How to choose coffee beans
Have you ever been to a coffee shop, looking for some beans for your French Press or Mokka Pot? You have a look at the merchandise shelf and behold! An array of different coffees from different countries. You pick up a couple of bags and each of them has unusual markings. Some say light roast, others medium. Then there are tasting notes. Alas, something that makes sense! But wait... processing? What is that supposed to mean? Everything just gets confusing again, as you wonder what all this jargon has to do with your coffee. In this article, we will break down these terms and hopefully, by the end of it they will become useful tools when buying beans for your next brew!
Tasting notes
This is the easiest terminology to identify with. Tasting notes are a description of the coffee’s flavour, using the tastes of food and other beverages to identify what flavours we should expect to find. For example: you might pick up a bag with tasting notes of lemon, blueberries, and caramel. You should expect this coffee to be fruity with a citrus feel to it and some sweetness.
Roast Profile
Besides tasting notes, one of the first things people tend to look out for when selecting their coffee is the level of roast that coffee has undergone. Typically, there are three stages of roasting: Light, medium, and dark. Each of these is to do with how long the coffee has been roasted for and – as a result – the colour of the coffee bean. Let’s have a look at each of these in basic detail, specifically in terms of how they affect the coffees flavour.
Light roast: Light brown in colour; high in acidity (fruitiness/citrus/sourness, not pH); light bodied.
Medium roast: Brown colour; medium acidity; sweeter flavours develop (sugars/caramel/nuts); medium bodied.
Dark roast: Dark brown; low acidity; richer flavours (dark chocolate/dark fruits/caramel/spices); heavy bodied.
Processing
One of the most surprising aspects of coffee, to many consumers, is that coffee is not a nut-looking bean. It is, in fact, a cherry. Farmers pick the cherries from coffee trees (either by hand or using machinery) and it is the seed inside them – that we call the coffee bean – that is roasted and ends up in our cup. But before that takes place, these beans need to be processed and dried. Over time, there have been more specialised processing methods which bring out unique flavour characteristics, but to keep things short, we’ll just look at the two most common.
Natural: The coffee beans are left to dry out in the sun, with mucilage still on the bean. Natural coffees tend to exhibit tasting notes of fermented fruit and some sweetness. An example of a natural coffee at Nomads’ is the Nuach Peralta Estate from Nicaragua.
Washed: The coffee beans are fermented in a tank, then washed to remove any mucilage still attached to the bean, before being left to dry. Washed coffees tend to exhibit more clarity in the coffee’s flavour, most often exhibiting fruit notes, like citrus. An example of a washed coffee at Nomads’ is the Nuach Huila from Colombia.
There are other factors that affect the coffee’s flavour, and we’re more than happy to answer any questions about those, or even write specific blogs on them. We hope you find this guide useful when picking your next coffee and will help you to find what you like, what you don’t like or to give you a better idea of the coffee if you’re trying something new. Some of the terminologies used above are often referenced in our cupping sessions – so keep an eye out for our next event on our website or by subscribing to our newsletter!
If you have any more questions or blog suggestions, please do get in touch with us via email or one of our socials!
Simon Burnett
