffee beans to the scientific adviser of our lab. I told him one roast was stopped at seven minutes and thirty seconds. The other roast was stopped at eight minutes. A few days later, he commented about how different the taste profiles were when the difference in roast was only thirty second.

My quick description was that the lighter roast seems to maintain delicate aromas for the nose. The darker roast seemed to give characteristics that were more noticable to the tongue – thicker body, nuttier, heavier attack to the tastebuds. To get the best of both worlds, just put the two together and make yourself a good cup of coffee.

So tasting still comes back to the nose and the tongue. So in this flu ridden time – do your best to protect your nose and your tongue.

Coffee Tasting – What’s the Value of a Scoring System?

I personally think the extreme in the world of tasting is in the wine business. It gives everyone an inferiority complex about not being able to taste what the experts taste. It kind of promotes an elitism. It may even be used by unscrupulous critics as a means of marketing and promotion.

So is there real value in having a scoring system for how something tastes, like coffee? When I was in high school, Roger and Ebert’s movie critics’ show on PBS became popular.  Most people watched it to see those two guys argue. But the best part of the show was actually seeing sneak previews in the clips they showed. That was in the prehistoric era before the internet. Those clips gave the show value more than seeing if Roger or Ebert gave a thumbs up or a thumbs down.

Somehow the same should be true in coffee tasting. On websites like Sweet Maria’sand Coffee Review you’ll find a scoring system.  I’m not sure how well I believe in a universal scoring system, but to take these scores as a general guide is not bad. I’m sure a coffee rated in the 90s would taste better than a coffee rated in the 70s. But we won’t worry about anything about the system that is more complex than that just yet.

So I would like to come up with a simplistic system and/or method that would help the average coffee drinker. Maybe answers to questions: Do I like the taste? Why? What is the first taste that comes to mind – sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami (you know – the taste of meat. I actually had a cup of espresso that tasted like fish to me – yuck!)? Anything else? Would I like to drink this every morning?

The more I try, the harder it seems for me to try to describe what I taste. I just want something simple and a help to others like me.

Beginning a Taste Quest – A Coffee Tasting Mission Statement

I’m reading a book The Accidental Connoisseur – An Irreverent Journey Through the Wine World, by Lawrence Osborne. I identify with him quite a bit. He mentions that he did not grow up in a wine connoisseurs’ home. But he had a desire to develop a sense of taste.

Here is the quote I like from Mr. Osborne: Taste is not learned out of books; it is not given from one person to another. Therein lies its profundity.  . . . Taste is like a perverse coral: it grows slowly and inexorably into unpredictable shapes, precisely because it’s an offshoot of living itself. Acquiring taste, then, is not a result of study; it’s a talent for living life.

So what is my understanding of Mr. Osborne’s words of wisdom? Everyone has a beginning. Our taste for coffee can only be developed by beginning to drink a lot of coffee – all kinds of coffee – from all kinds of places – of many different roast profiles – brewed by many different methods. . . Sound like fun? I’m ready to begin.

This is the beginning of a taste quest. We will investigate – we will experiment – we will taste – we will enjoy – COFFEE!

Longing for a Technicolor Taste World

Anyone who read my descriptions to my junk food taste quiz would quickly realize that I am not very eloquent nor have a very discerning palate. As far as my tongue goes, all I can say is, “salty, sweet, sour, bitter. . .”  But maybe that is just par for the course. Expect anything more from the tongue  — might just be expecting too much. If a particular food does not have much aroma – which I think is most junk food – then all we can say is what our tongue tells us.

To me a taste world revolving around the tongue is just a black-and-white world. The nerve endings of our taste and aroma receptors are in very close proximity to the emotional nerve centers in our brain. I should have some brain tissue available to discover a Technicolor taste world out there. Ok, I’m dating myself – the analogy should probably be a non-HD world and an HD taste world – but I don’t have HDTV, so I can’t use this analogy.

Let’s get a little philosophical — I’ve mentioned before that developing our sense of taste may just come with practice. I also think it comes with a state of mind. More often than not we eat for sustenance – this is out of necessity. But every now and then, we should be able to eat for enjoyment. This doesn’t have to require spending outlandish amounts of money at a gourmet restaurant. With a little bit of effort I think we can get our hands on good food. Then it just takes the luxury of finding the time to slow ourselves down from the day to day rat race and enjoy being a human being who finds simple pleasure in food and drink.

Junk Food Taste Bud Quiz

While we are on our coffee tasting journey, let’s investigate common roads we have all been on. Tell me what comes to mind, taste-wise, when I mention these foods:

Oreo cookies: crunchy, dark chocolate cookie, sweet creamy kind-of-plastic white center, got some milk?

