#MICE2016 | 19

Many times throughout the year I’m presented with the stunned and bewildered faces of coffee drinkers while conducting coffee tastings.

Their expressions are most often due to the unexpected

experience of tasting the profound, familiar flavours of commonly consumed fruits, sweets and nuts inside their cups of coffee.

There are some flavours that really rock the ‘coffee tastes like coffee’ taster’s worlds, such as apricot jam and dried stone fruit in a Costa Rican, sweet thick caramel and chocolate in a pulp-natural Brazilian, or the rich tea rose aroma, candied lemon, strawberry cream, sherbet and jellybean likenesses in a fully natural Panama Geisha.

With the chemistry to back me up, coffee is one of the most complex things we humans consume. There are differing schools of thought regarding the communication of coffee flavours due to the difficult-to-explain nature of sensory experiences. Although, the use of analogies to draw reference to the flavour of (mostly) food items, as in the wine industry, is the most common approach.

I am often faced with questions such as: “Have you added marmalade to this?” from those who are new to flavours present in specialty coffee and who can’t quite believe how coffee can taste like so many other things.The reason I like to emphasis the term “analogies” is because the flavours in coffee can be profoundly similar to those present in the flavour of, for example, a raspberry. But, there is no direct link (at this point in time) to say that a coffee contains the chemical constituents of a raspberry. The analogy is employed

to highlight the remarkable resemblances between the two but also to denote the differences.

To discover the analogies in a coffee requires that the taster holds an intricate catalogue of memories relating to the specific experience of certain foods with specific flavours. I like to refer to these flavour-related memories as “gustatory images” (an image coming from the imagination). It is the relationship between a gustatory image and the experience of flavours in a certain,

and imagery By Rob McDonald

Wielding flavour analogies

The new Coffee Taster’s Flavour Wheel, produced by the SCAA in collaboration with World Coffee Research.

20 | internationalcoffeeexpo.com

let’s say, Kenyan coffee, that allows the coffee taster to recognise the black currant characteristics in the cup.

This stuff is starting to sound complex, but in reality, it is actually a very intuitive process to perform. It’s as simple as thinking Vegemite (a Vegemite image), recalling the unique design of its savoury/ salty flavour, and then recognising the Vegemite-esque of something that isn’t Vegemite but has a strong similarity in flavour.

The reason why analogies are so commonly used in describing coffee is because coffee could be the mothership of flavour. It contains hundreds, potentially thousands of bioactive compounds. Coffee comprises an enormous diversity of flavours in the same way that music contains an enormous diversity of sound.

Describing a coffee with analogies and tapping into what could be described as a “collective conscience of gustatory imagery” is helping the coffee industry communicate the characteristics of coffee in a language that all consumers are already fluent in.

One of the most widely used resources of flavour attributes (what I refer to as images) is the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s (SCAA) Taster’s Flavour Wheel. In fact, the SCAA has just released a compelling and updated new version of the wheel.

The revised Flavour Wheel is the result of huge steps forward in innovative thinking and scientific research in approaching the coffee sensory experience. These steps forward are due to a three-year collaboration between the SCAA, World Coffee Research (WRC), dozens of sensory experts, scientists, coffee buyers and roasters. Specifically, the content within the new Tasters Wheel hinges on the WRC’s recently developed and extremely in-depth sensory lexicon (a coffee vocabulary).

The lexicon is an extensive catalogue of recognisable flavours in coffee and provides a precise description of each flavour alongside a quantifiable 0-15 point intensity scale. Also and most impressing, the lexicon provides direct instruction on how to create a flavour replica of any of its listed flavours at a desired intensity – this if for the purpose of universal calibration.

For example, the flavour descriptor of raisin is: “The concentrated, sweet, somewhat sour, brown, fruity, floral aromatic characteristic of dried grapes.”

To achieve a flavour replica at a 5.5-point intensity the SCAA recommends chopping half a cup of raisins, adding

a three-quarter-cup of water, and then cooking it in the microwave on high for two minutes. Then, filter with a sieve and serve the juice in a 1-ounce cup. There is also a slightly different recipe for creating the aroma replica of the raisin. The lexicon even gives reference to a specific brand of raisin, which was used in their description (in this case Sun-Maid).

To my knowledge, the lexicon provides the strongest structure for the scientific inquiry of coffee to date. The direction of the lexicon is one of becoming more specific, detailed and accurate about the analogies used to describe the flavours in coffee. It is also used to train sensory experts within a structure that allows them to remember and recall precise and specific gustatory images. A typical lexicon calibrated sensory panel consisting of five to seven people who are required to train for a period of six to nine months before evaluating any coffee.

I see the new SCAA Taster’s Flavour Wheel as a kind-of cheat sheet to the WRC’s lexicon in terms of content, but arranged in a visually compelling, intuitive and direct format.

The wheel employs an expanding structure that draws clear relationships between basic flavours, categories of flavours and the images of things such as fruits, sweets, nuts, vegetables, herbs, spices, and so on. It is a professional resource, which is accessible to anyone with an interest in the coffee sensory experience and, like its predecessor, will gladly find a home on the walls of coffee farms, co-ops, cupping labs, roasters and cafés stretching from major cities to some of the most rural coffee outposts in the world.

It is important to note that this article discusses and explores the language used in communicating and defining a coffee flavour, but does not touch upon the quality, success and beauty of flavour, which, from an aesthetical point of view, is the way most people take it.

Coffee perception, rather than definition, is the area of sensory experience where one explores the way in which coffee flavours relate to each other, forms a whole experience, and are expressed to the taster.

Rob McDonald is Zest Specialty Coffee Roasters’ resident coffee specialist.