When buying coffee in Vietnam, you may sometimes find yourself surrounded by complicated coffee terms that are hard to fully grasp. As with any field of industry, there is a technical vocabulary of terminology or jargon associated specifically with it, and the coffee industry is obviously no different. To help you along, we have compiled a list of key coffee terminology as a “coffee dictionary”. Here are some of the most common coffee terms and definitions you might come across when researching and sourcing coffee from Vietnam. This coffee glossary will help you to feel like someone who’s “in the know.” We will continue to update the list periodically, so if you have any suggestions or questions, your help is welcomed and necessary.
In order to provide a deeper insight on Vietnam’s Coffee Market, we’ve created this series along with tips on how to select the best beans from Vietnam for your business. Jump to:
- A start-to-finish guide to coffee beans market in Vietnam
- Best types of coffee beans to source in Vietnam
- How to find wholesale coffee suppliers in Vietnam
- Essential guide to checking the quality of Vietnam’s green coffee beans
- 4 Most common mistakes when sourcing green coffee beans from Vietnam
A
- Acidy (Acid): Vị chua
A desirable flavour that is sharp and pleasing, but not biting. The term ‘acid’ as used by the coffee trade refers to coffee that is smooth and rich, and has verve, snap and life as against heavy, old and mellow taste notes.
- Acrid: Vị chát
A burnt flavour that is sharp, bitter and perhaps irritating.
- Ambers: Hạt màu vàng
Smooth yellowish beans caused by soil conditions.
- Astringent: Vị hơi đắng
A taste that causes puckering and a bitter impression.
- Aftertaste: Hậu vị
A taste that remains in the mouth longer than usual after eating or drinking.
- Aroma: Mùi thơm
Usually, pleasant-smelling substances with the characteristic odour of coffee. Chemically, they are aldehydes, ketones, esters, volatile acids, phenols, etc.
- Aged Coffee: Hạt cà phê lâu năm
Coffee beans that have remained in the warehouses for several years, which, at best, have reduced the acidity and increased the body.
B
- Baggy
An undesirable taint, resembling the smell of a bag made from jute. Often observed in coffees that have been stored for long periods under unsuitable conditions.
- Baked
Generally unpleasant characteristic. Sign of coffee having been over-roasted or roasted too slowly.
- Balanced or round
Acidity and body are both present to the right extent.
- Bitter: Đắng
When strong, an unpleasant, sharp taste; biting like quinine. Similar to acidity, but lacking smoothness.
- Body: Thể trạng
Body is the perceived thickness of brewed coffee on the tongue. Descriptions can range from “watery”, “thin”, or “light”; to “medium”; to “full”, “heavy”, “thick”, or “syrupy
- Black beans: Hạt đen
Caused by harvesting immature beans or gathering them after they have dropped to the ground. Blacks are often taken as the yardstick for rating a defect count.
- Bland or neutral: nhạt
Tasting smooth and flavourless, lacking coffee flavour and characteristics. However, this is not necessarily always a negative comment.
- Bleached beans: Hạt mất màu
Colorless beans, often caused by drying too rapidly or over-drying. Also known as soapy and faded beans, usually associated with mechanical drying.
- Blotchy beans
The result of uneven drying.
- Brown beans: Hạt nâu
Brown in colour. May be caused by faulty fermentation, improper washing or over drying – see also ‘foxy’.
C
- Coated beans
Beans to which the silverskin adheres. Caused by drought, over-bearing or harvesting of unripe cherries.
- Crushed beans: Hạt nát, dập
Pulper-damaged beans, which often split and fade. Also caused by manual pounding of dry cherry to separate beans from husk.
- Carbolic, chemical
Self-explanatory. Workers who have had wounds on legs treated with disinfectant and have then worked in tanks can cause this type of flavour. Certain emulsions in the manufacture of sacks are also a problem.
- Carmelized
Burnt-like flavour; carmelized sugar flavour. Usually associated with spray-dried instant coffee, but sometimes found in roasted coffee.
- Common, commonish
Poor liquor, lacking acidity but with full body. Usually associated with coated raw beans and softs and pales in roast.
D
- Decaffeinated: Khử caffeine
Coffee with more than 97% of its caffeine removed in order to avoid as much as possible the damages that caffeine could produce to the people who did not tolerate it. Decaffeinated beans have a much darker appearance and give off little chaff when roasting. Decafs will roast differently than regular coffees because of their altered state; in most roasting methods, they will roast faster than regular beans.
