Coffee, COFFEE, EVERYWHERE! You’re probably already familiar with store brand coffees made with low-quality Robusta beans. And there’s the alternative, which is the coffee often known as Gourmet Coffee that you can buy direct from roasters across the country. Coffee giants like Starbucks and most of the city’s smaller roasters use this higher-quality, shade-grown Arabica bean because of its superior flavor and aroma.
That being stated, and as is often recognized by now, how can you filter out only the finest gourmet coffee beans before making a purchase?
Let’s focus on flavor for the time being. Madawaska Coffee has matured into a “art of reflection” and “drink of experts” in recent years. We’ve graduated to the next level of coffee appreciation, where we take time to taste each sip and pick out the variations in flavor that reveal the bean’s continental origin. The more coffee you drink, the more you’ll appreciate the unique characteristics of each bean, which are based on factors such as altitude and soil type of the farm where it was grown.
The “Underlying Flavors” of Coffee, or “Cupping,” Are What Make It Unique.
Few coffee roasters today conduct blind taste tests on their beans to ensure the highest quality. These beans are evaluated and ranked in the same way as wine is. Coffee tasting, sometimes known as “cupping,” is a popular pastime. The judges are trained experts known as Master Tasters. The method entails inhaling deeply from a cup of freshly made coffee, followed by a loud slurp to allow the coffee to take in air, spread to the back of the tongue, and optimize flavor.
Master Tasters, similar to wine tasters, seek to quantify every facet of a coffee’s flavor. Acidity (a harsh and sour taste, like when biting into an orange), body (the texture or mouth-feel, such as oiliness), and balance (the subtlety and harmony of flavors working together) are all factors in this evaluation. Cuppers may try to guess the origin of a coffee based on the distinctive flavors that the beans exhibit, which vary depending on the country or continent of production.
Coffee’s flavor profiles can be described using a lexicon that seems endless. Chocolatey, sugary, fruity, woodsy, crisp, clean, lively, sturdy, summery, and gentlemanly are just a few of the more out-there descriptors.
