Fragrance Aroma Flavour
Cupping lab in Kenya
Fragrance, aroma and flavour are the three major parts of coffee evaluation, and enjoyment. What are they and how are they different from each other?
Fragrance (dry ground coffee)
This is the first and often most enticing and complex part of the sensory evaluation. The fragrance is the perception of volatile compounds that escape the ground coffee. These volatile compounds are the least stable (weak inter-molecular bonding) and this is why they leave the ground coffee and enter the environment. With lots of practice and focus it is possible to pick up particular fragrances from the ground coffee, which enables us to describe the smell (eg. apple, citrus, chocolate, caramel etc). How coffee is grown and processed, as well as the particular variety of coffee used, has a dramatic effect on its fragrance. For example, naturally processed coffees often have a fragrance of fruit, berries and chocolate, whereas the same coffee processed using the washed method may smell of caramel, citrus, flowers and honey.
As soon as the coffee releases its fragrance, it becomes less complex and vibrant. This is why we grind fresh for every cup of coffee we make!
Aroma (wet/brewing coffee)
This is the smell of brewing coffee. The aromas of brewing coffee likely include caramel, nuts, chocolate, citrus, honey and brown sugar. When hot water comes into contact with ground coffee, the coffee absorbs the water until it is saturated. Once saturation has occurred, the flavour and aroma within the coffee grounds can be released. The change of state of water from liquid to vapour (steam) also helps some volatile compounds to escape the ground coffee and enter the air. As the brew cools down, the intensity of the aroma drops. This can be seen by the fact that cold coffee has significantly less aroma than hot coffee. Cold-brewed and cold-drip coffee have very little aromatic intensity as the cold water used in these methods fails to extract the full range of available aromas. The aromatics released during brewing are different to the dry ground coffee fragrances. These particular aromatics are slightly less volatile (they needed hot water to allow them to be released). The complexity of coffee is perceived mainly through the olfactory sense (smell) and this is one of the major reasons why a coffee enjoyed in a ceramic or glass vessel will taste better than a coffee in a paper cup with a lid because the lid limits your nose’s access to the coffee. This is also why your taste is affected when you have a blocked nose.
Flavour (taste, texture, balance)
This is the actual tasting of the brewed coffee. Coffee is slurped into the mouth from a deep-bowled spoon during cupping (coffee evaluation process). This is to aerate and spread the coffee across the palette. This part of the evaluation aims to determine things like texture, acidity, sweetness, saltiness, bitterness, richness, balance and of course, any specific flavours that are recognised.
The smells and tastes found in all three of these categories combine to form a flavour profile of a coffee.