· By Jos Whettingsteel
Tasting Notes Are Mostly Nonsense
Let's Talk About the Elephant in the Coffee Bag
You're standing in a cafe or scrolling online, trying to pick a coffee. You flip the bag over and read: "Notes of bergamot, candied kumquat, and wet stone."
Cool. What does that mean?
If your answer is "absolutely nothing," welcome to the club. You're not the problem. The label is.
Tasting Notes Weren't Written for You
Here's something most roasters won't tell you. Tasting notes were designed for professional cuppers. These are the people who taste 30+ coffees in a row, slurping from spoons, spitting into buckets, scoring each one against a standardised flavour wheel developed by the Specialty Coffee Association.
That system works brilliantly for what it was built for. Grading green coffee. Comparing lots at origin. Communicating between buyers and farmers across different countries and languages.
It was never built to help you pick a bag for your Saturday morning flat white.
Somewhere along the way, the specialty coffee industry took a professional grading tool and slapped it on consumer packaging. Then acted surprised when people felt confused. Or worse, stupid.
The Dirty Secret About How Tasting Notes Get Written
Here's an insider thing that might annoy you. A lot of tasting notes are written before the coffee is even roasted.
Roasters receive information about origin, altitude, variety, and processing method. A washed Ethiopian Yirgacheffe at 1,900 metres? That's going to say "floral, citrus, stone fruit" almost every time. A natural Brazilian from Cerrado? "Chocolate, nuts, dried fruit."
These are educated guesses based on what that type of coffee typically produces. They're not wrong, exactly. But they're not describing what's in your specific bag either. They're describing a category.
It's the wine industry all over again. "Hints of forest floor and crushed violets" when you just want to know: is it dry or sweet? Will I like it?
The Mum Test
We have a simple rule at BOM. If your mum can't picture the taste from the description, it's useless.
That's not a dig at anyone's mum. It's a filter. Can a normal person who drinks coffee every day read this and think "yeah, I'd like that" or "nah, not for me"? If the answer is no, the description has failed. Full stop.
"Notes of bergamot" fails the mum test. Most people have never consciously tasted bergamot. They've had Earl Grey tea, but they don't know that's bergamot. So the note communicates nothing.
"Tastes like Coco Pops and vanilla milkshakes" passes the mum test. Everyone knows exactly what that means. Everyone can decide in half a second whether that sounds good.
What We Do Instead
We describe our coffees the way you'd describe them to a mate.
| Industry-Style Tasting Notes | What We Actually Say |
|---|---|
| "Stone fruit, milk chocolate, caramel, balanced acidity" | People Every Day: "Coco Pops and vanilla milkshakes" |
| "Dark chocolate, orange zest, full body, bittersweet finish" | No Sleep Till Brooklyn: "Jaffa cakes dipped in a dark chocolate thickshake" |
| "Cacao nib, malt, dark berry, heavy mouthfeel" | Hyperdrive: "Maltesers melting in a dark chocolate nebula" |
| "Floral, jasmine, bergamot, bright acidity, tea-like" | Something like: "Green tea vibes with a squeeze of lemon" |
Same coffees. Same quality. One version makes you feel like you need a degree. The other makes you want to buy a bag.
Three Things That Actually Help You Pick a Coffee
Forget the flavour wheel. Here's what to look for when you're choosing a bag.
1. Roast level. Light roasts are brighter and more acidic. Dark roasts are heavier and more bitter. Medium sits in the middle. This single piece of information tells you more about how a coffee will taste than 15 tasting notes combined.
2. What it works with. Does it sing with milk? Is it better black? Does it hold up over ice? A coffee that's beautiful as a pour-over might taste like nothing in a latte. Knowing how to use it matters more than knowing it has "notes of nectarine."
3. A comparison you can actually picture. "This tastes like a Tim Tam in liquid form" tells you more than "cacao, malt biscuit, coconut, medium body." One is a flavour. The other is a shopping list.
This Isn't Anti-Specialty Coffee
We need to be clear. We're not saying specialty coffee is pretentious. We roast specialty coffee. We obsess over green bean quality, roast profiles, and extraction. We track every batch. We care deeply about this stuff.
What we're against is gatekeeping. Making people feel like they need to "get it" before they're allowed to enjoy good coffee. The entire point of roasting great coffee is for people to drink it and love it. Not to make them feel inadequate in the supermarket aisle.
You can have incredibly high standards for quality and still describe the result like a human being talking to another human being.
Specialty coffee got so busy signalling to each other that it forgot to talk to the people actually buying the bags.
The Bottom Line
Tasting notes aren't evil. They have a place. That place is professional cuppings, green coffee grading, and conversations between buyers and producers.
On consumer packaging? They're a barrier dressed up as information. They make insiders feel smart and everyone else feel excluded. And coffee is too good and too universal to be exclusive.
Next time you're picking a bag, skip the "candied kumquat" and look for something that actually tells you what to expect. Roast level. Brew method. A flavour you can picture without a Google search.
Want to see what we mean? Check out our blends and read the descriptions. No bergamot. No wet stone. Just coffee that sounds like it tastes.
Keep Reading
- What Single Origin Actually Means — If tasting notes are out, here's what actually matters when picking a bag.
- The Plunger Is Underrated — The simplest way to brew great coffee. No pretension required.
- How to Store Coffee So It Actually Stays Fresh — One canister and a dark cupboard. That's the whole system.
- Brew Guide — Our full brewing reference for every method.
