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Coffee Glossary

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Wonder what's brewing in the bean business? Here's the latest lingo for any aspiring coffee connoisseur.

Cupping
A precise tasting process, often performed around a revolving circular table, designed to determine the flavor profile—body, acidity, and aroma—of a coffee.

Drip Bar
This tiered unit has filters on the top levelthat drip coffee into cups underneath, while the barista moistens the grounds, waits, adds more water, and stirs.

Fair Trade
A movement to set an international price for coffee beans, intended to enable small farmers to be able to sustain their land and families. Look for "Fair Trade Certified" labels.

Fluid Air-Roaster
A device that releases hot air into the roasting chamber (imagine a popcorn popper) to levitate the beans and prevent them from coming into contact with the hot metal canister, which in traditional drum cooking can scorch a dark roast.

Green Coffee
Beans that have not yet been roasted.

Traditional Organic Coffee
Crops grown without synthetic chemical fertilizers or pesticides.

Roasting
The degree to which the green coffee bean is "cooked," along with the "heat recipe" (how high a temperature is applied and for how long). The roasting brings out or diminishes certain flavor characteristics in the bean. Beans that are less roasted have a tendency toward a bright acidity, like lemon; beans that have been roasted more tend to have a bittersweet quality, like cocoa.Single-Origin Coffee A coffee produced in one geographic area.

Single-Estate Origin Coffee
An unblended coffee made from a single bean that bears the name of its unique grower and tastes distinctively of its region.

Specialty Coffee
Also called gourmet or premium, this variety is made from exceptional beans grown only in ideal climates; these beans often have characteristic flavors shaped by the soil in which they were grown.—F.M.

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