• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Coffee Review

The World's Leading Coffee Guide

Advanced Search

  • Reviews
    • Latest Reviews
    • Top-Rated (94+)
    • Espressos
    • Best Values
    • Top 30 Coffees of 2022
    • Taiwan Coffees – 台灣送評的咖啡豆
    • Pods and Capsules
    • Reviews by Country of Origin
    • Reviews by U.S. City
    • Green/Unroasted
    • Advanced Search
  • Reports
    • Latest Reports
    • Africa
    • Americas
    • Asia-Pacific
    • Espressos
    • Annual Top 30
    • Processing Method
    • Social/Environmental
    • Tree Variety
    • Blends
  • Equipment
    • Interpreting Equipment Ratings
  • Journal
    • Preview – 2023 Tasting Reports
    • 2023 Editorial Calendar
    • How Coffee Review Works
  • About
    • Our Story
    • Kenneth Davids
    • Our Team
    • Our Advertisers
    • Our Sponsors
    • Learn
      • Interpreting Coffee Reviews
      • Reference
      • Glossary
    • Contact Us
  • Trade
    • 2023 Editorial Calendar
    • Becoming an Advertiser
    • Campaign Package Deals
    • Getting Coffees Reviewed
    • Quoting Reviews
    • Award Certificates
    • 2023 Media Kit
  • 中文 – Chinese
    • 評介和獎章宣傳使用條款
    • 台灣送評的咖啡豆
    • 如何將您的咖啡送評
    • “行銷攻略” 促銷活動
  • Members
    • WHY BECOME A MEMBER?
    • Member Benefits
    • Our Sponsors
    • Programs and Initiatives
    • Member Support

Shop for top-rated coffees at Durango Coffee Company

Shop for No. 1 coffee of 2021 at Paradise Roasters

Shop for top-rated coffees at Amavida Coffee Roasters

Shop for Top-rated coffees at Barrington Coffee Roasters

Shop for top-rated coffees at Kakalove in Taiwan

Shop for top-rated coffees at GoCoffeeGo

Shop for 93-point Yemen coffee at Baba Java


Resuming with Sweetness

November 27, 2010 by Kenneth Davids

So let’s blog again like we did last summer. Reviewing three or four descriptive terms per week is the new plan.

Judging by an occasional puzzled email, sweetness may be one of the more confusing terms for those new to coffee description. We use the term regularly in our reviews, and it’s one of the most important technical descriptors used in evaluating quality in green coffee.

Yet readers who buy a coffee we call “sweet” will be disappointed if they expect it to taste like sugar. Sweetness in coffee is subtle, yet also pervasive and precious. It underpins much of what we value in coffee, from the honeyed floral notes of light-roasted coffees to the pungent dark chocolate of darker roasts.

Yet coffee is, after all, a naturally bitter beverage, and bitterness too is part of its appeal. But we can take bitterness for granted in coffee. It will always be there. Promoting natural sweetness, however, requires effort, a lot of effort.

If you taste a ripe coffee fruit of the arabica species, fresh off the tree, several sensations probably will strike you, among them: it tastes a little tart, a little bitter, but also a little sweet. Not extremely sweet, but discernibly so.

Returning to the effort part, almost any act of carelessness as coffee is transformed from ripe fruit to roasted bean will promote bitterness and reduce sweetness. Too much green, unripe, bitter-astringent fruit in the harvest, for example, rather than sweet, ripe fruit. Failing to dry the beans properly, allowing the formation of sweetness-dampening moulds. Failing to transport or store the beans properly. Roasting them too dark too fast. And if the coffee makes it through all of that, we can destroy any amount of natural sweetness by letting the brewed coffee sit on a hot plate for more than a few minutes.

So a good part of the care that goes into harvesting, removing the fruit residue and drying a fine coffee is aimed at preserving the original fragile sweetness reflected in the taste of the fruit. It makes everything else going on in a fine coffee better: the acidity (fuller and less sharp), the floral and fruit notes (more honeyed and ripe), caramelly and chocolate sensations in a darker roast deeper.

Essentially, many coffee drinkers are so accustomed to the dominating bitter character of ordinary coffee that they automatically add whitener and sweetener to their cup. At Coffee Review we value sweetness in particular because it encourages coffee drinkers to take their coffee black, or at least without sweetener, and experience the coffee itself, its subtle pleasures unwrapped for us by a sweetness given by nature but obsessively nurtured by grower, miller and roaster.

In a few days: flowers and aromatic wood, two positive though rather opposing descriptors we use often in our reviews.

Filed Under: Journal

Primary Sidebar

Shop for top-rated coffees at Durango Coffee Company

Shop for No. 1 coffee of 2021 at Paradise Roasters

Shop for top-rated coffees at Amavida Coffee Roasters

Shop for Top-rated coffees at Barrington Coffee Roasters

Shop for top-rated coffees at Kakalove in Taiwan

Shop for top-rated coffees at GoCoffeeGo

Shop for 93-point Yemen coffee at Baba Java

Become an advertiser

Get Coffees Reviewed

 

Connect with Us

Sign Up for Our Free E-Newsletter

Enter your email address below to receive our free e-mail newsletter
  • Coffee Reviews
  • Tasting Reports
  • Reference
  • Glossary
  • Please Support Our Advertisers
  • Contact Us
  • Journal
  • Kenneth Davids
  • Interpreting Coffee Reviews
  • Roast Definitions
  • Caveats about Coffee Ratings
  • Editorial Calendar
  • Getting Coffees Reviewed
  • Advertising Opportunities
  • Quoting Reviews
  • Copyright
  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy Policy
  • Site Security

Copyright © 2023 Coffee Review. All Rights Reserved.