Rosie: I'm Rosie Garren and you're listening to the Wire Cutter Show.

Rosie: Hey there, it's Rosie. In our last episode, Christine and I talked with Wire Cutter editorial director Margarite Preston about the gear you need to upgrade your coffee setup at home. We covered grinders, different brewing methods, and other techniques to develop the flavor you want in your morning brew. So, go check that out if you haven't heard it. But there was one important element of a great cup of coffee we didn't have time to talk about, and that's the coffee beans themselves.

Rosie: Every cup of coffee starts off as a ripe coffee cherry, the fruit of the coffee plant. The seeds of that plant get harvested, dried, roasted, and packaged up as coffee beans. Every step of the coffee production process is an opportunity to change the way a cup eventually will taste. From the type of coffee plant you grow to the temperature at which you roast the beans. To be honest, I find that a bit overwhelming.

Rosie: I've been a wannabe coffee snob for years and I still struggle at the grocery store or at my local coffee shop deciphering the words on the back of a bag of beans. How do I experiment with new brands or new coffee roasters and still have confidence that I'm actually going to like the taste? So to understand that, I'm going through coffee 101 with Sum Nai. Sum is co-founder of Coffee Project New York which began as a coffee shop in New York's East Village and it has since expanded into roasting wholesale retail education. Sum also happens to be a certified Q Grader which I've just learned is essentially the equivalent of a sommelier in wine. So after the break some's going to tell me about how to buy coffee beans that will end up in a cup of coffee I love. So stick around.

Rosie: We're back with S Guy, coffee expert and co-founder of Coffee Project New York. Sum, welcome to the Wire Cutter Show. So happy to have you.

Sum: Thanks for having me.

Rosie: Thank you for being here. Um, my first question is how, why, when did you fall in love with coffee? I'm from Malaysia, born and raised, and coffee culture there, it's a big thing. Like, we would go hang out, drink coffee at any time of the day, 7:00 a.m. to like 2:00 a.m. in the morning because it's just like a medium for us to get together and talk about things. My love for actual like the specialty coffee side of things didn't really happen until I moved to New York City. I wanted to actually build the space like what I have back home in Malaysia for people to come in and gather drinking whatever that they want. However, I realized that as soon as I start the business, me diving deeper and deeper into coffee as a beverage.

Sum: Yeah. And now it become coffee as the fruit and then the whole coffee culture is the people the producer and all these people that we're bringing together changed a lot for me from the beginning itself where it is just the barriage as a medium of connection.

Rosie: Okay. So you obviously have a very very deep knowledge of coffee. We're going to ask you to dial it way way way back like you're talking to curious noviceses. So, how do you choose beans you know you'll like when you get home?

Sum: So, I think the first thing is maybe look at the bag of coffee and see some of these flavor calls that is listed on the back. I prefer to go with the flavor first or the profile first because then it opens up your mind about trying different coffees from different origin.

Rosie: I want to talk a little bit about these tasting notes and some of the words that you see on on a bag of coffee. If you see chocolatey as a as an example, what does that mean?

Sum: A lot of times it's an impression. The bag of coffee tells you what is the first thing that you might be tasting. Coffee itself is a fruit. So the innate flavor call that you get from it, it's going to be either fruity or something herbaceious or floral.

Rosie: Okay?

Sum: Or a combination of both. But when you see a bag of coffee that you have notes like chocolate, hazelnuts, brown sugar, these are all the chemical reaction that's happening when we put the seed into a roaster and start roasting them. So it's the sugar in the city itself browning to a certain reaction. It reminds you of how it tastes like chocolate.

Rosie: Yeah.

Sum: Hazelnut or um brown sugar.

Rosie: I've seen cherry. I've seen apple. I've seen so many different things and I've always wondered what that means. So that manifests when the beans are being roasted.

Sum: Correct. So um technically speaking like whenever the coffee is getting roasted chemical reaction happen and the heat change some component in the beans itself to a compound that you might also find in let's say strawberry. So when we both eat a strawberry together, we know it tastes like strawberry, right?

Rosie: But I don't know how your strawberry tastes and you will not know how my strawberry tastes, but we both know that we're tasting strawberry because we have experience having them. with the roasting side of things is if this coffee has impression of strawberry, highly likely there is a compound in the beverage itself that reminds you of the strawberry that you had in the other compound when you're eating a strawberry. So,

Sum: so this is all incredibly subjective because notes of strawberry to me in a bag of coffee are is very likely going to be different or different on my palette than it will be on yours, whatever that strawberry is.

Rosie: Correct. So uh whenever I am teaching a class or I'm like getting a note uh on the back of coffee a lot of times we try to stay calibrated. We will know like if let's say this bag of coffee tastes like strawberry then my strawberry and your strawberry will somewhat be the same because we have experience with what we call the coffee lexicon or the flavor wheel where we do a bunch of pallet calibration together.

Rosie: Can you explain this process? I've I've heard of it. I've read a little bit about it, but I'm I would love for you to kind of paint a picture of what that looks like. The calibration process.

Sum: Once in a while, we gather some of our team members and we buy a bunch of spices, fruits, and we eat it together and try to pinpoint the product that we're eating from ground level. So, take a lime and as an example. So, when I have a lime, I cut it open and I start eating it. Instead of just saying like a sour, we're diving into the five basic tastes. Sweet, sour, bitter, umami, and salty. When we do an exercise like that together, we write down from aroma, fragrance, which is we start from smelling them. And I remember doing this exercise and realized for the very first time, lime on its own is not just sharp, bright, and acidic. It's actually salty.