- Defect: Lỗi
A defect refers to specific preparation problems with the green coffee, or a flavor problem found in the cupping process. Bad seeds in the green coffee sample are termed defects, and scored against the coffee to determine it’s grade. Also, defect flavors are those found in cupping the coffee, and described by a host of unfavorable terms, such as Skunky, Dirty, Cappy, Soapy, Animal-like, Sour, etc. Roast problems can produce defect flavors, as well as poor sorting or preparation of the coffee, mistakes in transportation and storage, problems at the wet mill, bad picking of the fruit or problems going back to the tree itself.
- Discoloured beans: Hạt mất màu
Often pulper-damaged. Other causes are contact with earth, metal and foul water as well as damage after drying and beans left over in fermenting tanks (see also ‘stinkers’).
- Drought-affected beans
Either coated or misshapen, pale and light in weight.
- Dull, unnatural coloured beans
Due to faulty drying, often associated with metal contamination.
E
- Ears
Part of a broken elephant bean.
- Earthy beans: Hạt có mùi đất, đá
Smell of earth, caused by collecting beans fallen on bare ground.
- Elephant beans
A generic aberration resulting in two beans being joined together – usually deformed and likely to break up during processing/roasting (see also ‘ears’, above).
- Extraction: chiết tách
It is the time of coffee drop to the cup. The time of extraction of an espresso must be between 25 and 30 seconds.
F
- Faded beans
Beans from old crop or dried too rapidly.
- Fermented: Lên men
Chemical flavour caused by enzymes on the green coffee sugars. Very unpleasant odour and taste. In its strongest form sometimes referred to as ‘hidey’ referring to smell of untreated animal hides.
- Flaky beans: hạt nhỏ
Usually very thin, light and ragged (see also ‘drought-affected’, ‘lights’ and ‘ragged’).
- Floats or floaters/lights
Under-developed, hollow beans – the fruit will float in water and is ‘floated off’ during wet processing. In washed coffee a sign of inadequate grading during wet processing.
- Foul
Objectionable liquor often similar to rotten coffee pulp. Sometimes the most advanced stage of fruity and sour coffees. Causes are mostly bad factory preparation or the use of polluted water. It must be noted that one badly discoloured bean is sufficient to give a foul cup to an otherwise good liquor.
- Foxy beans
Rust or reddish coloured, a result either of harvesting overripe, sometimes yellow, cherries, delays in pulping, improper fermentation or faulty washing.
- Freeze-dried coffee
Soluble coffee, product of freeze drying, which is the ideal process to preserve the attributes of flavor, aroma and perfect balance of coffee, and which consists in freezing the liquid extract of coffee. Once frozen, it is introduced into a vacuum chamber to separate the water by sublimation. In this way the water is removed from the solid state to the ambient gas without passing through the liquid state.
- Fruity
First stage of sourness. Caused by overripe and yellow cherry or by fermentation with too many skins.
G
- Grading
Classification of beans according to size and shape. The beans are sorted using sieves (screens) into the following categories: AA, plantation A, Screen 18/20, AB, screen 16, C, Brokens, E, Elephants, Peaberry. Check out the grading size chart we use in Vietnam
- Green, water-damaged
Self-explanatory – usually brought about by dry parchment or hulled coffee becoming wet.
- Green, greenish
Flavour suggestive of hay. More common in early pickings. In some coffees this flavour is lost a few weeks after curing. Seldom found in coffees which have been thoroughly dried.
- Grassy
A very pronounced green flavour can be most unpleasant.
- Grounds: xay
The remains of the coffee after the extraction process.
H
- Hail-damaged beans
Show blackish circular marks on the oval side of the bean.
- Harsh
A harshness of body. Coffee of immature raw appearance (but not necessarily from green cherry) frequently has a harsh taste. Drought-stricken or over-bearing trees producing mottled cherry frequently give this flavour.
L
- Light bean
Bean the specific weight of which is below normal – caused by drought or die-back.
M
- Mottled beans
Are blotched, spotty or stained. Usually due to uneven drying.
- Musty (mouldy) beans
Partial or wholly discoloured, whitish fur-like colour and texture. Show mould growth visible by the naked eye or evidence of mould attack.
- Musty or mouldy
Self-explanatory. Caused by piling or bagging very wet parchment or by dry parchment getting wet. (See ‘musty’, under Green or raw coffee, above.)
N
- Natural
Natural characteristic is the full body, slight bitterness indicative of natural processed coffee. It is a negative characteristic of a fully washed coffee.
- Neutral: trung hoà
No predominant characteristics – can make a good base for blending.
O
- Onion flavour
Often bordering on foul. Associated with the use of badly polluted and stagnant water.
