EPISODE #6

Sandro Bonacchi: Flavor complexity

“The flavor of a cup of coffee is the totality of the perceptions that are stimulated when drinking it.”

Sandro is a coffee expert specialised in sensory analysis, quality control of the raw material and also quality control of the outgoing products. In this episode of Behind Your Coffee, Sandro talks about aromatic complexity and explains the thinking behind the Coffee Flavor Wheel.

The episode
During the extraction of a cup of coffee, and therefore also in an espresso, hot water extracts chemicals from the coffee, which produces a complex mix of many chemical substances in the cup. This large presence of aromatic chemical compounds is what determines the aromatic complexity in the cup. The Coffee Flavor Wheel is an aromatic map in the form of a wheel that helps make sense of the sensory perception of the aromas, so it’s a great way to get as much information as possible out of the aromatic notes present in a cup of coffee.