Gallery: Taste Coffee Like a Pro With This Gorgeous Flavor Wheel
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Everyone on the coffee supply chain—from farmers to roasters to baristas—uses the terms on this flavor wheel as a shared vocabulary.
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The Specialty Coffee Association of America and the World Coffee Research organization just updated the flavor wheel for the first time in 20 years.
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The new lexicon is rooted in science and descriptions of chemicals more than it’s based on coffee culture.
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The categories at the center are your basic flavor descriptors: sweet, floral, fruity, and so on.
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But it’s not enough to call a coffee “green”; terms like “peapod,” “hay-like,” and “fresh” are what matter.
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Coffee can even have medicinal tastes, or papery tastes. Now all of that is standardized, in this updated Flavor Wheel.
