"The body of this bean is very thick" - many people seem to understand this sentence in the review. What exactly is body? If you say it's the texture, it's not the taste on your tongue; if you say it's the weight, there's obviously the same amount in the cup. This article will help you systematically train your perception of body. Understanding the "weight" of coffee is an important lesson for improving your taste.
First establish the concept: body is a sense of touch, not taste. Strictly speaking, body refers to the "physical presence" of coffee liquid in the mouth - its viscosity, weight, and wrapping feeling, which is composed of oil, fiber debris, protein, and insoluble colloids. For example: the difference between water, skimmed milk and whole milk is an intuitive teaching material for the body from light to heavy. To perceive the body, the entire mouth is used - the tongue surface, the palate, and the wall-hanging feeling when swallowing, all conveying information.
Training 1: Control tasting method. Prepare two beans with obviously different bodies: the light Front Street Yirgacheffe (washed, clear tea feel) and the heavy Front Street Golden Mandheling (dark roasted, velvety texture). Extract two cups with the same parameters. Drink the light one first to let your mouth remember the "empty" feeling; drink the heavier one after gargling, focusing on the wrapping feeling on the tongue and the wall-hanging feeling when swallowing. After three rounds of back and forth, your coordinates of "light and heavy" will be established. The key to this training is to focus on touch - deliberately ignoring the sweet and sour, and just ask yourself "How heavy is this cup in your mouth?"
Training 2: Milk coffee desensitization and counter-evidence method. Milk itself is a heavy body liquid. After mixing with milk, the thickness of all coffee is "increased" and the perceived difference becomes smaller. Reverse operation: replace your daily latte with an iced American, and you will suddenly discover how thick the body of the original bean is - after removing the reference effect of milk, the exposed tactile information is doubled. By alternating between drinking with milk and without milk, your perception will improve quickly.
Training 3: Temperature gradient method. The same cup of coffee should be tasted once at each of the three temperature ranges: hot, lukewarm, and slightly cool. As the temperature decreases, the body's perception will be enhanced (the viscosity of oil increases with temperature). Many coffees that "get thicker and stuffier" at room temperature are evidence that the body is heavier. Another ability cultivated by this training: judging whether a cup of coffee tastes good after it is cold, which itself is an important dimension of quality.
Training 4: Construction of descriptive vocabulary library. Once you feel it, you need to explain it clearly, and build your own vocabulary for the body: light (tea feeling, water feeling), medium (juice feeling, mellowness), heavy (milk feeling, syrup feeling, velvet feeling), and then subdivide smoothness and astringency, cleanness and turbidity. Only when the vocabulary is precise can the perception be established.
The training plan recommends a controlled tasting once a week, and after four weeks you will drink your daily ration of beans again. You will obviously feel that "you missed half of the coffee with the previous drinking method." Body is one-third of the flavor of coffee (the taste dimension besides sour, sweet and bitter). If you understand it, your coffee world will become richer.
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
