REWRITE: on comforting and Surprising coffees
The way coffee impacts me
and what it does to my mind depends heavily on specific context.
I can be in the mood for one thing one day and be in the mood for it's polar opposite the next day. Sometimes I need to be calmed down. Sometimes I wish to be hyped. And I'm not talking about caffeine content. What I am talking about is the emotional impact of the sense of smell and the intuitive preferences concerning taste and mouthfeel. However, if we want to share our coffee experiences we better come up with a way to describe them to others.
Follow me on meandering my way towards an affectual mapping of different coffees.
This essay used to be all about the word funky. Traditionally, the word is mostly used to talk about very fermenty, „process heavy" coffees. Since your favorite anaerobic lots around the corner have obliterated the records set by the funkiest naturals you could find in the entire city some years ago, I don't really see much use for this descriptor. Maybe, now this version of funk just represents only one genre of coffee profiles that can be loud and surprising. At the same time, for me the experience of finding a heavily fermented profile in my cup of coffee has become less and less surprising.
Funk is fun.
Funk is different. Funk is intense. Funk is intuitive yet very complex at the same time. Since the original coffee funk has become part of the absolute mainstream in our little niche, in my mind I've been using the term to refer to any exciting notes that go beyond those of nice coffees you would describe as very smooth, rather quiet, beautiful yet one-dimensional or “old school”. Besides the traditional, almost alcoholic fermentation note, this could include intense sweetness, sourness as well as impressive acidities or heavy spice notes, that could either give your cup very earthy or very vibrant undertones.
Reading this, do you think of sparkling rhubarb in a cup of washed Kenya, fragrant nutmeg and clove in a wet hulled Sumatra, the cloud of surreally sweet rhaspberry jam rising from a natural Central American Gesha?
For the sake of this essay that no one’s asked for please follow me in the following subjective demarcations of my categories. The value of this categorization, to me, is to group together fundamentally different coffees because they have similar levels and qualities of impact or liveliness when you first take a sip. So, again, in this essay I want to use markers like “comforting”, “surprising” and “lovely” to roughly define big bulks of specialty coffee profiles (obviously set in an open space, blurry borders and all).
one bleeds into the other, Descriptors overlap.
the way we experience coffee is heavily influenced by our expectations.
weird graphic by myself.
Ok now
Look at that image above. You can clearly tell apart three different areas. They seem to be on three different layers that you can easily identify, yet all of those are interconnected and indistinguishably bleed into eachother at some points. This perspective on profiles is largely influenced by my experience training for and competing in my local CTC Nationals. Cup Tasting Championships are a bizarre world. They help you train one of the most vital skills in the industry, yet in a paradigm that has nothing to do with the way business decisions are done. You learn to turn off the part of your brain that categorizes coffees as "marketable” or “that suits my preferences”. You take them for what they are.
There’s all kinds of smooth coffees. Thin and heavy ones. There’s all kinds of noticable acidities. Sharp and softer ones. There’s all kinds of surprising bitterness. Herbal, green ones and earthy, brown ones.
On the other hand there’s a consumer POV to my imagined classification of profiles. I noticed, the only thing that really leaves me the fuck bamboozled when expecting a cup of specialty coffee is a total lack of sweetness. I generally do not appreciate an earthy cup of nutmeg, nuts and roastiness without any hint of caramel and vanilla. But other than that, I know I could be served almost anything walking into most (Viennese) specialty coffeeshops. Asking for a cup of coffee - to some extant - is always asking for a surprise. And usually the first impression of a cup of coffee is a pretty accurate observation of its overall character.
What do you feel when you take this first sip?
Maybe the most effective way for me to transfer this idea that’s rather based on how coffee makes me feel over to your brain is to invite you to imagine this scenario:
Imagine you walk into a cute little specialty coffee store that roasts a small portfolios of exciting lots in house. The single origin, washed espresso you receive feels surprisingly calm and muted. There might be some intriguing notes but you have to listen closely.
VS
The espresso blend you receive catches you in surprise. Some of its characteristics are much more vivid and brighter than you would’ve expected them to be and you have to take a step back to actually know what’s happening.
