How to taste coffee

Brew it, or order it

At home, use a recipe you can repeat, so that when a coffee tastes different you know it’s the coffee and not the method. Weigh the coffee and the water, and grind just before you brew. The brew guides have the numbers for V60, Chemex, Clever Dripper, AeroPress, French press, moka pot, espresso and cold brew.

At a café, a filter coffee or a plain espresso shows the coffee most clearly. Taste it before adding milk or sugar: both cover up the flavours you’re looking for.

Smell it, dry and wet

Much of what we call flavour is really smell, so start with your nose. Smell the grounds just after grinding: that’s the dry aroma. Smell again once the water goes on, leaning over the brewer or the cup: the wet aroma is often quite different.

Don’t try to name anything yet. Notice whether it smells sweet, fruity, nutty or roasted, and whether the smell is strong or faint.

Let it cool, then slurp

Very hot coffee hides its flavours. Give it a few minutes and keep tasting as it cools: acidity and sweetness are usually easier to pick out when the cup is warm rather than hot, and many coffees change noticeably on the way down.

Slurp it, from a spoon or the cup, drawing in air as you do. It sounds rude, but it sprays the coffee across your whole tongue and carries its aroma to the back of your nose, which is where most of the detail is. Professional tasters, called cuppers, taste every coffee this way.

Notice the basics

Before looking for specific notes, ask five simple questions.

Acidity

Is it bright and lively, like biting into an apple, or flat? Good acidity tastes fresh and juicy. A sharp, unpleasant sourness usually means the coffee was under-extracted: ground too coarse or brewed too briefly.

Sweetness

Does it taste naturally sweet, like caramel or ripe fruit, with no sugar added?

Body

How does it feel in your mouth: light and tea-like, or heavy and syrupy?

Bitterness

A little is part of coffee. A lot, especially if it’s harsh or ashy, often comes from a very dark roast or from over-extraction: ground too fine or brewed too long.

Finish

What’s left after you swallow? Does the taste linger pleasantly, fade quickly, or leave your mouth dry?

Name the notes, from broad to specific

This is where a coffee flavour wheel helps. Start in the middle, with the broad family: does the coffee taste fruity, sweet, nutty or roasted? Then move outwards to something more specific: Fruity to Berry, and Berry to Blueberry.

Stop wherever you stop being sure. “Fruity” is a perfectly good answer, and a better one than a precise guess. Most coffees show two or three families, so pick more than one if you find them.

The notes printed on the bag are the roaster’s impressions, not a test. Taste first and read them afterwards; if you can’t find the blueberry, you haven’t failed.

Rate it

Give each cup a simple score for how much you enjoyed it, from one to five. That isn’t the same as how a professional would grade it, and it doesn’t need to be: your score is about what you like.

Add a line on why: “too bitter”, “would buy again”, “better at the café than at home”. Those few words will be more use later than the number.

Compare over time

Tasting two coffees side by side is the quickest way to learn: differences you’d miss in a single cup become obvious. Brew both the same way and taste them one after the other.

Over weeks and months, a record of what you drank, how you brewed it and what you tasted shows patterns you wouldn’t otherwise notice: the origins, processes or roasts you keep rating highly, or the café that always gets it right. When a coffee disappoints at home, change one thing at a time, starting with the grind, and taste again.