Preparing the Perfect Cup

Prepare your senses for an experience. Premium Arabica beans start each perfect cup of Millstone^® Coffee. Once your coffee is ground, you're ready to begin brewing.

Making Sense of Your Senses

Much like wine tasting, coffee tasting (or cupping) is a technique used to evaluate the flavor profile of coffee. Our master cuppers have spent years honing their senses to help them select the best blends and roasts for Millstone Coffees. Here are the four characteristics they look for when sampling coffee:

• Acidity refers to the pleasant and sharp quality of coffee that keeps it from tasting muted. It is a desirable characteristic that shouldn't be confused with the bitter connotation its name suggests, and can be measured as a sensation of dryness on the back of the palate and under the edges of the tongue.
• Body is the overall feeling of coffee in the mouth. The tongue perceives it as heaviness, thickness, and richness.
• Aroma is the combination of smell and taste, contributing to the flavor's subtle distinctions.
• Flavor is the total impression of coffee on the palate, and is a combination of acidity, body, and aroma.

Once you understand these basic tasting characteristics, you will be able to distinguish the flavors of the varying roast levels:

• Light roasts provide a smooth taste, mild flavor, and peak aroma.
• Medium roasts offer a robust taste and full flavor, while medium-dark roasts combine a dark, rich taste with a full body.
• Dark roasts are noted for their bold, smoky, bittersweet taste.
• Flavored coffees are usually light roasted to give prominence to the flavor.