To help improve communication and sharing, would like to discuss a very important part of coffee flavor descriptions.
Bitter vs Sour vs Acidity
While some languages and cultures make separating and describing these flavors more easily defined, English is not so clear, and there are so many different cultures that use English, which furthers the importance of discussing what we mean when talking coffee flavors and charscteristics.
topics to discuss:
Bitter
Sour
Acidity
bonus
pH scale
sensations from stomach acid and caffeine
associated words with this topic: acrid, sharp, citrus, lemony, chalky, harsh, char, herbal, tea-like, medicinal, complex
Why is this topic being brought up? English does not clearly distinguish between bitter and sour. Aslo, acidity for many people is often associated with sour flavors. That means when using English, “bitter” can mean any of the above definitions. this creates a major issue with coffee because a combination of sour and bitter flavors tend to be the dominant flavors. not to mention that caffeine can often excite the digestive system and create the sensation of exteme acidic sensations in the gut.
Coffee is one of the most complex flavors people consume on a regular basis, and it is unfortunate that English is so easily confusining in describing the most important aspects of the composition of a coffee flavor profile.
I’m not sure I agree with this, as a native speaker of American english. What makes you think this is the case?
I have personally met people who can’t explain the difference, in the same way that some people don’t have a vocabulary (or perception) to distinguish musical pitches or chords, or colors. But that doesn’t mean the words are the same.
Not having this problem in Danish (where sur [colloquially] covers sour, acidic, tart, tangy, astringent, puckery, sharp and a couple of others - but not bitter), will abstain from getting into a discussion, but that said, there is in fact a fair amount of research in this. For instance referenced in this article… Sour-Bitter Confusion
I would very much disagree. For me bittery is very much less desirable then sour or acidic (American English Native Speaker). I think a lot of descriptive words like those are all very relative to our upbringing, and what we are exposed to as we develop our pallets. Some people may simply have an unpleasant experience and have someone call it “bitter” or “sour” and therefore just lump those terms into an “unpleasant bucket” in their mind, which might make them feel the same. Speaking for myself, for some strange reason, I love sour things. But to me, there is a parallel between sourness and acidity. That being said, they may not be directly proportional to each other. Tannic acid, vs citric acid, vs malic acid all create very different experiences to me. Being able to understand how to perceive those different acids and use them as descriptive terms also depends on the other person having similar ability to different them beyond just “good” or “bad”. If perhaps that person has not ever had a really dry, tannic wine, or black tea, they may not know the drying / mouth coating effect, or even if they have, but don’t realize its tannic acid that causes that, then that type of term is not really relevant to them.