Coffee Drinker’s Guide: Flavor Wheels & Useful Pictures

Tasting coffee is much easier using a tasting wheel to fully appreciate all its flavors, acidity and tasting notes. Coffee can have either light, medium or heavy body, meaning how viscous it is — a heavy body might be more syrupy, while a light body is less thick.

The acidity of the coffee might mimic the strength of acidity of certain fruits on a spectrum. For example, a very brightly acidic coffee might remind you of lemon, while a mildly acidic coffee might be closer to the taste of a berry or dried fruit. Coffees can gain flavors from the soil they are grown, the processing method, what grows nearby or how it is roasted.

Image by CounterCultureCoffee.com

Inforgraphic: Anatomy of a Coffee Cherry

Photo by Amada Clifford

Coffee is actually a fruit, and inside you will find several different layers until you get to what we typically refer to as “coffee beans.” This is actually a misnomer, as coffee is a fruit that grows on a plant! Farmers try to pick the ripest cherries for certain types of coffee, such as lower-yield high quality coffees. There are 3 main ways to process coffee cherries. Check out our blog on wet processing, honey processing, and dry processing for more!

My daughter designed the image below by hand to showcase the anatomy for our readers. Here you can see that the outside that requires processing and the inside holds the bean. Before processing, coffee looks red, like a cherry, hence its name.

To learn more about coffee, join us on our world tour as we explore coffees from around the world.