What's it all about anyway?
To wrap up this intro segment to specialty coffee, let’s talk about how to appreciate the drink. Because that’s what it’s all about, right? Tasting! Enjoyment! Love of the bean! Thus far, we’ve covered in very basic form and in admittedly very broad brush strokes some of the defining features of craft coffee’s “backstory” - its growth, harvest, and production at origin; its roast profile; its chemical composition, etc. But now we’re in “real time.” Our coffee has traveled across the globe and been perfectly roasted and brewed (ideally!) to express (supposedly!) its inherent flavor potential…and now it sits in front of you on the table. Perhaps you’ve made yourself a pourover for the first time at home, or else you’ve just ordered a single origin espresso at your local craft shop. In any case, it sits there, quietly unassuming, ever so demure - listless and impenetrable, even…So now what? You bring the cup to your lips and take the first sip, just as you have done and will continue to do with any old cup of coffee your entire life. But do you notice anything different? Anything special or unique? You take another sip, this time slowing down for just a moment. Rather than desperately gulp it down to get that precious precious caffeine into your system, you pause. And then breathe. You take it in. Maybe it’s hard to pinpoint the exact characteristics of what you’re experiencing. Maybe, if you’re like we were 8 years ago and just dipping your toes into the wild world of specialty/craft coffee, you can tell that this ain’t exactly your grandma’s “cup of joe,” that it’s unlike anything you’ve ever had before, but the precise language and concepts for articulating why it’s different elude you...
And that’s okay. That’s where this article comes in! Admittedly, there’s a whole science behind coffee tasting, and we could take you down a rabbit hole if we wanted. After all, there are actually people in this world who spend years mastering this stuff. They take courses, rigorous exams, and an untold number of trips across the country to various training facilities just to hone in their pallet and learn how to taste coffee “well.” In the specialty industry, we call these folks “Q-graders” (short for “quality graders”). And their sole purpose in life is to - you guessed it! - determine the quality of coffee! And then, of course, to rank it along a standardized formal scale (see first article), so distributors and roasters (and increasingly now, consumers) know what they’re working with. Q-graders are able to accomplish this feat because they’ve been trained to dissect, in detail, all the olfactory, gustatory, and chemesthetic characteristics of a given harvest of beans and then apply various descriptors and numerical values to them. Their specialty, you might say, is nuance but then also precision and exactitude. Simple enough, you might say, but believe us when we tell you that, in reality, it can be extraordinarily difficult and complex, too. Again, this is the rabbit hole we alluded to earlier. In this article, though, we’d like simply to get you acquainted with the “art” of tasting.
To start, this video does a bang up job at the fundamentals. James Hoffmann was the 2007 World Barista Champion, and he has since become a leading figure in the world of specialty coffee education, promotion, and appreciation. It’s a little long, mind you, but if you haven’t run across it on your aimless nocturnal internet wanderings yet, do give it a watch!
And that’s okay. That’s where this article comes in! Admittedly, there’s a whole science behind coffee tasting, and we could take you down a rabbit hole if we wanted. After all, there are actually people in this world who spend years mastering this stuff. They take courses, rigorous exams, and an untold number of trips across the country to various training facilities just to hone in their pallet and learn how to taste coffee “well.” In the specialty industry, we call these folks “Q-graders” (short for “quality graders”). And their sole purpose in life is to - you guessed it! - determine the quality of coffee! And then, of course, to rank it along a standardized formal scale (see first article), so distributors and roasters (and increasingly now, consumers) know what they’re working with. Q-graders are able to accomplish this feat because they’ve been trained to dissect, in detail, all the olfactory, gustatory, and chemesthetic characteristics of a given harvest of beans and then apply various descriptors and numerical values to them. Their specialty, you might say, is nuance but then also precision and exactitude. Simple enough, you might say, but believe us when we tell you that, in reality, it can be extraordinarily difficult and complex, too. Again, this is the rabbit hole we alluded to earlier. In this article, though, we’d like simply to get you acquainted with the “art” of tasting.
To start, this video does a bang up job at the fundamentals. James Hoffmann was the 2007 World Barista Champion, and he has since become a leading figure in the world of specialty coffee education, promotion, and appreciation. It’s a little long, mind you, but if you haven’t run across it on your aimless nocturnal internet wanderings yet, do give it a watch!
Fragrance and aromatics, mouthfeel and body, finish and balance, sweet vs sour, salty vs. bitter… These characteristics, as we’ve just seen, help to furnish any would-be appreciator of craft coffee with the basic building blocks for articulating their experience, for bringing a measure of what you might call “shape” or “form” to the “raw material” of sensory input. And then, of course, there’s the “flavor wheel.” Graders and enthusiasts of all stripes often like to reference this visual as they’re trying a new coffee in order to move beyond the above more rudimentary features into the realm of specific “flavor notes.” Perhaps you’ve seen our meticulously crafted, hand-drawn one hanging up in our shop bathroom!
Keep in mind, the wheel, regardless of where it comes from (there are several, the one above is just Counter Culture's Version) never has nor will it ever represent an attempt at exhaustive totality. That is, there isn’t enough room on any chart on the planet that could cover every possible flavor note coffee is capable of producing. Little known fact: the plant, coffea arabica, the essence of whose tiny dense bean you’re drinking…well, it contains several times more flavor-producing compounds than even wine. And think of the extravagantly poetic, to say nothing of cryptic, heights to which connoisseurs and sommeliers are accustomed to taking their assessments. Ultimately, the flavor wheel isn’t intended to be an exercise in prescription, but an aid in description, which is why we include it here. And when it comes right down to it, any given taster of any given cup of coffee, specialty or otherwise, is going to experience a whole constellation of different flavors that may or may not match up with what someone else in that same room is noticing. That’s part of the fun! And not only that, but racking your brain to narrow in on a specific flavor note you can’t quite put into words should be fun, too! …is that blueberry pie I’m tasting? Gushers? Apple streusel?...Being inventive and creative, while making sure to base at least some of your determination in knowledge and past experience, is part of the joy of drinking craft coffee, part of its beauty and grandeur.
To wrap up: a lot of people - that’s everyone from farmers and producers to exporters and importers, from roasters to baristas - have worked really hard and paid an enormous amount of attention to a lot of crazy details to ensure that we as consumers get to drink coffee that’s not only ethically made and high in quality, but also fabulously rich, subtle, and expansive in terms of flavor. What a gift! What a blessing! So, if you could, slow down. Be intentional. Next time you order that bag of natural process coffee from the Huehuetenango region of the Guatemalan highlands and brew yourself up a cupp’a, pay attention. Appreciate. Notice the sensations in your mouth, your nose. Notice even the memories it occasions, the images and feelings certain qualities and features of your coffee spontaneously recall. (Fun fact #2: when you smell and/or taste a cup of coffee, mucus coated sensors in your olfactory bulb and elsewhere send the electrochemical signal to the limbic system of your brain to be sifted, collated, and processed, and this, as it happens, is also the area of brain where emotions and sense-based memories are stored…pretty neat).
Hopefully, this first installment in our education series furnishes you with something of a rough-sketch roadmap, a firm enough foundation upon which to move forward and start exploring more coffees with greater awareness without, by that same token, feeling intimidated or overwhelmed. Happy drinking!