What is the taste of coffee?

#1: Post by **mathof** » April 6th, 2013, 12:33 pm

Before I began to taste the range of coffees now being prepared as espresso, I would have said that all coffees had a pretty similar overall flavour. A sort of, you know, coffee flavour, like that in coffee ice cream. Now, although I enjoy espresso made from many of the coffees on offer from specialist roasters, I don't know that in a blind tasting I would be able to tell that I was necessarily drinking something brewed from a coffee bean and not some other shrub. I wonder if others recognise a common flavour in the many single origins and blends now available.

#2: Post by **allon** » April 6th, 2013, 12:44 pm

My theory is that most people associate a certain flavor as "coffee" flavor. And that certain flavor is stale coffee flavor. It's pretty universal and creeps into and dominates all coffees. Once the staleness is removed from the equation, the true flavors emerge. This is why so many people go back to that comforting idea of what coffee tastes like even after tasting fresh coffees, because its what they're used to.

What is the taste of fresh coffee? It varies greatly by origin, roast, and preparation.

#3: Post by **another_jim** » April 6th, 2013, 1:08 pm

mathof wrote: ... I don't know that in a blind tasting I would be able to tell that I was necessarily drinking something brewed from a coffee bean and not some other shrub

You can blind taste an arbitrary coffee alongside a chicory and malted grain drink (i.e. the most popular ersatz coffees). If the experience of tens of millions of people of wartime rationing from the civil war on is any guide, the difference between the ersatz and the real coffee should be pretty obvious.

#4: Post by **jonny** » April 6th, 2013, 1:16 pm

There is a wide range of flavors in different coffee beans but probably close to 99% of the possible flavors in a coffee are quite subtle, which I think is why an average coffee consumer has a difficult time telling the difference between coffees, especially when milk and/or sugar are used and especially when not tasted side by side. If I had to pick a handful of flavors that I think describe the main flavors of most average roasted coffees (throwing out over roasted beans and ultra light single origins that may not contain a majority of any of the following), I would choose carmalized sugar, cacao, and almond skins.

#5: Post by **SpromoSapiens** » April 7th, 2013, 3:13 pm

jonny wrote:carmalized sugar, cacao, and almond skins.

I agree with this, although for the sake of a broad, sweeping, universal coffee-ness i would back away from almonds specifically and just say "nutty-ness". I would add to these a kind of breadiness and, well, char. What I mean by these last two is essentially what I think adds up to "roast." Standard archetypal coffee flavor is "roasty," for sure.

#6: Post by **crusty cup** » May 12th, 2013, 3:06 am

I tasted Brazilian coffee and thought it was the fundamental coffee flavor. I guess that's kind of an unsurprising and trivial answer though; a lot of coffees have Brazilian mixed in.

#7: Post by **aecletec** » May 12th, 2013, 3:49 am

Brazils can have a wide range of flavours when fresh and of appropriate quality... agreed on stale coffee tasting "like coffee".