A Beginner’s Guide to Specialty Coffee Flavors – How to Describe Coffee Taste, Aroma, and Mouthfeel

Coffee shops are probably the most beloved places for contemporary young people. Whether for socializing with friends, working, or studying, coffee shops provide a great venue and atmosphere.

The more you go, the more you naturally want to understand what the baristas mean when they describe the flavors.

Especially if you happen to catch a café in the middle of cupping, the small table is covered with “strange” bowls, and the barista is drinking coffee with a “soup spoon,” making “uncouth” sounds—all of which intrigue newcomers and fascinate curious bystanders.

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Common Types of Coffee

Typically, single-origin coffee is tasted — coffee beans from a single origin. These beans are usually brewed into black coffee, meaning the liquid obtained by pouring water through coffee grounds, consumed directly without any additives.Because these coffees are of high enough quality, after proper roasting, their flavors can number in the thousands, blending in our mouths into complex yet balanced profiles that deliver a pleasurable drinking experience.There aren’t many coffees that require such tasting approaches. Based on coffee-growing regions, they can be divided into three major regions: the Americas, Asia, and Africa.The Americas region emphasizes aroma, Asia highlights a rich mouthfeel, and Africa tends to be more acidic.The 2021 Huakui coffee beans were referred to as version 5.0, while the new 2022 crop will be named ‘Huakui 6.0.’ Due to shipping disruptions caused by the pandemic, the newly arrived Huakui, originally scheduled for April, finally arrived in June.

Therefore, some coffee shops also classify beans by flavor profiles. For example, Qianjie Coffee divides their offerings into five simple categories: those with prominent fruity and floral notes, those with noticeable fermentation characteristics, those with balanced flavors, those with a wine-like profile, and those with higher body and richness.This way, recommendations can be made based on customers’ preferences.

The Correct Way to Use the Coffee Flavor Wheel

The coffee experience we have is influenced by a range of personal and physiological factors.

On a personal level, it can be simply summarized as not having tasted enough, or not having strong or deep enough flavor memory.Since coffee flavor is mainly perceived through smell, touch plays only a very small part in coffee flavor. Even professionals conducting coffee quality evaluations do not assign scores for it.Additionally, most flavor wheels on the market are created by foreigners, and their taste experiences naturally differ somewhat from ours.Taking the SCAA (Specialty Coffee Association of America) flavor wheel as an example, you can see that many of the terms listed are ones we rarely encounter in everyday life.

However, the flavor wheel is still a great tool. We can use it to help build our own flavor library, especially when we don’t yet have the corresponding concepts. The flavor wheel can remind us of the aroma and taste memories of the coffee we just drank.