Coffee Talk

The Memory of Flavor

This month, Brandon describes how life experiences and memory impact our sense of taste.

I recently had the opportunity to teach a class on the History of Coffee and Cupping Basics with a friend Ben Helt of Benetti's Coffeshop in Raytown. We were both pleased to see our class was extremely excited and full of questions. From Kaldi's discovery of coffee to simple brewing methods, they saturated it all. A group with this type of enthusiasm is rare and was well received.

As we prepared coffees from different regions around the world on placemats in front of them, we explained the importance of cupping in the coffee industry and how it is necessary for an active dialogue amongst enthusiasts. Much like wine tasting, coffee cupping is required to keep standards high and community strong. In this particular exercise we wanted to make clear the distinctions between regional coffees, a spectrum of the world's offerings.

At this point though, as was to be expected, our group took a few steps back, intimidated by the required slurping and the pretense of what seems to be almost a ceremonial attention to detail. This is an all too common scenario when cupping coffee and tasting wines or beers with first timers. "Deer in the headlights" expressions are an exciting thing to see though. A child-like approach to something foreign encourages me to be a better teacher, patient with my newly converted specialty coffee drinkers.

As we proceeded I realized the group's enthusiasm wasn't going to make up for their lack of creativity concerning what they were savoring. This class knew there were drastic differences between each cup, one being Ethiopian, another Sumatran, another Costa Rican and so on (an all blind tasting of course). The problem came as they struggled through their explanation of what they tasted. "Bold," "strong" and "weak" were repeated descriptions.

Activities like drinking your morning cup of coffee or sitting around a well-cooked meal with the family are similar in the fact that they are personal to you. Your personal experience has a lot to do with what you taste. Drawing on personal experience and memories and tying it to your current experience is the most exciting aspect of food and beverage tasting. While there is nothing wrong with calling your coffee "strong" it doesn't give the people you are experiencing the moment with a meaningful frame of reference and it certainly doesn't challenge your palate to explore.

As the cupping continued Ben and I began to encourage the group to consider aroma, flavor and mouth feel in order to describe a specific experience they may have had before. People began describing "The smell of the soil in their mother's garden" in reference to Sumatran coffees. Another was reminded of "tea with lemon" which was their favorite drink and was how they described the Ethiopian Yirgacheffe. A third, blindly tasted a Folgers coffee that we added to the mix and was instantly reminded of a long work day (her office coffee being Folgers).

There were no right or wrong answers concerning what they tasted that night, only how what they tasted reflected on their personal experience. Memory and experience should be of the foremost importance when tasting coffee. There should always be a whimsical desire to attach your senses to your memory the same way you do when you view art. Just like some paintings and sculptures can grip your heart and spark your mind, great food and beverage can do the same.

Brandon Briscoe is the Marketing Art Director at The Roasterie,Inc. He has a BFA in Studio Art from UMKC. He and his wife Eva are active members of their Christian community and passionately love the people of Kansas City.