Rosie: Huh. And then we would tone down our levels to match each other and at the same time would explain why I would taste this this way. So this is how we stay calibrated in the professional setting. However, how do we stay calibrated with people who enjoy our coffee that is not in coffee? And that's when you see bags of coffee that says that it tastes like Jolly Rancher, tastes like a cotton candy. So these are terms that it's a little bit more common that people can actually figure it out and also think about it and it's also more fun and personally I think it's less scary. So if I get a bag of coffee that tastes like Fruity Pebbles, I'll know for sure that oh it's a mixed bag of fruits, tastes like a red sunre, then I know it's going to be a little bit boozy and also like a lot of like red grape compared to like if you want to go straight into like this coffee tastes like orange, strawberry and kiwi. I think after brewing it, sipping it and looking at the label helped you understand the flavor.

Rosie: When I'm buying coffee, should I be buying whole bean or ground?

Sum: I think whole bean is always the go-to because once you ground the coffee, you're exposing the coffee areas a lot more. So, chances of it degassing, getting still is a lot quicker even though you still them. But that's a very practical reason of why you do not want to grind your coffee ahead of time is because you don't know how you want to brew it.

Rosie: Mhm.

Sum: So if let's say you are you have a bag of coffee and you preground or you bought it pregrown, there's only going to be good for like filter. You won't be able to make any adjustment or like cater it to a different brew style.

Rosie: Another term I've been curious about roast date. M

Rosie: what does that mean relative to my buying and then making and drinking a cup of coffee?

Sum: So when we talk about roast date is uh technically when is the beans getting roasted and finished and packaging. That date tells you the freshness. When you have a back of coffee that is super fresh. Let's say it's roasted yesterday and you brew it right away. it's not always going to be the best results because there are still a lot of things going on with the coffee after we finish roasting. So, what we like is to have a rest period. And that's one of the reason why we want to pay attention to the roast date. The sooner you brew your coffee after the roast date, it's actually harder for you to extract the coffee. So it will not taste as good as if the coffee has been sitting in the bag for 5 days or more.

Rosie: The flavors won't be as deep.

Sum: Yes. Um not only that, you might get a lot of like smokiness, gassiness or what we call like grassiness um right after roast. And sometimes when we cup coffee together, a very common flavor call that we'll be getting if the coffee is way too fresh is roasted beef.

Rosie: O

Sum: yes. Um, so as soon as it rest and open up, you'll get a lot more benefit from the beverage itself.

Rosie: So in terms of short hand, how long generally are you going to want to wait?

Sum: Ideally 7 days. Rule of thumb is if you have a lighter roast, chances of it resting longer is going to be better.

Rosie: Can you briefly explain the differences between light, medium, and dark roasts?

Sum: light, medium and dark rose is uh when we see the color of the beans itself very very subjective because somebody's dark rose can be somebody's medium rose however uh what I like to see when someone is talking about light medium and dark roses it is almost always reflected in the way that the back of coffee has the calls. So light roast coffee you will always see a lot of herbaceious floral and fruit notes in the back.

Rosie: Okay.

Sum: Medium roast of coffee you will see a little bit more of the fruit but at the same time you get some sort of brown sugar like vanilla or like cooked berries. So like think about pineapple or peach that you throw it on top of a grill kind. So that will be your medium roast. And if it's a dark rose, look out for notes like caramel, dark chocolate, roasted hazelnut, almonds. These are all sign that can tell you a little bit more on that. As long as you're not tasting burnt or extreme bitterness from the dark roast itself, it will be great as a milk barriage or maybe that is the cup of coffee that you need to wake you up in the morning.

Rosie: What are some of the ways you can determine the taste of coffee beans based on where they're from? M this is exactly where gets very fascinating for me. I love how coffee tastes in different region. So coffee from the Asian region a lot of times is going to be lower acidity because of the elevation and then coffee from the Americas is going to be a little bit more mild in acidity and more spice forward notes of apple and things like that and then coffee from the African region will be brighter fruier more floral so these are all the classic but there's a lot of things changing right now and people are getting more and more creative with fermentation technique and it throws me off all the time. So, I have a cup of coffee just maybe two to 3 weeks ago. It is actually a cup of coffee from Indonesia. When I had it, it tastes like almost an high elevation Colombia

Sum: because of the anorobic natural process that are putting on to it. So while we all have something to ground us to the taste, now things are getting more and more complex.

Rosie: Okay. So let's say I buy my coffee beans at the grocery store. I'm in the aisle. There are so many different options. What is your general guidance when you're looking up and down and trying to reach for a bag of whole bean coffee? What do I look for

Sum: when you're buying coffee in a grocery store? I think the first thing is uh pick the coffee that you like how it tastes, the brew method it's roasted for and then after that you can look into regions that might excite you. You want to see something that is very common or not common if it's a blend or it's a single origin and finally probably is the roast date. You don't want to have something that has been sitting on a shelf for like 6 months or something like that.

Rosie: And also you want you it needs to have a roast date.

Sum: Yes. I think highly likely you will see a roast date on each and every bag of coffee.

Rosie: So, thank you so much for joining us. This was amazingly helpful. Really, really appreciate it.

Sum: Thank you, Rosie.

Rosie: All right, that's it on coffee beans. We'll link to the Coffee Project New York website in our show notes. Thank you for listening. Bye.