It’s impossible to write strong tasting notes without first accurately assessing a coffee. Assessment is best done with a clear-eyed, dispassionate approach.
Writing tasting notes, however, typically invokes emotion and memory, may include wordplay and often draws on topical or cultural references. These are two entirely different modes of thinking, each requiring its own skill set. In this article, we explain how to turn a precise assessment into tasting notes that sell coffee and delight consumers.
Most people find it easier to taste coffee and write the tasting notes at different times. You can even assess and write on separate days. This allows you to change your environment, shift your mindset and contemplate how a coffee’s flavours might connect thematically.
To do this effectively, you’ll need clear and detailed notes from your coffee tasting assessment. If you don’t have one to hand, loop back now and work through the Coffee Tasting Framework. And remember, only write assessment notes that you’d be happy to see in final, consumer-facing tasting notes.
Developing a vibe and a format
Pithy summaries are essential for selling coffee. There are several ways to succinctly and accurately communicate tasting notes:
List attributes in a set order
For example, list them in the order they are assessed: aroma, mouthfeel, taste, flavour and finish. With this structure, the tasting note ‘blueberries, slight astringency, well-balanced acidity and sweetness, stone fruit, benefits from long finish’ becomes strikingly clear. You can even skip unremarkable attributes and abbreviate to ‘blueberries, well-balanced acidity, stone fruit’ without significant loss of clarity.
List attributes in order of dominance
Another option is to list attributes in order of dominance. We think this is less good, but still acceptable. For example ‘milk chocolate sweetness, nougat-like mouthfeel and apple-like acidity’ is markedly different from ‘apple-like acidity, nougat-like mouthfeel and milk chocolate sweetness’.
Use graphics
Some attributes, such as mouthfeel and taste, can readily be communicated with icons. If the weight and the taste balance is communicated with icons, then ‘blueberry aroma and stone fruit flavour’ would suffice.
Managing primary, second-tier and compounded descriptors
Be clear in your thinking whether a note is primary, second-tier or a compounded descriptors. For example, ‘granny smith apple’ is a second-tier descriptor – it is a more specific than ‘green apple’. Both The Coffee Tasting Wheel and Coffee Aroma Map deliberately only include primary references.
Only use specific descriptors when the note is immediately apparent and includes all the expected attributes of mouthfeel, taste and flavour. It would be misleading to write ‘granny smith apple’ if it’s only the acidity you are referring to.
Similarly, ‘milk chocolate’ combines sweetness with cocoa flavours and implies a smooth, medium-heavy mouthfeel. Again, don’t use the term unless all those characteristics are present. If the coffee only has one of these characteristics, break the note down into the relevant constituent part, such as ‘sweet’, or ‘chocolate-like’ flavours or ‘medium body with viscous mouthfeel’.
Production information
If you include production information, show how it connects to the tasting notes. For example, longer mucilage contact time usually contributes to sweetness. Or, higher altitudes and shade-grown coffees promote slower ripening, allowing more complex flavours to develop. Some origins and varieties have signature tastes, so you can indicate whether a coffee is typical or atypical.
Many aspects of coffee production have an indirect, or not well understood, causation. While potentially interesting for a select audience, these are often of low importance, unless they are novel or compelling.
Some roasters have removed tasting notes altogether, listing only origin, variety and processing method. While this is a safe fallback, it’s suboptimal and likely to be less effective as a marketing tool.
Creating a theme
It’s elegant to anchor a coffee’s tasting notes around a single theme. This requires creativity and a broad range of reference points. A strong theme encapsulates all the coffee’s key characteristics.
Themes can be simple. If a coffee tastes like a well-known chocolate bar, you might hint at it by riffing off their advertising campaigns, deploying wordplay with their slogan or referencing the colour of their packaging all without referring to the brand by name.
Aroma and taste can trigger vivid memories because tastes and locations are stored in adjacent parts of our brain. Use this to your advantage. The trick is to make the triggers universal without sounding generic, such as the smell of picking strawberries or the sweetness of jasmine on a warm, spring night.
Themes don’t have to be flavour related, they can capture something’s essence – even if it’s abstract. The possibilities are endless. To take an example that pushes to (and some might even argue beyond) the boundaries, a ‘Sir Keir Starmer’ coffee might have few distinct flavours, a slightly heavy body and be a little nutty or mildly sweet – depending on your coffee and political perspective. You can appreciate that this coffee is ok, a little underwhelming, but ultimately a bit boring to drink.
Themes can connect to music, art, memes or sitcoms – pretty much anything you like. They are powerful because they distil all the attributes into a single, concrete idea. But beware: if your audience doesn’t share the reference or your vantage point, they can go horribly wrong. If your theme doesn’t assist your communication, take a break and start again with a new theme.
Incite emotion
Tasting notes that evoke strong, positive emotions often drive sales. Emotions can override rational thinking. Roasters already know this. Many leaned into emotive tasting notes, but pulled back after generating customer disappointment from overpromising.
If your tasting assessment is driven by clear-eyed reason, then your tasting notes can incite emotion on the condition that it’s authentic and true. When emotion and reason combine, just like the sweet and sour tastes, something is produced that is greater than the sum of the individual parts. After all, the human experience is equal parts reason and emotion.
Our insistence on structured tasting might seem at odds with emotive writing, but it’s not. A clear-eyed assessment enables creativity. It offers the structure to be evocative while maintaining accuracy.
Remember, emotions are personal and your theme’s references must resonate with your audience. The picking of our political example above carried risk. Some will actively dislike Sir Keir, many might not even know that he is the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister. But, because of these challenges, the example demonstrates just how incongruous a theme can be while still bringing together aspects of a coffee’s profile. In general, we probably wouldn’t put these tasting notes on a bag, but everything depends on the context. If you’re running a coffee tasting at the Houses of Parliament, a well-targeted personality-focused theme is likely to be highly memorable and well received if it is both accurate and delivered in a spirit of good fun.
