It can be daunting to understand coffee bean types, flavors & characteristics enough to go to a coffee shop or super market. Then look up at that large wall of coffee bags and select one. Which one should you choose? Why are you choosing it? What do these flavor words mean?!
We’re going to help explain how to understand beans and flavor characteristics, so you can get the best coffee for you.
First thing we’re going to talk about is going to be roast degree. How darkly a coffee is roasted. Generally, we talk about either light, medium or dark.
Supermarket coffee can be a bit tricky because they don’t use this type of language. Often, they use strength, and they’ll say strength 5, strength 3. They don’t generally put anything down as strength 1 or 2 because no one wants weak coffee.
Specialty coffee roasters get annoyed about using the word strength on the front of a bag because strength means something else.
Strength is the ratio of coffee to water necessary to brew coffee. The higher the strength, the less water necessary to achieve a certain level of richness or bitterness.
Specialty coffee often does not describe roast degree. The most common thing to see is a description of whether it might be used as a filter coffee or as an espresso coffee.
When it comes to the term roasted for espresso, that tells you a little bit regarding the coffee from that particular roaster. Most roasters will roast their espresso products a bit darker, a little bit deeper than they would do their filter coffee roasted product.
However, some people in specialty use what’s called an omni-roast. Omni-roast is where they’re somewhat roasting for both at the same time.
It’s a kind of philosophical thing for many roasters and their approach to espresso, filter coffee, and to roasting as a whole. That all being said, if you are buying specialty coffee and it does not indicate roast on it, it is a light to medium roast.
Supermarket standard is light or medium coffee. On the occasions they don’t directly say roasted light or medium, they tend to signify that.
If there’s a description of the roast, like the country, which doesn’t really mean anything.
For example, French roast. But if it says it’s dark roast, then you know, it’s different. Otherwise, you can presume it to be light to medium roasted.
With the supermarket stuff, the higher the strength, the darker the roast. Generally speaking, the lighter the roast of coffee, the more acidity it will have. The darker the roast, the more bitterness it will have and the less acidity it will have.
Specialty coffee roasters feel that light to medium gives you a nice sweetness, a little bit of acidity, not too much bitterness, and tons and tons of flavor of where the coffee comes from.
This is why it’s such a popular roasting style choice for specialty companies.
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Now, we need to talk about the descriptors and commercial coffee roasters. The large corporate companies that roast coffee beans. In fact, more and more commercial companies will offer you maybe 3 or more descriptive words. The objective is to complete 2 different jobs, and I hope people can forget about this.
In some cases, descriptions can be so odd or unusual or kind of contrary and clashing that it really doesn’t make sense. However, it sounds good to a beginner coffee consumer. It will sound completely delicious.
Those coffee descriptions from commercial coffee makers promise a great deal. If you say my coffee is going to taste of caramel, well, I expect it to taste almost as if you’ve put caramel in the bag.
This leads to further confusion with the consumer who thinks, “Oh, is this like a flavored coffee?” “Is this like a caramel flavored coffee?” Don’t make the mistake, those exist, but more often than not, commercial coffee makers are not living up to their marketing. They’re trying to communicate something about the coffee’s tastes to you with that word. And we’ll come to that a bit more very soon.
Quick tip: specialty coffee is a little bit like wine. There is an exception, the most expensive wines are often the most elegant, the most classic, and they would be familiar and enjoyable to most people.
The highest priced coffees tend to be the most unusual, the least kind of typical coffee-tasting coffees. That is the suggestion to bear in mind.
If you’re looking at a more expensive coffee, have a look at those words. Do they promise you a very unusual experience? And is that what you want?
One of the things to bear in mind is that often these roasters come up with their descriptions
for coffees through a comparative tasting.
They’re not just tasting that one coffee on its own.
They’re comparing it to other coffees that they’re also roasting and serving.
But if you, the consumer, don’t have that comparative tasting experience when you drink it, it can feel harder to pull out the berry qualities of a coffee or the kind of ripe pear promised by the roaster.
However, if you were comparing it to something else, then the differences would be more obvious. You could say, “This is kind of more pear-like in its way in its flavor when compared to coffee B, C or D”.
So, know that there is an element of frustration that’s almost inevitable because you won’t have the same comparative experience as a coffee roaster. Generally, they’re doing their best to broadcast some key information to you.
They are trying to help you really find out if you’re going to enjoy that coffee or not. No one knows your personal preferences and what you like.
Many times, consumers don’t know what they want. With that being said, consumers do know what they dislike. With that information we can guide you to a better coffee.
Generally, if there isn’t a texture adjective on the coffee bag then it’s medium-bodied.
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