How to taste coffee like a roaster

To taste coffee like a roaster, smell it before you drink it, slurp it from a spoon so it sprays across your whole mouth, and keep tasting as it cools. Put two coffees side by side, because differences are far easier to find than descriptions. Then ask four plain questions of each cup: how sweet, how bright, how heavy, and how long it lasts.

Smell first

Most of what we call flavor is smell. Your tongue reports five things: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami. Everything else, the berry or the chocolate or the toasted nut, reaches you through your nose, partly as you sniff and partly from the back of your mouth as you swallow. The cupping protocol the Specialty Coffee Association published in 2005 defines flavor as taste bud sensations combined with the "retro nasal aromas that go from the mouth to nose."

You can prove it in ten seconds. Pinch your nose shut, take a sip, and notice how little is there. Let go and the coffee comes back.

So smell at every stage. Smell the whole beans, then the grounds straight after grinding, when they are at their most fragrant. Smell the brewed cup before your first sip. Say the first thing that comes to mind, even if it is "toast" or "my aunt's kitchen." Those first words are often the most accurate ones you will have.

Slurp it

Roasters taste from a spoon, and they slurp loudly. Pulling the coffee in with a sharp breath breaks it into a fine spray, coats your tongue and the roof of your mouth, and pushes aroma up into your nose. The same protocol says the coffee should be drawn in "to cover as much area as possible, especially the tongue and upper palate."

At home a teaspoon works. Take half a spoonful, purse your lips and inhale hard. It is not polite, and it works much better than sipping.

Let it cool

Very hot coffee hides a lot. The SCA protocol starts judging flavor when the cup has cooled to 160°F (about 70°C), which takes 8 to 10 minutes after the water goes on. It rates acidity and body as the cup falls from 160 to 140°F, and leaves sweetness until it drops below 100°F. Tasting stops at 70°F, room temperature.

Do the same. Taste when the cup is hot, again after ten minutes, and again after twenty. Fruit and sweetness often come forward as a coffee cools, and so does any harshness. A cup that is still pleasant at room temperature is a good sign.

Taste two at once

Flavor memory is short. It is hard to say how sweet a coffee is, and easy to say which of two coffees is sweeter. That is why roasters almost never taste alone.

Brew both coffees the same way: same ratio, same grind, same water, same time. Any difference you taste then comes from the beans, not from the brew. Pour them into matching cups, and if you want to be strict, have someone mark the bottoms so you taste blind.

What to notice

Take one question per sip rather than trying to catch everything at once.

• Sweetness is the roundness that makes a coffee seem like fruit or caramel with no sugar added. Ask whether it wants sugar.
• Acidity is the bright, mouthwatering part, the same thing you feel biting into an apple. Good acidity is juicy. Harsh acidity is thin and sharp, and it is usually a brewing problem. Acidity in coffee goes into the difference.
• Body is weight on the tongue. Think of the gap between skim milk and whole milk.
• Finish is what stays after you swallow. Notice whether it is sweet, clean or dry, and how many seconds it lasts.

Only then reach for flavor words. Start broad, with fruit, flowers, chocolate or nuts, then narrow down: fruit, then berry, then blueberry. The Coffee Taster's Flavor Wheel, which the SCA and World Coffee Research rebuilt in 2016 from the World Coffee Research Sensory Lexicon, is laid out the same way, from general words in the middle to specific ones at the edge. What tasting notes on a coffee bag mean explains where those words come from.

A tasting with our three roasts

Our three coffees make a good first flight, because they differ in country and process, in altitude and in roast. Brew all three the same way. A small pour over of 12.5 g of coffee to 200 g of water at 201°F works well; it is half of Sofía's pour over recipe and keeps the same ratio of one part coffee to sixteen parts water. If you want the full professional method, cupping at home needs no special kit.

Taste from lightest to darkest, then go back through them.

1. Start with acidity. The light roast from Ethiopia is the brightest of the three. The dark roast from Guatemala is the softest.
2. Move to body. Feel how much heavier the Guatemala sits on your tongue than the Ethiopia.
3. Look for sweetness as they cool. The Colombia, washed Pink Bourbon and Caturra from Huila, carries hints of red cherry, panela, cacao nib, and panela is unrefined cane sugar.
4. Finish with the finish. The Guatemala has hints of toasted almond and brown sugar, with a little orange at the very end. See how long that orange stays.
5. Check the notes. We list hints of blueberry, jasmine, peach for the Ethiopia. You may find them, find something else, or find nothing yet. All three answers are useful.

Write one or two words for each cup, even rough ones. Do the same flight a week later and compare the pages. Your palate is learning when the words get more specific and the second page agrees with the first. All three coffees are on our coffee page if you want to try it.