How to Choose Coffee When Tasting Notes Don't Help

Caramel. Dark chocolate. Pecan. Toffee. Maybe a hint of berry. Then a roast level, and a word like body or acidity for good measure.

You read it all, nod along, and buy the same coffee as last time.

You can choose a coffee you'll enjoy without decoding any of that.

Ask a good barista for help and they won't start with altitude or processing. They'll ask how you make your coffee, whether you take milk and what you usually like.

Those few answers do most of the work, so that's where we'll start too.

How do you make your coffee?

Your brewer matters for two reasons.

The first is grind.

Coffee needs to be ground to suit the way it is brewed. Fine for an espresso machine, coarser for a cafetière and somewhere in between for a pour over or filter machine.

The second is taste.

The same coffee can come across quite differently depending on how it is made. An espresso is small and concentrated, so you get a lot of the coffee's character in a few sips. A mug from a cafetière is longer and lighter by comparison.

If you mostly make espresso, or milk based drinks from an espresso machine, keep that in mind as you read on.

If you grind your own beans, whole bean gives you the most say over the grind.

If you don't, ground coffee is a perfectly good choice. Tell us how you brew when you order and we can grind it to suit.

Do you take milk?

Milk changes how a coffee comes across.

It can soften sharper flavours and make chocolate, caramel, toffee and nutty notes feel even rounder and more familiar.

Coffees with plenty of body and deeper roast character also tend to hold their own well once milk is added.

If you mostly drink your coffee black, you'll usually notice more of the coffee's own character, so the tasting notes have a little more to tell you.

And if your coffee ever seems to disappear into the milk, try using a little less milk before you change anything else.

Richer, smoother or sweeter?

This is where your own taste comes in.

Which of these sounds most like a coffee you'd enjoy?

Smooth and familiar.

Nothing that catches you off guard. The sort of coffee you'd happily have every day, with flavours like caramel and chocolate rather than anything unexpected.

Richer and darker.

More roasted character and a little more depth. The sort of cup that still makes itself known once milk goes in.

Sweeter and softer.

Rounder and gentler, with flavours like toffee, milk chocolate and nuts.

There is no right answer.

If you're torn, think back to a coffee you really enjoyed, at home or in a café, and ask yourself which of the three it was closest to.

What do the tasting notes actually tell you?

Tasting notes are clues about the kind of flavours you might notice in the cup.

They are not a promise that everyone will taste exactly the same thing.

People notice different things, and the way you brew a coffee and whether you add milk can both change what stands out.

So if you've never once tasted pecan in a coffee, you haven't done anything wrong.

You don't need to pick out every note in the finished cup for them to be useful.

If chocolate, caramel or toffee sound good to you, that already tells you something.

If fruitier flavours sound more appealing, look in that direction instead.

That's usually all you need from them to choose.

What does roast level tell you?

Roast is another useful clue.

Darker roasts generally bring more of the roast itself into the flavour. Medium roasts can leave a little more room for the coffee's other characteristics to come through.

One is not better than the other.

They suit different people.

Darker does not automatically mean stronger either.

How concentrated your coffee tastes also depends on how much coffee you use compared with the amount of water.

If your cup tastes weak, changing the amount of coffee you use might make a bigger difference than simply buying a darker roast.

Where our coffees fit

Here is how our current coffees line up with those three directions.

Conquered Signature Blend is the smooth and familiar one.

It has smooth caramel and dark chocolate character, a medium dark roast and a full body. It is particularly good with milk and is the sort of coffee that can easily become your everyday cup.

Conquered Dark Roast starts with the same smooth caramel and dark chocolate profile as Signature, but takes the roast darker.

It has the same full body, sweetness and low acidity, with more roast presence and a richer overall cup. If you like the style of Signature but want something darker, this is where to look.

Ascent Espresso Blend is the sweeter one.

Pecan, toffee and milk chocolate sit alongside a natural maple like sweetness and soft acidity. It was made with espresso in mind and works particularly well in flat whites, cappuccinos and lattes.

There is no winner here.

They are three different answers to the same question, and the right one is whichever sounds most like you.

You can see them side by side in our coffees.

What if none of that helps?

Some days you don't want to weigh it all up, and that's fair enough.

The Coffee Finder asks the same sort of questions a barista would.

How do you make your coffee?

How do you take it?

Which sort of flavours sound good?

It then suggests one of our coffees and the grind to go with it.

Your result appears straight away. You don't need to hand over an email address, and you can change your answers whenever you like to see how the recommendation changes.

Whichever way you choose, the first bag tells you something.

If it isn't quite right, you'll know which direction to try next time.

And you'll be choosing with a little more to go on.