Your Flavor Road Map: What 1,761 Single Origin Coffees Tell You About Taste

Practical Moves for Roasters

• Audit Your Label Language
  Compare your current labels to the top-frequency list. If every coffee leans on chocolate and caramel, customers may skim over differences. Introduce precise sub-terms: ganache, cocoa nib, molasses.
• Leverage Lift to Position Coffees
  Use high-lift notes to reinforce origin authenticity. A Kenyan with “grapefruit” instantly reads as classic.
• Break Stereotypes Intentionally
  Use a tasting note associated with one origin to describe a coffee from a different origin (if you can justify it).  For example, an Ethiopian coffee with a Peanut Butter tasting note will be exceedingly rare. Try to make it work.
• Guide Customers with Clear Hierarchy
  Keep the first note broad, the second precise, the third playful. Example: Chocolate / Strawberry Jam / Hibiscus. It tells a complete story without overwhelming.

How Coffee Drinkers Can Use the Same Insights

• Read Past the Headline
  Two coffees can list “chocolate.” A second note of hazelnut says nutty; plum hints stone fruit; blood orange signals tangy acidity.
• Use Origin Shortcuts—But Stay Curious
  Ethiopia often means berries or florals, yet a honey-processed Ethiopian might taste like peach cobbler. When you see a note that feels off-beat, try it.
• Taste Pairs Consciously
  Brew a flight: one coffee with caramel + chocolate, another with caramel + orange. Spot how a single swapped note flips the cup profile. Your palate grows sharper.
• Match Brewing Method to Flavor Goals
  French press accentuates chocolate and caramel body. V60 heightens citrus and florals. Think of brew gear as a flavor dial, not just a habit.

The Edge of Reality

As tasting notes move away from the universal terms (chocolate, caramel, etc.) and toward rare or highly specific descriptors, the more subjective tasting becomes, in our opinion.  Everyone knows generally what to expect if a coffee is described by “chocolate”.  A roaster with average tasting skills probably isn’t going to misclassify a coffee with bright acidic citrus notes as “chocolately”.  (Though it’s not a guarantee that all tasters will settle on chocolate or any other term consistently for the same coffee.) On the other end of the spectrum, here are a few of the weirder notes we saw:

• 3 Musketeers
• 90’s orange drink
• Apple Jacks
• Blue raspberry
• Jolly Rancher

At this end of the spectrum, it becomes more abstract, which might seem counterintuitive.  But a coffee clearly doesn’t literally taste like a Jolly Rancher.  So what about it led a taster to describe it that way? Directionally, most people could probably guess at a high level what sort of profile evokes “Jolly Rancher”.  But despite the very specific note, it’s very hard to land on anything precise. 

For roasters, be careful with these fringe terms.  They are entertaining to read, and must be fun conversations in the tasting room. But balance trying to be fun and unique with the actual point of tasting notes in the first place, which is to help steer consumers toward coffees they will like.

What’s Next?

Our dataset updates quarterly and we have been tracking tasting notes for thousands of coffees since 2021. We’ll keep tracking the numbers, but you don’t have to wait. Use the findings now:

• If you roast: Refresh label copy, pilot an outlier lot, and keep it relatable to an average coffee drinker.
• If you brew at home: Hunt for high-lift notes to widen your taste vocabulary.

When grounded in data, tasting notes become a practical compass for everyone along the coffee chain. Next time you pick up a bag—or print a label—let those notes guide your adventure.

Curious about deeper cuts (processing method, price tier, or varietal analysis)? Reach out, and we’ll dig into the numbers together.