Establishing a format
To combine facts, key tasting notes and evocative writing, create a format that works for your brand. A strong and successful format can be used consistently across the entire coffee range.
Title
This might be the name of the producer or a name you assign. Identify the constraints, such as a 48-character limit for packaging, and develop a tactic to consistently manage exceptions.
Flavour Description
A succinct summary of aroma, taste, flavour and (if relevant) mouthfeel. This could be a three-word summary, a sentence or a set of icons.
Categories
Segment coffees so retail staff and online shoppers can find what they’re looking for. Categories should align with your flavour description.
Production Information
Might this be a short summary or full production detail? The information could be formatted in a table or text.
Tasting Notes
Create a tone of voice that reflects your brand and structure. Would your brand and format be stronger if you lead with tasting notes or production information?
Identifying a strong format
A strong format is a marketing asset. If consumers understand it, they’ll come back. With each coffee they buy, they learn more about flavour – and their own preferences.
Case Study: Crafting tasting notes
There’s many ways components can be compiled. In a recent tasting, we explored how altitude and processing impact flavour. The tasting started with a natural-processed, machine-harvested Brazilian coffee. A consumer would identify this coffee as a better version of commodity coffee and it meets the comforting expectation. The second coffee was the same variety, handpicked at higher altitude. This would be classified as a classic coffee. The final two coffees had flavours outside most consumers’ experience. For interest, and our limited space, our case study focuses on the final two coffees. They are both coffees for the curious.
| Cordillera de Fuego, Costa Rica | Cereza Natural Paisa, Colombia |
|---|---|
| Hernando Tapasco and Olga Lucia Botera of Cereza Coffee Company | |
| Roasted by Special Guests | Roasted by Crankhouse |
| ‘Hot Cross Buns’ • Medium colour • Light body • Cinnamon and dried citrus peel | ‘Fruit Mince and… Strawberries’ • Lovely reddish colour • Raisins, figs, plums… and strawberries, especially as it cools • Just enough acidity to be harmonious with the flavours |
Cordillera de Fuego undergoes a specific fermentation process that yields unfamiliar flavours. ‘Hot cross buns’ combines the flavours of cinnamon and dried citrus peel.
Cereza Natural Paisa is complex and flavourful, with distinct flavours of both dried fruit and fresh berries. Since these flavours rarely appear together, it’s important to set expectations.
Visually, the reddish hue of Cereza is distinctive and sets up the strawberry note. Mouthfeel-wise, Cordillera is lighter than the flavours would imply; Cereza’s mouthfeel is pleasant but unremarkable.
On the palate, the strawberry flavours in Cereza isn’t obvious at first, they develop as the coffee cools. While the coffee is ‘balanced’, it only has just enough acidity. Plus the acidity is lower than the sourness of fresh strawberries would imply. These factors make the taste note important, largely to set drinkers’ expectations.
Both producers use bespoke fermentation methods. We included details on their philosophies and processes in the presentation. The format echoed the tasting structure:
- Coffees named after producers
- Farmers listed before roasters
- Emphasis on elevation and processing
- Flavour notes largely follow tasting order
- The Theme integrated into the experience
Both coffees are outstanding. If I could only recommend one, I’d choose Cereza Natural Paisa. Despite its novel flavours, it’s also surprisingly comforting. The sweetness, low acidity and distinct, complex flavours made it the high point of the tasting.
Using the Coffee Tasting Framework, Cereza’s quality is self-evident. Its curious yet comforting nature appeals to a broader group. By contrast, though equally high-scoring, Cordillera de Fuego mainly satisfies the curious.
Communicating specialty coffee’s distinctive flavours
Coffee is one of the world’s most interesting drinks. Specialty coffee was founded to connect consumers with tasty coffees that reflect their terroir. It was envisaged that supply chain transparency would increase farmers’ incomes.
It’s timely for the industry to better communicate what makes specialty coffee delicious. It’s coffee drinkers who pay specialty coffee’s price premium. If we are unable to better match consumers to coffee and fulfil their expectations, margins will continue to diminish. Without a greater price premium for tasty coffee, it’s difficult to see how specialty coffee will have the financial resources to met its social and environmental objectives, let alone navigate the challenges of the coming decades.
This short series has explored the components of coffee tasting. We’ve created the Coffee Tasting Framework to guide people through tasting coffee. It highlights that tasty coffees share three attributes: a pleasant mouthfeel, a harmonious balance of tastes and strong ‘alignment’ between the taste and the flavour.
Plus, to help tasters identify and understand coffee’s distinctive smells and flavours, we created the Coffee Aroma Map and the Coffee Flavour Wheel.
To predict which consumers segments will appreciate a coffee, we’ve also explored the role ‘expectations’ play when considering tastiness.
Throughout, our focus has been on the critically important task of writing accurate and compelling tasting notes.
Specialty coffee is a big tent. There’s room for many flavours, styles and strategies. United Baristas wants to help your business succeed. Use these tools and principles to build your own approach to coffee communication.
This work is the result of decades of thinking about coffee’s flavours and consumers. It is also indebted to other beverages, especially wine and whisky, and the people that have generously shared their insights and knowledge. Over time the Coffee Tasting Framework has become simpler and stronger, but it remains a work in progress. Please let us know how you use it.
Specialty coffee has greatly evolved over the past 50 years. But its future still rests on one thing: serving delicious, distinctive coffee.
Now’s the time to better explain why specialty coffee is so very, very tasty.
It’s time for a flavour revolution.
