"Strong and weak", "mild and bitter" are probably the most common pairs of opposites that coffee drinkers use to describe their coffee. Some coffee experts consider these terms useless. Unfortunately, that's not true and is rather elitist.
In recent years, coffee farmers, importers, roasters, baristas, bloggers, restaurateurs, scientists, etc. have made the specialty coffee industry more colorful, but also more confusing for the uninitiated. We're getting more coffee variety, more stories, and more individual characteristics of beverages.
Questions that every café with quality standards must ask itself today are:
- How do we convey all the knowledge we've gained to average coffee drinkers?
- What descriptions do we use?
- Which coffee serves as our reference to make the differences clear?
- How do we avoid overwhelming consumers in the process?
What follows is a mini-explanation model that won't overwhelm consumers but should still make them curious for more background information – if they want it
Strong and weak coffee
The majority of coffee drinkers define coffee by its intensity. The natural reaction of coffee professionals would probably be: "Yes, but what kind of intensity?" A valid question, since we know that acidity, sweetness, body, etc. are examined not just for intensity but also for quality.
Does it make sense to explain to a coffee drinker the differences between quality and intensity, knowing full well that this causes confusion among coffee professionals time and again?
Let's engage in this intensity discussion. The statement "this coffee is strong (or weak)" is not as one-dimensional as it sounds. You can answer this statement clearly with "yes" or "no" and then immediately elaborate, because there are at least three reasons why the coffee might be strong/weak:
- Ratio of coffee to water (recipe)
- Agitation, time, temperature, pressure (brewing method)
- Solubility of the coffee (roasting)
We've already identified three topics (recipe, brewing method, roasting) as a starting point for an in-depth conversation with the consumer about quality.
Mild and bitter
"Mild" and "bitter" are probably the second most common descriptions for coffee. In sensory training sessions, I always ask participants what they understand by "mild". Answers like these are the norm: "fine aromas, fine flavors, nothing disturbing, no acidity, harmonious." When asked what the opposite of mild is, the most common answer is: "bitter".
So how do we handle this?
We have some imprecise descriptions, but also a helpful pair of opposites: bitter – mild.
To illustrate this, we usually conduct an experiment with an optimally extracted filter coffee A (TDS approx. 1.25, extraction rate approx. 20%), and an over-extracted filter coffee B (TDS approx. 1.25, extraction rate approx. 25%). So far, most participants taste coffee A as "mild and harmonious". In comparison, coffee B is "bitter", "unbalanced" or even "aggressive".
If we expand our Y-axis with an X-axis, the following simple diagram emerges, which anyone can understand and comprehend with a little explanation:
We haven't become too technical yet, we haven't described the coffee lexically (variety, origin, processing) or substantively (flavor notes, body, acidity, etc.). And yet we were able to convey more information – information that includes rather than excludes the average coffee drinker.
We don't need to reinvent sensory communication. We advocate meeting consumers with the terminology they use, but defining it more precisely. And suddenly "weak" and "strong" becomes a complex matter.