VS
In your hands you’re holding a fragrant cup of coffee. Eventhough it feels very heavy, it’s packed with heart warming aromas and its sweetness brings everything into a smooth yet powerful equilibrium.
“The fringe of this category, to me, is one of the most exciting spectrums for coffee profiles. “
- yummy. -
“The fringe of this category, to me, is one of the most exciting spectrums for coffee profiles. “ - yummy. -
The first cup, I’ve labelled lovely. There’s an incomprehensible beauty to soft, delicate coffees that draw you in, that make you look closer (with your olfactory bulb) at this quiet atmospheric pointilist painting. If your cup feels like some floral or creamy notes on a foggy sunday morning when you’re the first in your house to get up and everything in the world of your perception is so calm and quiet you can’t even imagine the incredible noise of saying a word out loud instead of whispering to yourself; that’s the kind of coffee I am talking about. And of course, this could be a washed or honey or whatever. Whether the robe you’re wearing on said morning is crocheted or made of silk, it’s still a light, soft, cozy robe. As I said, there’s very different ways to be light and soft and this is just as true for coffee.
If I experience anything like the second example, I would call that a loud and surprising coffee. Something’s less smooth and equilibrated than you expected. At least one aspect of this cup screams to you. Usually this could be what I would call an impressive acidity, an obnoxious aroma (as is present in some additive fermented lots) orthe good ol’ classic funk! Whenever you have this coffee you can only think about these one or two characteristics. It’s like that one friend in your group - and this obviously could be wonderfully entertaining or terribly annyoing to you. Also, this is where this categorization gives up on being intersubjective. There’s quite a lot of lots and roasts I enjoy that diabolically play with this line; is that one characteristic the loudest of a more or less smooth cup or is it about to take over for good? The fringe of this category, to me, is one of the most exciting spectrums for coffee profiles.
And don’t you secretly love the heaviness? Be honest. I mean, yeah… some of you are thinking of a bold yet smooth Canephora espresso and some of you think drinking a chocolaty Arabica with some body is a guilty pleasure. Again, entirely subjective coffee maps that those categories might inspire.
If I get that third kind of coffee in a shop, time and time again I find myself surprised by how comforting it can be. My need for thick, heavy duvets is just as relevant as my need for silky robes. There’s a time and place for everything and when it comes to going out for coffee and smooth, charming hunks with a lot of weight behind their punch it may just be whenever, wherever.
Looking at this map now, which coffees do you see?
This definition has been particularly helpful for me!
And this is why:
These threecategories (and we could discuss a potential fourth one for the fringe of surprising coffees) help me to understand coffee in an intuitive, affective way. Instead of looking for variables and notes one by one and then trying to put the puzzle together, this shallow differantiation leads to me to first look at the entire picture for a while. It makes me pause for a moment and let myself feel the coffee. And when you dive into those emotions you probably DO notice all of the different aspects this coffee has to offer but it’s always been influenced by its first and general impression.
For my fellow research buddies, this is an inductive approach. This is like grounded theory because you let the coffee lead the way. You dont’t go into the field looking for certain descriptors, rather you get them from the grounds themselves (hehe). And no, this is not the same as just saying anything that comes to mind.
Inductive methods are just as legitimate of an systemic approach. Just give the coffee space and listen to it.
If you’re really ready…
Close your eyes. Take a sip. Now feel.
And stick to the actual events in your description of them. This is always going to be a description that’s specific to you and your experience. In contrast to looking for expected, standardized qualifiers this might open up a way to share more emotional and therefore more relatable impressions of different coffees. Especially if you’re open about your personal biases and contexts, this might even offer a clearer and deeper way of expressing the way a cup of coffee felt to you. But whatever you do, don’t analyze every coffee you have. At least that’s what I argue in the little cousin to this essay.
And now, here’s a little exercise
if you do want to analyze a set of different coffees. Pause and don’t do anything for 2 minutes. Then listen to some Funk on high volume. Repeat the same thing but now listen to quiet, intriguing music like some Ludovico Einaudi or Liszt’s Liebestraum No. 3.
If you do the same with two nice cups of filter coffee or two very different shots of espresso, I think you’ll find you will be ready to fully listen to your cup and let it lead the way. And feel what it has to tell.