Australians love their coffee, and many can barely live without it. According to Statista, we consumed an average of about 2kg of coffee per person in 2022. Yet it’s estimated less than 1% of this coffee is grown in Australia.
Our new research, published in the Journal of Sensory Studies, introduces a world-first coffee character wheel which can be used to describe the unique “terroir” of Australian coffee.
We pored over published literature, online materials and coffee sensory panels to collate a list of 679 unique sensory terms describing coffee’s acidity, mouthfeel and aftertaste. We then narrowed this down to 95 terms, which were arranged onto our wheel.
