How to really taste that cup of coffee(2)
Picture a favorite cafe where soundtrack and din are kept low enough to let the sounds of grinding, tamping, and the machine's own natural music come through. It sends a message: Coffee-making is handled with care here, one at a time, without the assembly-line approach. You feel like something special is on the way.
How else does hearing contribute to the experience? My ears perk up to a barista who knows the simple power of a nice hello, how are you, and, even better, who takes the time and care to explain the characteristics of the coffee I've selected.
TOUCH
At a processing speed of 500,000 data points per second, touch is bronze medalist to sight's gold and hearing's silver, and absolutely critical to the tasting experience.
For coffee, touch equates to mouth feel. It is often said that a great espresso "paints the tongue," and indeed, it does. Body, temperature, and astringency are coffee's tactile markers.
Body is among coffee's key attributes, and absolutely central to espresso. We perceive a liquid's body through small movements of the tongue against the palate that send information about viscosity and texture to the brain. The determining factors are lipid count and the presence of solids in the liquid. The espresso method's use of high pressure (around 130 psi) produces higher lipid counts that increase the sensation of body, with relatively high viscosity adding to mouth feel. Very small particles that pass through the filter boost the solids in espresso, further coating the tongue. The result is body your tongue can feel, more so in coffee made from naturally processed beans than from washed beans.
Conversely, methods such as French press and brewing produce relatively low lipid counts, rendering body nearly imperceptible. However, French press does gain body from the same solids that give it darker color, present in the coffee due to the metal-screen filtration.
Excessive heat diminishes your power to fully touch coffee. Temperatures of 170F and higher temporarily anesthetize the taste buds, dampening overall taste perception. A well-made espresso, starting with water heated to around 195F, should reach an optimized-for-mouth feel drinking temperature of 160F, upon making contact with a cup heated atop the machine to about 120F. French press and brewed coffee are best felt when served at 160-170F.
The third big mouth feel dynamic, astringency, is sometimes admirable in wine and tea, but never in coffee. Astringency is the body's lip-puckering, dry-mouth reaction to presence of certain acids in unripe fruit -- in coffee parlance, to immature beans -- and is sometimes mistaken for sourness.
SMELL
Working at a clip of 70 bits of information per second, smell may seem downright tortoise-like in terms of processing speed, but it is paramount in how we experience coffee. We need to take our time sipping, never guzzling coffee or any other fine beverage, and give our sense of smell ample time to do its good and necessary work.
Let's divide the olfactory sense into two distinct categories: aroma and flavor. Aroma, or odor, is the olfactory sensation created by breathing. Strong aromas are present in roasted whole beans or freshly ground coffee, but the prepared beverage itself doesn't release many volatile compounds -- particularly espresso, where the crema acts like a lid. But when we drink coffee, its volatile compounds rapidly evolve in our mouth and travel quickly to the olfactory epithelium in the nasal cavity. Contradictory as it may seem, the sensation is stronger while exhaling.
Smell is not just about aroma. It is also how we experience complex flavors. Surprised? The nose is gateway to a plethora of distinct, natural flavors in coffee, with numbers and types varying by bean variety. Exactly how we experience flavor though smell is little understood. We do know that it involves our brain's attempts to compare the signals inherent in any particular odor to ones it has recorded in the past. That jasmine you smelled in your grandmother's backyard when you were ten? It created a file your brain can access today to recognize the presence of jasmine notes in your coffee.
So what delightful flavors might you smell in good coffee? Among the most prevalent are indeed jasmine, red fruit, berries, nuts, oranges, flowers, chocolate, caramel, and vanilla. The level at which each occurs varies by bean origin and blend composition. If your nose detects the likes of ash, soil, wood, or a rancid or chemical-like flavor, send that cup back. If you prepared it at home, go shopping for fresh beans, and clean your equipment.
The roasting process imbues coffee with roasted or toasted notes, stronger in dark roast than in light. These are delightful, but once again, be afraid of the dark: too dark of a roast, caused by over-roasting, covers numerous desirable flavors present in any good bean.
TASTE
Are you surprised that a discussion about coffee tasting puts the very sensation of taste dead last? Processing a mere 15 info bits per second, taste brings up the rear in our sensorial speed trials.
A common misperception is that taste recognizes complex flavors. As just explained, that is smell's job. In reality, our taste receptors, located on the tongue, pick up but four basic tastes: sweet, salty, bitter, and acidic. While certain regions of the tongue are more attuned to sensing one taste or another -- salt, for instance, by the center region -- all of our taste buds can perceive all four tastes.
This isn't to say taste doesn't matter. Our first genuinely deep, visceral feedback to coffee's taste comes when cup meets lip. As complex as coffee is, we react very strongly to the presence of these basic tastes, and most commonly state our coffee preferences, and dislikes, in terms of bitterness, acidity, and sweetness. Many of us, myself included, gravitate to an even balance of acidic and bitter, with a touch of natural sweetness. That helps explain the popularity of blends, which let you dial up or dial down characteristics inherent in different beans. Our way at illy is to mix a variety of natural and washed coffees, and then precisely calibrate the roast. As a rule of thumb, lighter roasts are more acidic, while dark roasts are more bitter.
Be a coffee rock star. Experience it with all five senses, and take your pleasure to entirely new places.
