Monday morning, our calendar asks a simple question: what smelled different in yesterday's batch? Before answering, we ask one back at Meteo Koffie: did the batch change, or did the nose? A coffee smell test you can run at home in ten minutes separates the two. It also explains why the first coffee you smell nearly always seems the best.
Coffee smell test: the nose tires first
Last weekend brought two different mornings to Marché de l'Abattoir. Saturday's batches, roasted on 10 October, list the air recorded during roasting on their product pages: 12°C, 85% humidity, clear sky. Sunday at 8 a.m. was colder, 8.9°C against 10.1°C at the same hour on Saturday, with a steady south-west wind at 14-16 km/h and not a drop of rain all day (Open-Meteo data for Brussels). Laurent reads the air every morning and adjusts the flame and timing on Golden so the flavour target stays the same.
What gets forgotten is the person standing next to the drum. Sunday is the second day in a row of smoke, warm beans and roasting smell. And the nose does what it does when you walk into a bakery: for the first minute the bread is everywhere, a few minutes later you barely notice it. That is olfactory adaptation. The brain turns down a smell that stops changing, so a new one can get through.
Hence our rule: a "different" smell noticed on Sunday afternoon at Golden gets checked again on Monday, with a rested nose, next to a bag from Saturday's batch. Only then do we say the batch is different.
The jar of beans at the perfume counter and the coffee smell test
Many perfume shops keep a jar of coffee beans on the counter. The idea is to sniff them between fragrances and "reset" your nose. Researchers at Beloit College tested this in 2011 (Grosofsky, Haupert and Versteeg, Perceptual and Motor Skills). Students smelled several fragrances, then coffee beans, lemon slices or plain air, and then had to pick the new fragrance out of a set. The coffee beans helped as much as the lemon and as much as the air.
That result is useful right away: coffee is one more strong smell piled on the others. For a tired nose, a break in fresh air does the same job, for free.
The coffee smell test in five steps, at home
You need two different coffees, or two bags of the same origin with different roast dates, two small jars with lids and a watch.
- Put a spoonful of whole beans in each jar, close them and wait 10 minutes. Write A and B on the lids.
- Step out of the kitchen for a minute or stand by an open window. No coffee on the stove and no scented soap on your hands during the test.
- Open A, two short sniffs, close it. Thirty seconds facing the window. Then B, the same way. Write one word for each: chocolate, nut, flowers, toast, smoke.
- Wait 5 minutes in another room.
- Reverse the order: B first, then A, with the same pause in between.
How to read the result:
- The first jar always seems stronger, whichever it is: the difference comes from the order, so from your nose.
- The same jar wins in both orders: the difference is in the bags. Check the roast date and the batch page.
- Both smell faint: think about where you were just before. A kitchen where you just brewed coffee is the classic trap.
What to change after the coffee smell test
A few small habits to try from tomorrow:
- Compare bags in the morning, before the first coffee of the day. After a cup in a kitchen full of coffee smell, your nose starts out tired.
- If a new bag seems to have no smell, take it to another room and sniff it after two minutes of fresh air.
- If the beans smell strong when you open the bag and barely at all a minute later, close it and come back later. The beans lost nothing in 60 seconds.
If you want to know where the chocolate and nut smells come from, it is all here: the chocolate taste in coffee roasted outdoors. And if the test shows two bags really do differ, try the triangle test for batches from the same weekend.
The coffee smell test at Marché de l'Abattoir
On Saturday and Sunday we are at Marché de l'Abattoir, by the exit of the Manufakture car park in Anderlecht. A tip from the stand: smell the batch in the cooling tray within the first few minutes of arriving, before your nose gets used to the smoke. Tell us which word came to you first. Last weekend's batches are also in the shop, with the roast date on every page.
Brut. Sauvage. Imprévisible.
