A cup of coffee in the morning is an unchanging ritual that allows us to calmly and comfortably tune in to a business mood and enter the rhythm of a new day. But sometimes we want to slightly change the taste we are used to - to make the coffee milder or stronger, to add unusual tastes or, for example, to supplement the drink with chocolate notes.
Coffee is one of the few drinks that allows you to select a bouquet of its tastes individually - so as to get maximum pleasure every day or even have several different recipes - depending on your mood. And for a start, it is enough to master only a few secrets of finding your particular type of coffee.
There are over ninety different types of coffee trees in the world, each of which produces a certain amount of caffeine. But only two varieties of this plant have fruit from which we can get coffee beans to make our favourite drink. These varieties require different conditions to grow and mature, but they are generally produced in many regions of the world. We have a wide range of coffee varieties available from all the major coffee regions of the world - South America, Central America, South Asia and Africa.
The taste nuances of each variety are determined by a huge number of factors, of which the main ones are the climatic features of the region, the mineral composition of the soil and the technology of harvesting and storing the crop. Bouquets of taste and aroma of coffee are typical for each region of growing coffee beans. Therefore, in the first stage of finding your perfect coffee, you should try varieties from different countries and choose a combination of the most attractive regions.
The best known are the varieties of South American coffee manufacturers from countries such as Colombia and Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru, Brazil and Venezuela. Some of their single varieties have even entered the world’s history of coffee. There is practically no sourness in the taste of coffee from this region, the taste is moderately mild, and chocolate notes come forward. Some South American coffees may even taste like a milk chocolate bar.
Central American coffee is recognizable for their bitter and expressive taste: they are less sweet, with a cocoa aftertaste, more likely to resemble dark chocolate.
The taste and aroma of coffee beans from Africa and Asia are largely determined by the climate of the country where they grow. African coffee is as exotic as its place of origin: it is bright, strong and sweet, often with fruity or floral flavours. And coffee from Asia is more influenced by the composition of the volcanic soil, where they grow, so these varieties are stronger, moderately bitter, with a slightly dry aftertaste.
The selection of varieties from a specific region or combination of regions is the first stage of the search, which will allow you to always feel exactly those notes in the drink that will bring you the greatest pleasure. At the same time, professional baristas consider not only the place where coffee beans are grown, but also the level of roasting of the beans, the type and method of preparation of the coffee itself, as well as each stage of the beverage preparation process - the amount of coffee, grinding, water temperature and the nuances of the recipe. This gives a lot of opportunities to experiment and get the most different nuances of taste and aroma of this drink.