The Flavor Wheel Is Biased (Here's Why)

In this episode, I dive into the SCA flavor wheel and explore why I think it's fundamentally biased in how it represents coffee flavors. I break down the structure of the flavor wheel, examining how it dedicates massive sections to fruity, floral, and acidic descriptors while giving surprisingly minimal space to classic coffee characteristics like sweetness, chocolate, and nutty flavors. I question whether this imbalance reflects what coffee actually tastes like or reveals the preferences of those who created it—potentially light roast enthusiasts who value brightness and acidity over traditional coffee profiles.

By listening to this episode, you'll gain a critical perspective on how professional coffee descriptors shape your buying decisions and learn why trusting your own palate matters more than any industry standard. I encourage you to analyze the flavor wheel yourself, compare it to what you actually taste in your coffee, and develop your own framework for understanding what makes coffee enjoyable to you personally, regardless of what the professionals say you should be tasting.

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 2:07 The Purpose Behind Professional Cupping Protocols
• 4:08 Why the Flavor Wheel Is Skewed and Biased
• 6:04 Classic Coffee Flavors Get Minimal Representation
• 8:27 Fruity and Acidic Descriptors Dominate the Wheel
• 10:33 The Sweetness Problem: Hard to Describe
• 13:08 Does the Flavor Wheel Matter for Home Brewers?
• 15:12 Who Created This and What Are Their Preferences?

Transcript

[00:00] When it comes to coffee, do you know that a flavor wheel exists? Maybe you do, maybe you don't. But it doesn't matter if you do or don't. What I mean by that is that mostly everything is dictated by the flavor wheel, SCA flavor wheel. It gives you all the possibilities of what coffee tastes like, the things that we think about when we actually drink our cup of coffee—acidity, sweetness, and everything else in between.

[01:12] But the reason why I bring this up more than anything is because I'm just trying to look at it objectively for what it is and what I see from it and what I understand from it as I am right now. That may change in the next couple of years, next couple of months as we keep talking about coffee, because this is a coffee channel.

[01:39] But when we think about it, if you know the origin stories of the flavor wheel, it's made for roasters and professionals in order to be in line and sync together as they analyze and cup the coffee. And as they do that, they give the descriptors of what this coffee tastes like, what you will probably get when you actually brew your cup of coffee.

[02:19] I have my mostly hate for cupping protocols. Some of it makes really good sense of what they're really trying to do to analyze the coffee, and I'm just trying to see if it's actually special. I get that. But at the end of the day, most people don't really actually drink their coffee that way. And it's more like a glorified French press. Again, a story for another day.

[02:43] But it helps professionals be as accurate and as scientific, as analytical, and less emotions involved about coffee, analyzing coffee, seeing it for what it is, saying why this one is better than this.

[03:08] And it's interesting that sometimes whenever we do talk about coffee, those ratings are supposed to be objective. And I think they are for the most part. But the thing that I'm getting at really is that if you look at the rating and look at what you actually drink and taste, that may be totally different than what you actually feel about that coffee, which is perfectly fine. At the end of the day, it's all about being honest with each other, with ourselves and all that stuff. But again, if you really look at the flavor wheel for what it is and how it actually goes about expressing coffee, it's skewed. It's biased.

[04:00] I think it is honest, but it's one of those things to the point where it allows people to have this type of imaginary type of feeling with coffee. What I mean by that is that when you look at the flavor wheel, you'll see defects, letting you know what are defects. And that's again, another story for another day of it being either the actual roasting defect that the roaster has picked up that he or she has done in the roast.

[04:55] And then you keep going and then you start looking at different things like rubber, wood, burnt, pipe tobacco, chemical, musty. And then it has a decent gamut of what that really is. And when you're actually drinking a cup of coffee, which is extremely helpful, it lets you know if that product is good or not, if we're going to actually base our objectivity on that.

[05:44] But as I keep looking down the flavor wheel, I start to see things that are a little, I wouldn't say off, but something that I just realized is that when you look at the classic flavors of coffee—nutty, cocoa, caramel, and all that—it's a very small slew of descriptors. Cocoa, dark chocolate, chocolate, different variations of nutty, cocoa, almond, hazelnut, peanuts, those type of things that you experience in some coffees.

[06:26] But then when you look at it again and kind of be objective with it, you'll see sweetness. And it's kind of weird that sweetness, which I think is a very critical part in coffee, balancing it out as much as you can, is not that big of a section. Or is that how we look at sweetness? Because some of the descriptors are brown sugar, vanilla, overall sweetness, sweetness aroma.

[07:03] It's just funny to me. They didn't get too crazy and wacky with what they glean as sweetness. And it doesn't keep going down the wheel. It just kind of stops from there, which is perfectly fine. I'm sure this took a long time to actually come up with, because at the end of the day, it's about coffee, coffee flavors and all that good stuff, right?

