SCAA Flavor Wheel Continued: Guest Coffee Reviewers Wanted

From Metro Espresso: DC's Coffee Blog

From Metro Espresso: DC's Coffee Blog

Citation: Sweetmarias.com Click to expand

In Part Two of the SCAA flavor wheel, the picture is roughly divided into four quadrants: External Changes, Internal Changes, Aroma Taints, and Taste Faults.  I will first state that half of this wheel I do not understand, demonstrating my limits.  Yet, this wheel speaks to the intracy of coffee roasting.  

What is most important to the everyday coffee drinker are the sections, Aroma Taints and Taste Faults.  For example, in "Taste Faults" when one roasts too light not completing the "first crack" the coffee tastes grassy to the tongue.  Unlike rare meat which is yummy, underroasted coffee is not.  In "Aroma Taints," the scorched and baked sections often appear in gas-station coffee or McDonalds.  

I invite Metro Espresso readers to print out the SCAA coffee wheels, and write coffee reviews! (The other is found here)  Send the reviews to duderino102*at*gmail.com and I will post them.  This is your chance to be to featured on Metro Espresso, and demonstrate your coffee love.  You by no means need to be a coffee expert, but one who merely enjoys coffee.  Be sure to include a short little bio that can be included with your review.
    

SCAA Flavor Wheel

Describing coffee flavor is hard.  Impossible even.  Is it earthy or spicy? Piquant or nippy?  Acidic or bitter?  Aromas can be equally puzzling.  Was that pine I smelled?  Oh no, that is definitely floral.  Errr...oak-like?  Many foodies know conveying flavor is fraught with generalizations and the impossible barrier of communicating something so delicate and nuanced as taste in words. 

The SCAA (Specialty Coffee Association of America) created the solution to our descriptive problems.  Behold the "Coffee Wheel"!  Now, we can utilize grandiloquent words like camphoric, enzymatic, and phenolic, along with easier descriptors such as citrus, nut-like, turpeny, and carmelly.

How to use:
1.  To describe Taste, use the left side. Aroma, right side.
2.  Work outwards from the center to the periphery.

Now, my coffee reviews shall be quite exact with the perfect adjective to describe what I am tasting.  Check back this weekend, as SCAA has a second wheel to describe the roasting process.

Citation: Picture grabbed from Sweet Maria's Coffee!  Click here for larger picture.