Sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter, savory, astringent.

These are the tastes we can sense.

So often when I am reading about espresso, I am struck by comments on "a cup so good that it wasn't bitter at all!" or "a godshot that was all sweetness in the cup" and I wonder what this indicates. I think that our consumer-driven society has pushed sweet and salty things on us very heavily, in large part owing to the fact that sugar and salt are cheap and easy additives to make food more flavorful. However, it leaves the flavor profiles of food out of balance in my opinion.

When I am adjusting an extraction of espresso, I aspire to simply allow the bean to manifest itself in its natural balance of bitterness, sweetness etc. I don't think I would be happy with a cup of espresso that was "all sweetness." If I wanted that I would have some candy.

What do you think? Are we neglecting the full spectrum of tastes in our lives?

Adrian

Sweet may be only one of several tastes we can sense but it is probably the only one that can actually turn into an addiction. I've seen a study where rats will repeatedly choose a water source with saccharine over one with cocaine. I agree with your conclusions for more then just espresso but it can be easy sometimes to take pleasure in sweet treats!

Hi Adrian.

Very interesting question that opens deep questions. I think that different people will look at coffee differently. For example, the landscape that a soldier sees is different than what a farmer sees. Whose of the two descriptions of a landscape would be more correct? Maybe someone could be seeking sweetness in coffee.

Cheers

If someone says a coffee is "pure sweetness", I'd interpret that as a very positive attribute but an obvious exaggeration. Since the sweetest coffees tend to be the ripest coffees, they are also the coffees jam packed with other mature flavors.

I like to approach coffee inductively, rather than thinking about how it should be before it barely was.

drdna wrote:I aspire to simply allow the bean to manifest itself in its natural balance of bitterness, sweetness etc. I don't think I would be happy with a cup of espresso that was "all sweetness." If I wanted that I would have some candy.

I'm thinking that striving to 'let the coffee manifest itself naturally' and striving for a 'natural' 'balance' of flavors are potentially mutually exclusive, and I feel like you might be trying to conflate your own ideal of flavor balance with the nature of a coffee's flavor. 'Flavor balance' is not an intrinsic aspect of coffee, it's cultivated at every level of coffee production, from bean selection to processing to roasting to dialing in a blend on a machine. Each player in this process, including the barista, wields a huge amount of power in rendering the flavor that a coffee has to offer. Presuming that your preferred rendition of the coffee is the coffee 'manifesting itself' strikes me as kind of a hokey idea.

SL28ave wrote:If someone says a coffee is "pure sweetness", I'd interpret that as a very positive attribute but an obvious exaggeration. Since the sweetest coffees tend to be the ripest coffees, they are also the coffees jam packed with other mature flavors.

+1. I'm also skeptical that when someone calls a shot "all sweetness" they mean it's anything like candy. I think that's hyperbole used to express the 'surprise' or enjoyment of the experience. I've never had or heard of a shot that tasted like someone brewed a shot of turbinado. I figure they mean the shot was tilted to the sweet side of the flavor spectrum. If it didn't have any dimension beyond that, it'd still be a poor shot (albeit more palatable), and I think most here would agree with that

I agree that sugar and salt are over-used in the American diet, to the point that it's a serious national health problem. I am not sure how that factors into people's comments on HB, though. I get the impression that the people on this forum, particularly the readership who actively discuss coffees with each other, is to some extent a 'mensa club' of tasters. No, not an Olympic team of pro cuppers (though there are a few here), but people who appreciate balance and nuance a lot more than the mythical average joe. So while I agree with the gist of what you mean, I'm skeptical of the connections you make in the post, Adrian.

shadowfax wrote:...your preferred rendition of the coffee is the coffee 'manifesting itself' strikes me as kind of a hokey idea... I'm skeptical of the connections you make in the post, Adrian.

Nick, quite correct, and I thought about this after writing it. To better express what I mean, I will draw on Tom's efforts at Sweet Maria's (the purveyor of green coffees and coffee accouterments) with the Espresso Workshop series. In this series of blends he used beans blended together to achieve a certain goal in a blend. When the beans are gone, so is the blend. On the other hand, traditional blends that go on for years and years start out that way, but are limited by bean availability (thus probably do not use rare beans to begin with) and when beans run out, substitutions are made to make an "almost like that" blend.

I am a big fan of the former approach. All I am saying is that I am not going to try to force an extraction to eliminate bitterness, for instance, if I feel that doing so is going to "push it out of the zone."

As to being hokey, yes, I am made of pure corn.

drdna wrote:When I am adjusting an extraction of espresso, I aspire to simply allow the bean to manifest itself in its natural balance of bitterness, sweetness etc.

And how do you find out what that natural balance is?

-- Suppose it is whatever Tom describes. In that case, you have picked that coffee because the description sounds appealing. In that case, your so called natural balance is the taste you wanted when you bought the coffee.

