How to use a coffee flavor wheel

A flavor wheel is a vocabulary laid out as a circle. General terms sit at the center and get more specific toward the rim, so the wheel works like a decision tree you can read in any direction. It solves the most common tasting problem: you can tell a coffee is "fruity", but you can't find the word for which fruit.

We describe the wheels here rather than reproduce them. Use the official versions, linked below.

The Coffee Taster's Flavor Wheel was first published by the Specialty Coffee Association of America in 1995. In 2016 it was rebuilt in collaboration with World Coffee Research. The new version rests on two pieces of research:

• The WCR Sensory Lexicon, which defines coffee flavor attributes with reference samples and intensity scales. The second edition (2017) identifies 110 flavor, aroma and texture attributes.
• A sorting study published in the Journal of Food Science (Spencer, Sage, Velez and Guinard, 2016). Seventy-two coffee experts sorted the lexicon's attributes into groups, without tasting, and the researchers used cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling to decide which terms belong together and how close they are. That structure became the wheel's layout.

The wheel is licensed under Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, which means non-commercial use, with attribution, and no modified versions. You can download it from the SCA.

The SCA's own guidance boils down to "start at the center, and work outward." In practice:

1. Taste first, then look. Form your own impression before the wheel suggests words to you.
2. Find the family. Near the center, pick the broad category that fits best, for example fruity, nutty, floral or roasted.
3. Narrow down. Move outward to the next tier. Fruity might become berry, citrus or stone fruit.
4. Stop when you're unsure. "Citrus" is a perfectly good note. A wrong specific note is worse than a correct general one.
5. Use the gaps and the colors. On the SCA wheel, segments that touch are closely related and a gap marks a looser relationship. The colors are meant to match the terms, so a taste you would call "something brown" points you to a particular side of the wheel.
6. Check against a reference. If you think it's lemon, smell a lemon. The WCR lexicon gives references for many attributes.
7. Repeat for each attribute. Use it for fragrance, aroma, flavor and aftertaste separately; they don't always agree.

• Counter Culture Coffee's Coffee Taster's Flavor Wheel (2013) was made by the roaster's coffee-buying team. It also advises starting in the center, and Counter Culture offers it free for non-commercial use with credit.
• The Coffee Character Wheel (AgriFutures Australia publication 23-227, 2023) was developed by Southern Cross University with Processing Methods Bootcamp and the Australian coffee industry. It covers character, such as acidity, body and finish, rather than just flavors.

The Coffee Tasting app uses vocabularies adapted from these last two, credited in the app. It shows them as lists, not as a wheel graphic.

• Reading the wheel before tasting. You will "find" whatever word you just read.
• Going too specific too fast. Beginners jump to the rim and pick the most exotic word. Experienced tasters often stay one level in.
• Treating the wheel as a scoring tool. It tells you what you taste, not how good it is. Quality is a separate judgment; see the cupping score explainer.
• Mixing up taste and smell. Many wheel terms are aromatics, perceived through the nose. Sour, sweet, bitter and salty are tastes. See coffee tasting vocabulary.

Coffee Tasting turns the "center outward" method into a picker. On any field you start at a broad family, for example Fruit, open it to Citrus, and land on Clementine, or stop at Citrus if that's as far as you can go. More than 250 flavor and character terms are built in, and you can add your own words.