Nacho Cheese Doritos: salty, cheesy, Mmm – MSG! crunch – orange fingers – gotta lick ‘em

Potato Chips: salty, crunch

Dill pickle: sour, crunch, pepper

M&Ms: sweet, crunch, Mmm chocolate

Coffee Tasting – Bitter on the Tongue

So I’ve been trying to find a more precise description of the taste of regular old coffee (8 O’clock – to be exact). “It tastes like coffee” just doesn’t seem right. Part of my philosophy about training our palates to appreciate good coffee is that it just takes practice and the proper vocabulary.

I used my French press with 8 O’ clock beans this morning; added a little milk; poured it into my coffee mug;  got on the bus and went to work. As I read my book – I typically borrow 3-5 books a month from the local library, in the back of my mind I kept asking myself, “So is it nutty” Chocolaty? Earthy?” Then reality hit. “It’s just plain old bitter!”

The poorer the quality of the coffee, the harder it is to get past the bitterness of the caffeine. The bitterness on the tongue just overpowers any subtle aromas the coffee may offer – or not offer.

Let’s give 8 O’ clock Coffee a break – it really is not that bitter – not like Maxwell House or Nescafe, but neither are there any subtle aromas that can overcome the bitter caffeine. At least the caffeine kicked in by the time my bus ride ended.

Coffee Tasting – Flavor Wheel

This the Specialty Coffee Association of America Flavor Wheel. To tell you the truth I find it intimidating. Many of the tastes and aromas I don’t even know. But I do feel one of the major problems in being an abled coffee taster is having the vocabulary.

So to make life easier for me and other beginners, I stripped down the wheel to three circles. Let’s see where we get.

Coffee Tasting – It’s not that easy

Has anyone tried my experiment – exhaling after taking a sip of your coffee? Well, I have two confessions:

First, it is not as easy as I had hoped. I was drinking 8 O’clock Coffee to see if I could come up with a description of its flavor. Sorry it just tastes like coffee. Maybe if I stretch my imagination I may be able to say that it’s a tiny bit nutty. More accurately I have the taste of bitterness – not as bitter as Maxwell House – but none the less bitter. Any other description? Coffee. Not fruity, not flowery, not chocolaty, maybe slightly nutty.

Second, when I first take a sip and exhale, I don’t immediately recognize the subtleties of the coffee’s flavor. I’m embarrassed to admit it but I typically am able to sense the delicate flavor moments later as I burp up the coffee. All the subtle nuances of flavor come to mind as the aroma wafts up the back of my throat into my nasal passages. Sorry I might be grossing you out -but it’s true.

Coffee Tasting – Smelling from the Inside Out

It has actually been found that if a person is taught to recognize a particular food by sniffing its aroma, he will not necessarily recognize it by its flavor.

What? How can that be? Don’t we recognize food by a combination of the taste in our mouth and the smell in our nose?

Definitely, but there are actually receptors in the back of our noses that picks up the odor of food as we chew and swallow that are different from the receptors in the front of our noses that we use when we take a big whiff of what’s cooking in the oven.

No doubt, the aromas we sniff in the kitchen help entice our appetite. The wonderful smells our noses pick up add to the full sensory experience of dining. However, taste recognition comes by smelling from the inside-out.

So here’s a practice my coworker, Chris, was taught at a wine tasting session (I think it applies to coffee as well): after taking a sip of your next cup of coffee – BREATH OUT THROUGH YOUR NOSTRILS. Then try to put into words what comes to mind.

“I’m Drippin’ 8 O’ Clock”

My coworker, John, asked me this morning, “Did you have coffee this morning?”

I replied, “Yeah, but I’m drippin’ 8 O’ Clock.”

It must have been in the way that I said it. But John took it as a statement of utter desperation. Not only did I use 8 O’ Clock beans, but I didn’t even use my French press or vacuum pot – I brought out my drip maker! Where is my coffee ethics? Where is the snobbery?

I may have felt that way, but I didn’t mean it that way.

Last night I bought a 12 oz. bag of 8 O’ Clock coffee from Giant Eagle. $5.25 on sale.  It didn’t hit me until today, but that’s $7 a lb. Green Ethiopian Yirgacheffe from La Prima is $6.50 a lb. Sometimes when the pocketbook gets thin, it’s easy to feel guilty indulging in good coffee. But good coffee (granted I have to roast it myself – but that’s half the fun anyway) is cheaper than cheap Giant Eagle coffee that’s even on sale!

No more will my conscience cheat me from a good cup of coffee in the morning!

So what do I do with my 12 oz bag of 8 O’ Clock? Well I want to explore how to best go about learning how to best describe what I taste in coffee. So here is my ambitious endeavor: can I describe the taste of 8 O’Clock coffee? Is it possible to be more descriptive than saying, “It tastes like coffee”?