-- Suppose you cupped it, and you decided what sort of balance you wanted for espresso. In that case, your natural balance is the taste you wanted when you roasted and cupped the coffee.

-- Suppose you tasted the coffee at a cafe, and liked it. In that case, the your natural balance is the taste you wanted based on the barista's shot.

Do you see the pattern? You use natural not for what the coffee is like, but for what you like. You are simply adding the ridiculous implication that what you like is natural, whereas what other people like is not. This is what has gotten people's back up

The term "natural" can be used in a way that is both meaningful and useful: the way the coffee would taste if grown, prepped, roasted and brewed in the most transparent and best practice method. Nowadays that would be hand picked when ripe, quickly wet processed, platform dried, vacuum packed, shipped fast, roasted light, and steeped French Press or cupping style.

Does this mean all coffee should be done like this? Of course not. This is simply a reference point. For instance, 9 out of 10 times, I'd take a Brasil overripe, tree dried, Full City roasted, done as espresso, than the same coffee done at the natural reference method.

Indeed, Adrian, though I'm not a home roaster anymore, reading your discussions of Tom's espresso workshops has been interesting, and I favor that idea of making a blend guided by a goal of making something unique, complex, balanced--or what have you--over the traditional goal of making something that is reproducible as coffee crops cycle in and out of season (not to mention year-to-year variations of any given coffee). Such an effort seems doomed to compromise, although I think there are some exceptionally talented roasters that do this successfully and with a consistently tasty product.

Square Mile names their espresso blend based on the four seasons, I believe, and each new season brings a blend of coffees that is not intended to be just like last time. Intelligentsia's Black Cat is similarly in regular flux, I believe, though it's less predictable (unless I am missing something) as to when it changes--unless you keep tabs on the blend components, which I believe are kept up to date (but not archived publicly).

But that's neither here nor there: I very much tend to share your preference for what you might call 'coffee driven' blending rather than 'signature-flavor' blending.

As for bitterness, here's my question: is it under-appreciated? I've read more than a couple times that most consumers, even in the high-end coffee market, prefer lower-toned coffees that have that deep chocolate comfort-foodness to them, perhaps with a good roasty bite to them. Coffee cuppers are the ones that are big on the bright, zesty coffees that taste like fruit or 'fancy tea.' I personally prefer the brighter side of coffee, though I've had great and horrible experiences on either side. Anyway, I'm wondering if this is maybe a semantic thing: If a shot is bitter or sour, I throw it down the sink. When I say bitter or sour, I mean that it's too much of a palate assault to take, making me gag/pucker (or just being unpleasant). But people like bitter flavors like baker's chocolate, cacao nibs, tobacco, malt: I don't get the impression that people try to eliminate bitterness, just tame it to the point where you can appreciate the nuances. Maybe I'm confusing what I do with general practice, though? I don't know.

drdna wrote:Sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter, savory, astringent.

These are the tastes we can sense.

Doctor, Doctor -- I thought it was sweet, salt, sour, bitter and umami. What does "pungent" taste like? As far as I know, and have been taught, "astringent" is a sensation commonly detected along the linings of one's cheeks and gums, and is commonly caused by compounds such as tannins.

Just curious, Adrian . . .

/ / / / /

SL28ave wrote:If someone says a coffee is "pure sweetness", I'd interpret that as a very positive attribute but an obvious exaggeration.

Or that they dumped in too much sugar.

SL28ave wrote:I like to approach coffee inductively, rather than thinking about how it should be before it barely was.

+1

Cheers,
Jason

Actually the key word for me in all of this is balance.

Balance is what I want when I brew coffee, though the difficult thing is communicating exactly what feels balanced and what doesn't. That doesn't mean that people don't agree - I regularly taste a range of extractions with people and we all tend to agree on certain shots being more balanced than others, and to some extent more enjoyable.

Balance does not mean, to me, absolute harmony. I'm a huge fan of Coca Cola, or Heinz Tomato Ketchup, as examples of balance. Though they are predominantly sweet and salty/acidic (in order) they are still magnificently balanced products - this is best highlighted by tasting the various attempts at replicating them. Bad ketchup inevitably gets the acidity thing wrong, and bad cola gets all sorts wrong from cinnamon to lime oil.

So far, in my limited experience, I've found espresso in the range of 18-19% extraction more balanced than outside of that range (for want of some technical definition) and I feel that those shots give me at least some window into the coffee itself, rather than giving me a mixture of the brewing process and the coffee. No one likes to 'taste the barista', all the more annoying when it is us we are tasting. So to speak.

I have varied and verbose opinions on the idea of consistency within a blend, or within consumer preference, which I shall save for another time. The only things I think coffee ought to be are clean, interesting and delicious.