How You Taste Coffee

Quick story—when Q graders rate a coffee, their first interaction with it isn’t about how it tastes. It’s the aroma. Freshly ground coffee sits in a cup, no water, just fragrance. Then enters the Q grader, an obnoxious-looking dude who resembles an art critic, aggressively slamming his nose into the cup. Clipboard clutched to his chest like a school nerd protecting his answers from the class clown (not that I have any experience there, of course).
 
Why do I tell you this in a post about taste? Simple: it’s almost impossible to separate aroma from flavor. Trust the nose. I’ve yet to find an incredible-tasting coffee that lacks intoxicating aromas when ground. Anyway, I digress.
 
The tasting sensation of coffee is unique to each of us, but flavor groups remain consistent across humans. It’s useful to know where we perceive the five main tastes:
 
Sweet – Detected primarily at the tip of the tongue.
Sour – Mostly on the sides of the tongue.
Salty – Found on the sides and front.
Bitter – Typically sensed at the back.
Umami – Spread across the tongue.

When I sit with clients discussing coffee flavors and roast profiles, words like acidic, sour, and bitter get thrown around interchangeably. I’m not too fussed about semantics when we all understand each other, but having a clear translation of how we describe taste helps foster consistency.
 
As roasters, we balance acidity—which holds all the unique flavors of coffee—with mouthfeel and smoothness.
 
Light roasts are acidic (sour).
Medium roasts are smooth.
Dark roasts are bitter.

You’ll notice I’m not telling you what you should drink. Taste is subjective. If there were an objectively best coffee, there would only be one. Hence, variation.  This is just a quick note to help you use common language when discussing flavors—not just in coffee but across all foods.
 
As AI takes over the world, these simple human pleasures will only become more important.
 
"You got to know, to understand."
 
— Tom
February 03, 2025 — Tom Denton