I recently read a report that said the last of your senses to start working when you wake up is the sense of smell. Yeah right. Not when the smell of freshly brewed coffee is making its way through the air and into my suite.
Doesn’t matter if it is first thing in the morning or last thing at night, freshly brewed coffee just has that special scent for me that always makes me smile. Some might have other favorite scents as I surely do but this one hits home. Baby powder. Jasmine. Rosemary. All good stuff but none hold a match to freshly brewed coffee.
Maybe it is the thought of the joy of starting a new day or warming up on a cold day but like I said it does not matter if it is morning or night or hot or cold. Though maybe the smell triggers the memories of those things. Ok, now we are getting into Tony Robbins territory huh?
I recently discovered freshly brewed coffee scented candles in case anyone was wondering what to get me for my birthday or for my un-birthday as The White Rabbit from Alice In Wonderland would prefer.
It seems that roasted coffee contains over 800 Volatile Molecular Species, many of which contribute significantly to coffee’s aroma. For comparison, wine only has about 150. With the right amount of heat in the roasting process, the Maillard Reaction or ‘browning” creates over 500 of these as the amino acids and carbonyl / carbohydrates, which are the reducing sugars found naturally in the green been, react to form new aromatic compounds.
We know that aldehydes are the most delicate and volatile aroma compounds created in the roasted coffee process. These compounds give coffee its sweet, caramel, fruit / floral-like aromas, however they are easily oxidized, which is to say, changed into acid and water or dissipated into the air especially when subject to the grinding process.
They say the best Arabica coffee beans, the staple of specialty cafes, typically have a higher concentration of these aldehydes and also contain more of a “butter” aroma. Both of these desirable and flavorsome compounds are readily lost due to dissipation into the air. This loss is accelerated in the grinding process where 50% of these delicate aromas are lost within about 15 minutes of grinding, which is why coffee in cafes often smells far better than it tastes.
Whatever. Just remember the words of Henry Ward Beecher when he said “No coffee can be good in the mouth that does not first send a sweet offering of odor to the nostrils.” I guess he forgot there is coffee in tiramisu.
What do you think of the smell of freshly brewed coffee? Or do you have a special scent you prefer? Share your thoughts in the comments. Would love to hear from you.
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