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As with wine, there are countless varieties of coffee, tasting them can be overwhelming. Our guide below will help you learn to distinguish one coffee from another therefore enhancing your coffee tasting experience.

• Aroma. This is a coffee's first impression and should reflect the actual taste of the coffee. It should be clean and pleasant.
• Acidity. This word describes a coffee's brightness, which allows the real taste of the coffee to be experienced. Acidity must be tangy but never sour.
• Body. This is the pleasant feeling of heaviness that a good coffee has in the mouth. This is caused by the natural oils in the coffee.
• Cleanliness of cup. Good coffee must always be free of any defects that cause disagreeable tastes or that distract from the true flavor of the coffee. Coffee should be pleasant to drink at all temperatures and it should never leave any type of unpalatable aftertaste.
• Flavor. This is the final arbiter of a coffee's quality. After a coffee is judged to completely satisfy the above criteria, it may finally be judged for its taste.