[07:29] But then when you start moving down the flavor wheel, the expressive part of it, the acidity, the fruity and all that stuff—floral, black tea, and then it goes to floral, then rose, jasmine, all that stuff. And then fruity—berries, dried fruit, other fruit, citrus fruit, sour. And then it goes to the different acidity levels as you keep going down.

[08:23] But it's expressive. It gives coffee this type of personality that is possible to get all this stuff with it. And yes, a coffee doesn't really skew one way or the other. It has the variations of all this stuff here and there. But when you look at this flavor wheel, it's just very skewed and biased in the way that it presents itself.

[09:02] What can you do about that? Because as much as the flavor wheel isn't for people or non-professionals, at the end of the day, that's what's put on the bags. That's what's put on the labels. That's how that actual importer or that roaster expresses themselves when it comes to that coffee.

[09:30] And when you sit down and think about it, you're affected by it. Because at the end of the day, you're essentially trusting somebody else, a professional with the buying power that you do have when you actually buy your cup of coffee.

[09:56] I guess what I'm saying here is that fruit gets a big part of that wheel. Acidity and different variations of it gets a real big part of that wheel. And when you start to think about sweetness and chocolate and all the classic things that we think about coffee, there's not that many descriptors. And probably that's just the case for what it is.

[10:34] But it seems a little misleading. I'm not saying that it needs to have the exact same descriptors because they're basing all of this off of what you will more than likely taste in a coffee. But then what it does too is that you almost get a sense of is this coffee actually fruity? Is it actually balanced? That's really what I'm getting or trying to understand coffee even more.

[11:14] Sweetness is something that I believe is hard to describe as you can see in actual flavor wheel. A very skewed little piece of the flavor wheel is devoted to sweetness. Yes, it has descriptors, but when you think about one of them being vanilla, how do you really get there with sweetness? How do you think about vanilla? Do you think about vanilla extract or do you think about it in the case of vanilla ice cream? That's pretty sweet, I can get it from there. A soft sweetness, something that doesn't linger as much depending on your palate, depending on the way you look at things.

[12:16] But sweetness is just sweetness for the most part. And I think that's the reason why we have a hard time actually getting that sweetness out of coffee or understanding it or how it's evident in the coffee. Because the amount of actual dedication that they have given to this whole thing as it relates to tasting coffee for what it is, is almost like just a dump type of thing.

[12:53] So that's kind of what I think about the flavor wheel. Is it impactful? Yeah, it is. I think it tells you a lot about what the coffee is, through professionals, through people who have studied this, who cup coffee all the time, who are in the trenches each and every day.

[13:16] But I think a lot of times to an extent, we are not in the same place as it comes to those professionals who are just drinking it each and every day. We have our gadgets, we have our brewers, we have our accessories, we have our paper filters, we have all this stuff to where we're just trying to bring out the best in the coffee at the end of the day.

[13:45] So I wonder how important it is for most people. Yes, bags has descriptors. It gives you an idea of what you will probably taste. But what I've understand from others is that, that's just the starting place. It's just the start of it all. It's just one of those things to where it doesn't really almost matter what somebody says. Because at the end of the day, they're going to explore it themselves. They're going to see it for what it is. And as they do that and gravitate to that, that's all that matters.

[14:30] So I would advise you to look at the flavor wheel. Analyze it. See how those notes are shown up on your bag of coffee. And then at the end of the day, just make your own determination of what you're tasting. Seeing what you can bring out in the coffee. Because the flavors are there, that coffee is what it is. Especially that bag of coffee that's in front of you. And just enjoy it, I guess.

[15:06] But I do wonder a little bit as I conclude right now, is that I wonder who actually wrote the, who made up the flavor wheel. I wonder if it's lightly roasted coffee drinkers. I wonder if they have a bigger skew, bigger impact in the way that things are actually described.

[15:38] Again, it's one of those things where you're trying to be as objective as possible, trying to see for what it is. But we know how things are run in organizations and all that stuff, right? They can be skewed one way or the other for whatever reason. But I do wonder about the committee and have they come back to the flavor wheel. Have they analyzed it some more? Have they saw some things that they should do better on?

[16:18] I don't know, this is just me talking. It doesn't really matter. At the end of the day, you enjoy the coffee the way you want to. You select it from a light, medium, and dark roast or interesting notes or origin. It doesn't really matter. At the end of the day, it's about you and your palate.

[16:38] The flavor wheel exists, that's great. If it doesn't exist, it doesn't matter. I don't think it's been here that much longer, that long, about 10 years, something like that, or even longer. I don't know. But at the end of the day, it's about you, that cup, and that's it. So talk to you later. Let me know what you think. Bye.