How to Choose the Best Coffee Beans

To choose the best coffee beans, you must first have excellent knowledge of your coffee preferences, which obviously involves having tasted a large quantity of different espressos and knowing the basics of what the raw material is.

The following summary will not cover coffee aromaticity but will be limited to describing the main concepts necessary to make an informed choice, focusing more on the taste aspect, which is the most immediate and perceptible characteristic.

The coffee plants used to produce the mainly commercialized beans are Coffea arabica and Coffea canephora (better known as robusta).

Arabica beans typically give coffee a taste tending towards acidic or sweet. Regarding the espresso crema, they provide a lower volume of crema compared to robusta but with greater stability, and the bubbles that make up the crema are also finer. (2)

Robusta beans, on the contrary, give espresso a typically bitter taste. The resulting crema from extraction is more voluminous and less stable compared to arabica, with coarser bubbles. (2)

Coffee, at the beginning of its life, is a bean enclosed within a fruit called a drupe. Each drupe contains two green coffee beans inside. Depending on the processing method used to extract the beans from the fruit, different tastes will be perceptible in the cup. There are many known pulping methods, but the most commonly used are undoubtedly the natural, washed, and semi-washed methods.

The natural method gives more sweetness and bitterness in the cup but less acidity, more body, and when present, a greater sensation of astringency. (3)

The washed method, on the contrary, brings more acidity but less bitterness and sweetness, with reduced body and any astringency. (3)

Finally, the semi-natural method presents acidity, bitterness, and sweetness halfway between the two methods just seen, although these tastes are still closer to a natural method. Body and astringency are also between the two methods described above.

When choosing the best coffee beans, you must also pay attention to the places of origin of the coffees that make up the chosen blend, as knowing them makes it possible to expect certain flavors typical of the country of origin.

The final step before commercialization is roasting. A darker roast will lead to a predominantly bitter taste in the cup, while a lighter roast will lead to a more acidic taste. (4) In this phase, the goal is usually to obtain a perfect balance between acidity, bitterness and sweetness from the raw material.

The people coffee blend, for example, is composed of Brazil Santos (arabica – natural), Ethiopia Sidamo (arabica – washed), Colombia Supremo (arabica – washed) and India Parchment (robusta – washed) with a medium roast. This composition gives an espresso with a full body, balanced taste and aromas of bitter cocoa, cardamom and spices.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

1- Muñoz L. et al. (2018). Physicochemical parameters and consumer acceptance in espresso and american coffee pods.
2- Xiuju W., Loong-Tak L., Siming T., Yucheng F. , Investigation of the factors that affect the volume and stability of espresso crema. Frin (2018)
3- Yoo Mei Choi and Hye Hyun Yoon. Sensory Characteristics of Espresso Coffee According to Green Coffee Processing
4- Bhumiratana N. et al. (2019). Coffee Drinking and Emotions: Are There Key Sensory Drivers for Emotions?.