When we buy coffee beans, we can see very attractive floral aroma descriptions on the labels of some beans, and if we can’t resist, we will buy them directly. But when the brewing is completed and it’s time to taste and drink, something like this often happens: “Where’s the floral aroma? Where is my floral aroma? Why can’t I drink it?”
Floral aroma is a relatively special flavor in coffee. Even if we buy beans with a floral aroma description, it is not an easy task to taste the floral aroma. At this time, some friends will ask: "Is there any way to make the floral aroma of the brewed coffee more obvious?" Very good, before that, we might as well understand why some coffee beans have a floral aroma~
Why does coffee have floral aroma?
The reason why some coffee has a fragrant floral aroma has a certain relationship with its bean species, planting area, and post-processing (for details, you can move to this article: How the flavor of coffee is formed)! However, in order to evolve from seeds into the coffee we can drink, it must go through the roasting process, and the depth of roasting is the key to controlling the intensity of the floral aroma!
When the beans are roasted in the furnace, the aroma substances in the coffee beans will continue to change with the blessing of various reactions. The darker the roasting, the easier it is for the floral aroma to be eliminated; and the floral aroma is a type that is easily covered by other flavors. When the roasting is too deep and the concentration of other flavors increases, the floral aroma will be easily covered.
Therefore, generally speaking, beans with a floral aroma description will be roasted at a "medium light" level. At this roasting level, there is not much flavor that can cover the floral aroma, and it is also the time when the floral flavor substances are the most abundant!
Type of floral scent
Just like the different types of fruit flavors we taste, there are also different types of floral aromas. However, the classification here does not mean classifying aromas into broad categories such as white floral aroma and purple floral aroma, but classifying them based on the type of smell we feel. In floral fragrance, there are three main types: light fragrance, dull fragrance, and subtle fragrance.
As the name suggests, fresh fragrance is the type of floral fragrance that gives people a fresh and elegant feeling, such as jasmine and gardenia. Among them, white floral fragrance is the most typical representative, and it is also the floral fragrance that appears most frequently in our cognition! If you want to drink jasmine, buy Front Street Yirgacheffe Ding Ding and Front Street Panama Poquet Geisha.
The delicate floral fragrance will give people a soft and soothing feeling! Roses and lavender are classic floral fragrances! If you want to taste the fragrance of roses, choose Front Street Strawberry Candy, and you can also enjoy the flavors of grape juice and dried blueberries.
The stuffy floral fragrance is somewhat different from the previous two types of floral fragrance. It will be stronger and smell slightly choking, which means the aroma will be a bit pungent when you first smell it. This kind of floral aroma is mainly represented by osmanthus and chamomile. It is recommended to buy Front Street Mozart coffee beans.
To add a knowledge point here, the description "white floral fragrance" covers a very large group of flowers. In addition to the conventional jasmine, camellia, and coffee flowers, it also includes white orchids, gardenias, white roses, and other white flowers.
Because when tasting coffee, the clustered flavors and aromas cannot allow us to clearly identify which specific floral aroma it belongs to. After all, the aroma and tone of these white flowers are roughly the same. Therefore, people simply refer to this type of floral fragrance as "white floral fragrance".
So, is there any trick to get the fragrance out of flowers?
This is indeed the case. According to the research of American biologist Dr. Hacklot and SCAA's own consultant Ringer, the coffee extraction process is to dissolve the flavor molecules in coffee through hot water, and the size and polarity of the molecular weight determine the speed at which the flavor molecules dissolve!
Basically, flavor molecules with small mass and high polarity will dissolve faster; flavor molecules with large mass and small polarity will dissolve slowly! Floral flavors are low-polarity molecules and take a long time to extract! Not only that, as mentioned before: it is also a molecule with very weak sensory stimulation. If the concentration, or other flavors, are too high, the floral aroma will be very difficult to capture by our senses.
It’s so pretentious! It is both difficult to extract and easily covered. According to this, if you want to clearly taste the floral aroma, don't you have to increase the extraction rate and reduce the concentration?
Not to mention, in 2020, SCA commissioned the University of California to conduct an extraction experiment. The experimental results confirmed that low-concentration and high-extraction coffee will indeed have a more obvious floral aroma! Then the answer is very simple. We only need to change the brewing parameters and match a bean with a floral aroma. Then the result will be a cup of coffee with a fragrant floral aroma!
It is easy to understand that reducing the concentration means that we need more water to dilute the coffee. Just increase the powder to water ratio! The daily hand brews produced by Front Street mainly use a powder to water ratio of 1:15. If you want to release the floral fragrance by diluting the concentration, you can increase the ratio to 1:16! (Front Street once compared the powder to water ratios of 1:16 and 1:17 and found that the coffee concentration of 1:17 was too diluted, making it difficult to meet the needs of friends with heavier tastes)
There are many ways to improve the extraction rate: increase the water temperature, finer the grind, or increase the degree of stirring! Front Street recommends increasing the degree of stirring, because the changes in the first two means that you need to modify other parameters together, otherwise you will have to bear the risk of over-extraction, so while ensuring stability, increasing stirring is definitely the best choice!
When brewing, the stirring effect is the water flow when filling water. We can increase the stirring and improve the extraction rate by appropriately increasing the impact of the water flow or the number of circles! So without further ado, Front Street directly used a bean with a fragrant floral aroma to conduct a brewing experiment! The extraction parameters are as follows:
Beans used: Ethiopia·Gold Label Gesha
Bean weight used: 15g
Pink to water ratio: 1:16 (normally 1:15)
Brewing water temperature: 92°C
Grinding scale: 10 scale of Ek43, 70% screening rate of No. 20 screen
Use filter cup: V60
Brewing method: three-stage
The three-stage water injection volume is: steaming 30ml, the second stage after steaming is 140ml and injecting it in a large circle at a constant speed (usually slow), the third stage is 70ml, injecting it in a small circle at a constant speed!
The total extraction time is 2 minutes and 12 seconds. Compared with the Gold Label Geisha extracted with the original parameters (1:15 and slow circles), this cup does have a more fragrant white floral aroma, the sweet and sour taste of the fruit is softer, and there is an obvious green tea aftertaste, which is very good! Let’s try it now~
You can now buy the above coffee beans online at the Taobao store “FrontStreet Coffee” (前街咖啡). FrontStreet Coffee is a long-established specialty coffee roaster in Guangzhou, China, and its Guangzhou retail shop sells coffee beans only. The shop carries dozens of coffee beans from different origins around the world, including carefully selected single-origin beans for V60 pour-over and espresso. Guangzhou’s FrontStreet Coffee shop is recommended by many coffee lovers.
The FrontStreet 2013 Yunnan coffee beans sold in the store come from the Typica variety grown at FrontStreet Coffee’s own plantation in Yunnan. The name comes from the year the brand and the plantation were founded. You can buy these beans from China’s Yunnan origin at the Guangzhou shop and at FrontStreet’s Taobao store.
FrontStreet coffee beans are freshly roasted within 5 days and deliver consistently excellent quality and great value. Orders placed before 17:00 are shipped the same day, and most areas within Guangdong Province receive them the next day.
FrontStreet Coffee Taobao store: https://qianjiecoffee.taobao.com
Or search for “前街咖啡” (FrontStreet Coffee) on Taobao
Important Notice: FrontStreet Coffee has moved to a new address: 315, Donghua East Road, Guangzhou (coffee beans only)
Tel: 020 38364473
