ojt wrote:Hmm, lots of discussion here already but I'll add my 2 cents.

I personally want to enjoy my coffees without sugar or milk. It's just a question of being able to taste what the coffee itself tastes like. But I do lately drink the occasional moka pot brew with preground coffee (the most normal Italian home coffee) where I do have to add milk AND sugar for it to taste any good.

The way we taste things is probably very personal so if you need sugar and / or milk that's completely fine. The most people I see here (north-east Italy) add loads of sugar to their coffee. Like amounts that will make the spoon stand upright in the cup That's a tad too much.. but it's just how people are used to drink it here, bitter coffee balanced with sugar and sometimes milk. That's OK, I just don't really like it myself. Of course I know lots of people who don't add either but like I said, it's personal.

But then, have you ever found a coffee that you like without sugar? Just wondering how sensitive your palate is. I have been able to make quite a few cappuccinos that my wide enjoys without sugar, and she's is one of those who pretty much always add sugar to coffee. The trick is to find the right blend / bean / roast, and brew it just right. She for example doesn't like sour / fruity coffee at all, so a slight bitter tendency is better. Too much bitter though and off she goes with sugar. I've settled on a certain comfort specialty blend I get from a roaster not far away, which is a nice mix between fruity and chocolatey notes so I can tip the balance either way. It is a fairly light roast, perhaps a light medium or something, which in my experience tend to be the sweetest and most bitter/sour balanced.

If the coffee you got is more on the darker roast spectrum and you dislike bitter (that being the reason for sugar?) you might want to practice a bit with ristretto style extraction or just a lower ratio, and I would kinda agree with the high dose low yield approach you mentioned earlier. That and / or lowering brew temperature. Basically the point for me with this is I try to extract a lot less from dark roasts to avoid bitter notes. The only way I ever found them drinkable. If it isn't super dark maybe the classic northern italian approach of fairly fast flow 3:1 ratio, in say max 30 sec, might work. When done right and the beans are good it is sometimes enjoyable for me.

When I wanted to get rid of milk and sugar in coffee I started slowly decreasing the amounts to get used to the new taste. This was IIRC with northern european drip coffee and mokapot brews at the time. After a while I actually disliked the sugar and milk. Made me feel ill. I did also start buying better and better coffees but I think you got that one covered already. The supermarket preground will mostly just taste bad no matter you do :/

But, adding sugar is just fine