Green Coffee

Note Profile

Botanical

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About

Green coffee is the coffee bean before roasting, and it is not a version of the coffee note. It is defined by what is missing. There is no roast, no chocolate, no caramel and no smoke. What is left is raw and vegetal, closer to cut grass and damp sacking than to a cup of espresso. Perfumers reach for it when they want the botanical connection to coffee without the gourmand one.

Scent Profile

Green coffee is the bean before roasting, so there is no roast, no chocolate and no caramel here. It smells raw and vegetal, a green note closer to cut grass and damp sacking than to a cup of espresso. It works as an aromatic, herbal modifier alongside clary sage. Underneath is a damp, earthy note and a faint, peanutty nuttiness.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeHeart · ~4h lasting

Family Green & Aromatic

Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.

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ScentArt

What is ScentArt?

Materials That Can Make This Note

Perfumers can build Green Coffee from materials such as:

2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine galbanum · green

Smell words come from published sources.

A given perfume with this note may use some of these, or something else.

Origin

The perfumery material is a CO2 supercritical extract of unroasted Coffea arabica or Coffea canephora beans, a greenish-yellow liquid of low viscosity. Supercritical CO2 is used because steam distillation alters the volatiles it is meant to capture. Solvent extraction gives a darker and less purely green product. A separate cold-pressed green coffee oil is sold as a skincare carrier oil. That is a mostly fatty, faintly scented product and it is not the same thing as the fragrance extract, though the two share the name. Roasting is what builds coffee's familiar smell: Incapto, a coffee roaster's blog, states that the green bean holds over 200 aromatic compounds that each contribute very little odour, and that most of the odour-generating compounds are made during roasting.

Usage in Perfumery

A heart note with moderate tenacity, used as a green-herbal modifier. Premiere Peau puts it in green, vetiver-based and herbal compositions and pairs it with galbanum, clary sage and mate absolute rather than with vanilla or cacao. Fragrantica records 5 placements, Parfumo 1 across 1 brand. It is an alternative to roasted coffee absolute for perfumers who want the botanical connection to coffee without the gourmand one.