- Origin: nguồn gốc
The name with which it is denominated to the place from where a coffee comes. One speaks of Origins when it is meant that it is a coffee of a single origin, that is not the fruit of a mixture with others.
- Overripe: chín quá
Brownish-yellow appearance; also known as foxy.
P
- Peaberry
A single oblong or ovaloid roundish bean – a result of only one bean developing in a cherry instead of the usual two.
- Processing: sơ chế
Wet/washed/fully washed process: sơ chế ướt
Coffee beans are removed from their cherries by mechanical pulping, leaving intact just the muselage (a thin layer of sugars) and a small amount of fruit. They are then soaked in water (fermented) to break down the muselage before being flushed with clean water. The result is a clean, fresh taste (for example, mandarin rather than plum) that’s more acidic and more complex. Think fresh fruit, not stewed fruit flavours. Adam Marley, of Adelaide coffee roaster Monastery, sometimes describes processed coffees in terms of colours. In this case, green and yellow.
Dry/natural process: sơ chế khô
Whole cherries are laid out in the sun and regularly turned, allowing the fruit to wither and dry naturally. Natural process coffees have a bigger body, lower acidity, more chocolate-y, less clean and a much fruitier profile. But more stewed or ripe fruit than fresh fruit flavours. They can be funky, potentially. Imagine colours such as blue and purple.
Semi washed/honey/pulped natural process: sơ chế mật ong
This balance between wet and dry process sees the outer skin of the cherry removed by pulping, leaving some of the muselage intact. Fruit is then dried in the sun before milling. This produces chocolate-y, nutty, honey-like flavours, sometimes a little funky. In terms of colours: orange and red.
- Pulper-nipped
Bean damaged by incorrect setting of the pulping knives – can become discoloured through oxidation during fermentation and may produce off-flavours.
- Pungent: hăng, cay
A taste sensation of overall bitterness of brew. A prickly, stinging, or piercing sensation not necessarily unpleasant.
Q
- Quakers: hạt lỗi
Blighted and undeveloped beans – show up as roast defects.
R
- Ragged: rời rạc, không đều
This description often refers to drought-affected beans – harvesting a mixture of mature and immature cherries results in beans having a ragged appearance.
- Rioy or Phenolic
A taste with medicinal odour and off notes, slightly iodized phenolic or carbolic. Cannot be hidden by blending – always returns.
- Rubbery
Odour and taste of rubber. Usually present in fresh robustas.
S
- Stinkers
Beans which are over-fermented owing to improper cleaning of pulpers, fermenting tanks and washing channels.
- Sour, sourish: chua
Unpleasant flavour, suggestive of rotting coffee pulp. Caused by faulty factory work, improper fermentation resulting in a continuation of the fermentation process during early stages of drying, overripe and yellow cherry, or delayed drying causing a heating of the coffee, excess fermentation with many skins. Discoloured pulper- nipped beans are a frequent cause.
- Strong
Unbalanced liquor where body predominates to the point of being tainted.
T
- Taint
A term used to denote the presence of flavours that are foreign to good clean liquor, but which cannot be clearly defined or placed in any category. It is often described as an offtaste or peculiar flavour for lack of a clear definition. Where the foreign flavour can be defined it is, of course, named accordingly.
- Thin
Lacking body.
- Twisty
A liquor which, although not directly unclean, is suspect and may become unclean.
- Three-cornered beans
Semi-peaberry in character. (see also ‘peaberry’)
U
- Unclean
Self-explanatory. A coffee which has an undefined unclean taste.
W
- Withered
Light and shrivelled beans caused by drought or poor husbandry.
- Winey
A fruity taste similar to fresh wine. Not necessarily unpleasant when the taste is in the background.
- Woody
A coarse common flavour peculiar to old crop coffee. Coffee stored at low altitudes with high temperatures and humidity (as in many ports of shipment) tends to become woody rather quickly. Storage at higher altitudes where feasible or in temperate climates is therefore recommended for long-term warehousing. All coffees, however, become woody if stored for too long.
In order to provide a deeper insight on Vietnam’s Coffee Market, we’ve created this series along with tips on how to select the best beans from Vietnam for your business. Jump to:
- A start-to-finish guide to coffee beans market in Vietnam
- Best types of coffee beans to source in Vietnam
- How to find wholesale coffee suppliers in Vietnam
- Essential guide to checking the quality of Vietnam’s green coffee beans
- 4 Most common mistakes when sourcing green coffee beans from Vietnam
- Everything you need to know about Vietnam’s specialty coffee
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