You've picked up a bag of coffee. The tasting notes say: blueberry, dark chocolate, brown sugar.
You brew it. You take a sip.
And you think, "hang on, where's the blueberry?"
This is one of the most common points of confusion in specialty coffee, and honestly, it's so fair. So let's clear it up.
There Are Two Very Different Kinds of "Flavoured" Coffee.
This is the part that doesn't get talked about enough.
If you walk into a mainstream grocery store, you'll find bags of coffee with names like Cinnamon Bun Roast, Dark Chocolate, or Maple Glazed Donut. These coffees are intentionally flavoured, thanks to flavouring oils added to the beans after roasting to create a specific taste.
But this distinct 'flavour' is not what specialty coffee roasters are after. We're not on a mission to add unrealistic flavours. Instead, we're on a mission to unlock what's already locked inside the coffee bean upon reaching our Canmore roastery.
So What Are Tasting Notes, Actually?
In the world of specialty coffee, tasting notes are a language in themselves. A shorthand for describing sensory experience that's actually quite complex.
At Eclipse, we have the tasting notes written on each of our bags. The flavour profiles, whether light and fruity, or warm and chocolatey, vary across our three distinct coffee categories.
When we write orange, dried apple & raisin on our Gahahe Burundi bag, we're not telling you the coffee tastes like you dropped a piece of dried fruit in your cup.
What we're really saying is that the natural compounds present in that particular coffee lot, which were developed over months of growing at 1,650–1,900 metres above sea level in Kayanza Province, Burundi, and drawn out through the roasting process, share flavour characteristics with those key things.
Think about how we talk about wine. A Pinot Noir described as having notes of cherry and earth doesn't contain cherries. No one added soil to the barrel. Those descriptors exist because our brains map unfamiliar flavours onto familiar ones, and cherry and earth happen to be the closest match for what's happening in that glass.
Coffee works the same way.
Why Does Coffee Taste Like Anything Other Than Coffee?
Let's talk about it.
Where the beans come from
Coffee starts life as a fruit. The coffee bean is actually the seed of a coffee cherry! A small, bright, sweet fruit that grows on trees across the equatorial belt. Everything about how that cherry develops (the altitude, the rainfall, the soil, the temperature swings between day and night, the variety of the plant itself) shapes the chemical compounds inside the seed.
The Coffee Bean Processing Method
Then comes processing. Take our Finca El Poema from Colombia. Processed as whole cherries sealed into airtight vessels, fermenting without oxygen, then dried with the fruit still intact. No additives, no pulping. Just native fermentation doing its work. That process is exactly why you get grapefruit brightness and a sparkling wine finish in the cup, and the result of how Sebastian chose to handle his harvest.
You can read more about this in our post on coffee processing methods →
How the Coffee Beans are Roasted
Then comes roasting. The roaster's job is to apply heat in a specific and intentional way to develop those existing compounds without burning them away completely. We call this precision roasting. Too dark, and everything gets obscured by bitterness. Done well, roasting gives those flavour characteristics somewhere to go, and they emerge as tasting notes, in all their glory.
Why Don't I Always Taste the Notes on the Bag?
Honestly? There's a few reasons.
Your Brewing Method
A pour over highlights brightness and fruit notes. A French press brings out more body and earthiness. The same coffee can taste quite different depending on how you make it.
Water Temperature
If the water temperature is too hot, the coffee tastes bitter. Too cool, and it ends up flat and underdeveloped. Getting the temperature right makes a bigger difference than most people realize.
Freshness
Coffee past its roast date loses its more delicate flavour compounds first, starting with the bright, fruity, floral notes. This results in a flatter, more generic cup. One of the reasons we put a roast date on every single bag we sell.
Your Palate
Tasting notes are perceptible, but identifying them takes practice. If you've spent years drinking coffee without actively trying to identify what you taste, your palate likely hasn't been trained to expect these things. The more you drink specialty coffee, the more those notes start to reveal themselves.
How to Use Tasting Notes to Find Your Perfect Cup of Coffee.
Now that you know what tasting notes actually are, here's how to use them at Eclipse:
So, Here's the Honest Answer
Tasting notes definitely aren't a lie. But they're not a promise that your coffee will taste like a chocolate bar or a fruit salad either. They're more of a map, or an honest description of what's naturally present in the bean, written by people who've tasted a lot of coffee (like our roastery team) and are trying to help you understand what you're drinking.
They're a way of telling the story of a coffee. Where it came from. How it was grown. How it was processed.
When we describe the Joia Rara as having notes of strawberry, citrus and almond, we're also telling you this is an anaerobic micro lot from the Barbosa family in Cerrado Mineiro, Brazil. That the cherries were sealed whole for 96 hours, fermenting naturally without additives. That the Acauã varietal grown at 950-1,100m above sea level naturally tends toward sweetness and fruit.
Every coffee has a unique character. One that's grown at origin and unlocked through precision roasting, but never added artificially.
And if you want to start finding them, we recommend trying your coffee black, using fresh beans, brewing it as recommended, and giving your palate a little time to develop.
Come in and try the Joia Raraas a pour over. That's the fastest way to understand what we mean!
Eclipse Coffee Roasters is a specialty coffee roaster based in Canmore, Alberta. We roast every batch in-house at our Railway Ave roastery and put a roast date on every bag. Browse our current coffee selection →
