I keep hearing about a sweet shot and a bitter shot. I add artificial sweeteners to my capo or espresso to kill the bitterness. I have never had a cappo or espresso that is truly sweet all by itself. When people say "sweet shot" do they simply mean an excellent shot or does the shot actually have a sweetness? I suspect the goal is to pull a shot with as little bitterness as possible, but, bitterness will always be present to a degree. I'd love to know.

Pure caffeine is bitter. So there is always a bitter edge to coffee. But a properly made espresso, especially one with a blend designed to be sweet, should have enough natural sweetness to leave your lips sticky. Most likely you have never been served a well-prepared espresso. This would be true of most people in North America.

another_jim wrote:n short, most of the bitterness in coffee and all its objectionable bitterness is a product of poor roasting or brewing. Espresso is more prone to poor preparation than other forms of brewing, so foully bitter espresso is more common than foully bitter coffee; but these off flavors can occur in any coffee.

Absolutely!

Sweet is a subjective term. Some espresso blends are sweet but if you normally dump a couple packets of sugar in your cappuccino or put sugar on your frosted flakes, than what you call sweet and what I call sweet are two different things.

When it comes to coffee and sweetness, I disagree with many of my esteemed colleagues on this site.

From an evolutionary standpoint, there is absolutely no reason why coffee seeds should be sweet. The fruit of the coffee cherry is another story. Animals enjoy sweet flavors, and will eat the cherry and disperse the seeds (hence kopi luwak). But chewing and digesting the seeds kills off any chance of propagating the plant.

As a result, fruit pulp tends to be intensely sweet (think apples, grapes, cherries, peaches, watermelons, etc.), but the seeds tend to be bitter. Coffee is no exception.

Bitter is an acquired taste. The natural response to bitterness is a gag reflex, because many naturally occurring alkaloid poisons are intensely bitter. Even caffeine is toxic in large quantities, and probably evolved as a natural plant defense against insect predators.

Sweetness is, of course, relative. There are indeed naturally occurring sugars in coffee seeds. But sweetness is not the predominant flavor, and there is no reason why it should be. Indeed, there are good reasons why the coffee seeds should be bitter and relatively indigestible. It is only through very careful preparation that the seeds become palatable as a beverage.

When we talk about coffee being naturally sweet, this is only true in comparison to other coffees. Coffee is not sweet in the same way that most dessert foods are sweet. People learn to enjoy all sorts of tastes, including hard liquor, cigarettes, and other compounds which are not "naturally" enjoyable - and should not be, for obvious health reasons.

My taste buds do not enjoy unsweetened coffee as much as coffee with a small amount of sugar and/or steamed milk. The natural bitterness masks my ability to distinguish flavors, and I have never felt compelled (for health or ego reasons) to train myself otherwise. Please do not suggest this is because I have never tasted good espresso, or because I'm some sort of sugar junkie - neither is remotely true. I simply find that unsweetened coffee tastes bitter. Always.

De gustibus non est disputandum.

I can definitely taste sweetness in a good shot of espresso...but there are still bitter and sour tastes there too. I think which you taste somewhat depends on who is tasting and how used they are to consuming bitter foods.

I recall making a couple cappuccinos with a lovely fruity, sweet tasting Colombian...I'm quite sure both came out the same but the one I tasted was sweet...cherry and milk chocolate to me...but my mom said that hers was too bitter to drink after a couple of sips and added syrup to it. We were both drinking the same coffee but the reactions were totally different. I think that coffee is sweet even as espresso and she thinks that even with milk it needs some sweetener.

and it's not that I can't taste the bitterness present...but it doesn't bother me...and I can taste what else is there too. I'll still dump an unbalanced overly bitter shot down the sink.

Most people likely consider "sweetness" in this context as the absence of the artificially-induced bitters that Jim catalogues above.

It's challenging to isolate any significant amount of actual sugars coming from the bean. Much in the same manner, some good straight Scotches may be considered "smooth"; they're not really very smooth at all, just less overtly rough in the realm of Scotch.

So a rich, round and well-made shot from well-roasted and well-grown/processed/selected beans may be called "sweet," but mostly just because it's not further down coffee's scale of recalled bitterness outcomes.

I have had many cups that tasted very sweet to me - cloying sweetness that gives me the same feeling in my mouth as when I eat something too sweet (distant memory of Captain Crunch cereal). I mostly experience this with fruity coffee where the beans have had a long rest.

I don't often taste chocolate in coffee, and I've eaten plenty, from bakers to fancy lightly sweetened to regular, but I once had a shot, cheap dark roasted coffee, that reminded me of a chocolate sauce I make - sugar, cocoa powder mixed with hot water and microwaved to thicken.

I thought it tasted almost the same, but was surprised by how sweet the sauce was when I had some soon after as a test.

So while I think espresso can taste plain old sweet, at least to me, it isn't (in my experience) sweet as things like juice or chocolate sauce.