Golden brown bread, caramelized sugar on top of a crème brûlée, the yellow-gold color of french fries. What do all of these have in common? The Maillard reaction, a chemical reaction that creates golden food and a distinct sweet/toasty flavor profile. What is the Maillard reaction? Our friends over at will break all the science down below, but long story short, the Maillard reaction is a chemical reaction that caramelizes foods—cookies, toasted marshmallows, pan seared meats—all the tasty things. The reaction occurs between 280°F and 330°F where sugars react with a group of amino acids to create hundreds of new, different flavors. Each food has its own flavor breakdown. For coffee, it creates a lot of the roasty, malty, and even fruity flavors you enjoy as well as creates coffee’s iconic brown shades. This happens during the coffee roasting process after the coffee cherry has been harvested and processed. 

Ready to go a shade deeper into the science? Below Barista Hustle takes us through the actual chemical reaction that takes place.

Reducing Sugars and Amino Acids

Maillard reactions occur between a reducing sugar and an amino acid. A reducing sugar is any sugar that has a free aldehyde or ketone group. These groups contain an oxygen atom with a double bond joining it to the carbon chain, which can easily react with amino acids and many other compounds.

Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. They have a variety of structures, but all have an amine group at one end, and a carboxyl group at the other. The amine group (NH2) on the left is the part involved in these reactions. The R, in the diagrams below, can be any of around 500 different side chains (anything from a single hydrogen atom to a chain of carbon atoms) which contributes to the complexity of these reactions.

The rate of Maillard reactions becomes significant in coffee roasting from about 140° C (284° F) upwards. Above 170°C (338° F), kicks in and starts to use up the remaining sugars. Because of the high temperature required, and because the initial reaction gives off a water molecule, the reaction is slow to get started while there is still any moisture around, which is why coffee doesn’t begin to brown in roasting until the ‘drying phase’ is complete.

The outcome

The different possible paths these reactions can follow, combined with the range of possible amino acids and sugars involved in the reactions, means that they form a huge range of flavour compounds. The most familiar of these are the roasted, bready or bitter flavours of , and the savoury flavours of peptides (think grilled meat). The reactions can also generate a wide range of smaller as well, which can include floral, fruity and caramel odours, as well as some ‘off’ notes like oniony or earthy flavours.

The range of flavours this generates is crucial to the complexity of aromas in roasted coffee, and is part of the reason the sugar content of green beans is so important to the final flavour, even if very little sugar survives roasting intact. Quakers (unripe coffee beans) are a great demonstration of this – the lack of sugar means that Maillard and reactions cannot take place, and the resulting beans are pale and lacking in flavour.

As well as flavour, formed in the Maillard reactions also play an important role in forming and stabilising crema in espresso, and provide body to brewed coffee. They may also provide some of coffee’s health benefits – especially antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activity (AS Moreira et al, 2012). 

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References

E Illy and L Navarini, 2011. Neglected Food Bubbles: The Espresso Coffee Foam. doi: 10.1007/s11483-011-9220-5

AS Moreira, FM Nunes, MR Domingues, MA Coimbra, 2012. Coffee : structures, mechanisms of formation and potential health impacts. doi: 10.1039/c2fo30048f