Descriptive Language

[Sweet Maria's]

Huzzah! Thank you, MikeW for participating. Bigbells, with dry fragrance it's not uncommon for certain flavors to not really pop out until you've started extraction, but also temperature can play a really big role in promoting certain characteristics while muting others

- chris schooley

[bigbells]

Huzzah! Thank you, MikeW for participating. Bigbells, with dry fragrance it's not uncommon for certain flavors to not really pop out until you've started extraction, but also temperature can play a really big role in promoting certain characteristics while muting others

- chris schooley

Does that mean that a roast which doesn't have an especially pleasant dry aroma but which produces a very good-tasting cup is guaranteed not to have been roasted optimally, or is it possible that the optimal heat/time roast profile can result in the same not-so-hot dry aroma/great-tasting cup with some coffees? Conversely are there any coffees where the taste in the cup never seems to be as good as the dry aroma (like cherry tobacco)?

[Sweet Maria's]

well, a lot of what you're getting into there is pretty subjective, as far as preference between dry fragrance and the cup. To your other point, your first question, this can be largely due to proximity to the roast date, with either being cupped to soon or too late in relation to the roast date. But as I was saying, it's also due a lot to temperature and solubles and how different flavor components react with eachother either amplifying or diminishing them.

- chris schooley

[BoldJava]

...

One of the most common poorly used words is Bold. What does Bold mean to you? ...

- chris schooley

It means dinner is ready and my wife is yelling out the back door to come and get it...<wink>

BoldJava

[dickc]

I guess it's pretty well established that some people have different capacities for tasting than others. Some of the folks with really heightened abilities get paid pretty well for their tasting skills. I read about some women who can tell what time of day the same brand of cookies came off of the same baking line based on slight changes in the taste that occur over the course of the day on account of the reuse of dough. As for my tasting of coffee, I taste far different things than I did just a year or 2 ago. I'm still searching for that ubiquitous apricot. Actually, I don't think fresh apricots have much distinctive taste. One of the first Kenyan coffees I experience had a remarkably lemony aftertaste. I would have never guessed it before. Nor would I have thought I wanted that taste in coffee. But, I liked it. Today, I can't imagine a buttery mouth feel in coffee. But, I'm willing to keep searching. At one time I thought the same about juiciness and then I had a Sumatran that juiciness seemed the only way to describe.

[Sweet Maria's]

Yeah, juicy is a good one. I've used that one a bit, and seen it plenty of places. Your statement made me have to think on it a bit. Juiciness is mostly a mouthfeel descriptor. I say mostly because when I use juicy in a review or what not, I'm also associating it with some other fruit flavors that are also present in the cup along with that thickened mouthfeel. I've never thought of juiciness in relation to a Sumatra though. Because of the herbaceous flavors in those coffees I often think of the mouthfeel being a little oily, or even with some really nice Sumatras that have that root beer sweetness I'll think of the mouthfeel as syrupy like a cola or soda pop. But that juiciness/syrupy-ness/oily-ness is all relatively similar as far as mouthfeel goes. This is case in point as far as looking at all the characteristics of a coffee and putting them together to make them all make sense in the cup, and how our minds do that sometimes. Thanks for sparking a synapse there.

- chris schooley

[dickc]

I agree with your observation about juiciness going with fruit flavors. This Sumatra was Sumatra Gayo and it was completely surprising for a Sumatra. It didn't have as much of the dark earthy flavors, but had quite a bit of fruit and thus the juiciness. It's a good example of why I like to try different coffees. Every so often one comes along that teaches me something. Who would have guessed that I'd learn what juiciness was from a Sumatra.

[patrickgrz]

Thanks for bringing up "Bold" Chris, as the word has become somewhat meaningless to me. Along with "strong", it seems responsible for a large share of common misconceptions among customers in everything from flavor profile and roast development, to level of extraction and actual caffeine content. While I basically never hear these words used by professionals, I do often find myself confronted with them while engaging customers about what qualities in coffee they find desirable. It's most common with folks who are just discovering specialty coffee, and it can be a bit of a barrier in explaining the types of coffees we source and our approach to roast development.

I do however enjoy the challenge of decoding what each individual really means when they say "bold", and finding a way to translate that into the language we use to describe our experience of coffee. When you really break it down, i find that they are most commonly referring to what we might think of as mouthfeel, and a certain saturation of flavor. Depending on their particular experience, it may relate to increased caramelization from deeper roast profiles, coffees with a heavier or more viscous mouthfeel, brew methods that yield a more concentrated cup, or any number of other factors. Whatever it may be, my main conclusion was that people using that descriptor were fundamentally looking for a cup whose tactile and flavor sensations were pronounced and forward, not subtle. Of course this is only one opinion, but it is based on observations and certain successes in exposing customers to new experiences in coffee.

To digress briefly to the larger topic at hand, I think descriptive language in this industry will always be imperfect. That being said, we can still find ways to make it useful, effective, and universal within reason. The only way we are able to describe our experience of coffee is referentially, and while references are always unique to the individual there is still plenty of common ground among them for us to work with. I think the reason you see more and more things like "starfruit", "meyer lemon", or "honeysuckle" is because these things have such unique and specific flavors; much more so than "fruit" or "chocolate". To many of us, coffee's flavors are very complex and thus merit a more complex descriptor to really communicate it. Also, certain descriptors can convey more than just a specific flavor, but a complete sensation. "Molasses" or "jasmine tea" give me a picture of a very specific flavor, type of sweetness, type of acidic sensation, and unique mouthfeel. I can of course see the argument against these type of descriptors, and its totally valid. As someone with a deep passion for coffee though, I have a strong desire to communicate my often transcendent coffee experiences with others. Descriptive language does not totally accomplish that, but if people have had a similar moment then it may just be enough to relate to.

- Patrick Grzelewski

[andy11oh1]

i find the descriptors 'bright' and 'body' useful. when i sip a coffee and taste something right away i call it bright. when a coffee has weight on my tongue i call that body. a descriptor i do avoid using is 'bold'. when a customer asks me for a bold coffee i honestly have no idea how to respond. when i imagine what qualities would make a coffee bold i think of a coffee that would go for second base on a first date.

[BoldJava]

...

To digress briefly to the larger topic at hand, I think descriptive language in this industry will always be imperfect. That being said, we can still find ways to make it useful, effective, and universal within reason.

Slight OT from Chris's question:

Excellent post. For those that would like to delve more deeply into the subject of tasting, cupping and describing, here is an excellent article from Roast Magazine this month on the subject of taste and language. Heavy sledding, philosophical, bit esoteric but a good read:

http://www.cafeimports.com/grinder/Roas ... gTaste.pdf