What are Tasting Notes in Coffee?

If you’ve been around specialty coffee for any amount of time you’ve probably heard someone talking about tasting notes. What are they exactly? And who determines what tasting notes are written on bags of coffee beans? And are they even real or is it just a barista buzz word?

Coffee tasting notes are very real! They are indicators of what characteristics the beans will display when brewed. Much like with wine, the variety of the fruit and the environment in which it was grown greatly influences the taste of the final product. Add roasting to the equation, and you have a whole new layer of tasting notes because the roast level can roast out or highlight different notes.

When you think about how many countries produce coffee, how many different farms lie within those countries, and how many varietals of coffee cherries there are, the vast array of tasting notes make a lot of sense. There are so many flavors one can pick out of a cup of coffee!

While the general rule is that everyone’s palette might be a bit different and what we each taste is valid, there is also a super helpful tool in the coffee industry to guide the process. It’s also a great tool to reference if you’re new to tasting coffee or trying to get a better grasp on the terminology. Meet the Flavor Wheel!

The Flavor Wheel, created by the Specialty Coffee Association, guides tasters around a tasting wheel using categories such as citrus, berries, and nutty to help narrow down tasting notes. This tool is widely used in the industry, and often the terms on the wheel become part of a barista’s vernacular. So you might hear a barista describe a coffee to you using words you see on this wheel.

But the flavors existed in the coffees before the Flavor Wheel was created. They’ve always been there, and there are some consistencies you can look for as you try new coffees. For example, coffees from Ethiopia often display blueberry tasting notes, and Guatemalan coffees often display caramel nutty tasting notes. These types of consistencies aren’t guaranteed though. Factors like processing methods, varietals, fermentation, and roast all change the flavors. But don’t be surprised if you start to see commonalities between coffees from the same origin!

So those tasting notes on that bag of beans? Someone who works at that roaster cupped the coffee and recorded what they tasted. You can read all about what a coffee cupping looks like here. It really is that simple though! A human tasted the coffee and wrote down different things they tasted in it. You might pick up different notes if you take the coffee home and brew it, but you’ll probably taste a lot of similar notes to what they suggested.