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The Bitter Appeal of Coffee

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It’s been a while since I posted about one of life’s great pleasures, coffee. In particular, I’m currently mining why the bitter flavor is so inviting.

Before you roll your eyes, I’m fully aware that caffeine is a drug and one that I have a loving relationship with. It’s classified as such because it stimulates the central nervous system, causing increased alertness. That explains my love affair. Our country is addicted because it gives most people a temporary energy boost and elevates moods.

Back to the taste. If you’ve been following the blog, you know I’m in Mammoth, California with my teenagers and their friends. I brought my grinder, French press and beans with me. However, I found Black Velvet Coffee here, an espresso bar serving deliciousness by the cup. I wouldn’t be true to you, the readers, if I didn’t sample a bit. I stopped in and bought a bag of Serra Negra from Brazil. The cup was exquisite, with chocolaty notes and a super clean finish. However, like all black coffee, it was bitter. I love the bitterness. Why? The answer is sort of scientific. From jjgoode.com:

Linda Bartoshuk, a professor at Yale University’s Medical School whose research focuses on the sense of taste explains that we might very well avoid these foods if only the basic taste system were at work. Smell, however, contributes considerably to what we think of as flavor. Bartoshuk explains that when black coffee enters your mouth, you perceive bitterness with your tongue, but you also perceive a complex coffee odor with your nose as the java molecules are pumped from your mouth into your nasal cavity (appetizing, huh?). Positive and negative responses to smells are learned, not visceral. And with coffee, it seems, these preferences override our preprogrammed distaste for bitterness.

Exactly. It’s the smells. My son, Dane, is thirteen years old and loves the aroma of freshly ground beans. Whenever I grind for my press, he leans in for a long inhale. I’m not sure if he will ultimately become a coffee drinker, but I’m sure our time together will push him in that general direction. My wish, of course, is that he learns to drink it black, in moderate quantities and as an adult to derive coffee’s many health benefits. It’s possible that he takes the route, like most Americans, of starting with cream and sugar, although I hope he skips that step.

Although she insists that she can only speculate, because comprehensive empirical evidence on the specific subject doesn’t exist, she believes that people like coffee because its smell becomes associated with its accompanying rush of caffeine and pleasures of cream and sugar. Enough instances of this pairing, and many people come to crave unadulterated coffee.

Yup, that’s how it will play out for Dane. Then, in five years, when I’m 44 and he’s 18, we can sit down together over a steaming cup and discuss life.

Dreaming big,

Kap

  • gavin

    Kap, I like your awareness of all things. Interesting coffee analysis. I’m intrigued by Big Coffee’s massive grip over the world. Oh, I’m right in line with everybody else. But it’s pretty unusual that this bitter little bean, native to a fraction of the planet, has become one of the world’s greatest pleasures and essentials - in a world producing some kick ass stuff at an obscene rate! Llike beer, whiskey, tobacco, many vegetables, coffee is terrible on your first taste. But as demonstrated here before, enjoyment of food and beverage are only partly about taste. I think life is about 90% mental, the other half being physical.

  • Doug

    Kap, I started the same with cream, lots of sugary cream, but have gone to black and usually brewed stronger than others. Love the smell of freshly ground and brewed beans and I’ve noticed that the whole process of grinding, brewing and enjoying a good cup of coffee is more about the process, being connected to something, being involved, than just dumping pre-ground beans into a paper filter and pouring hot water over it.

    This process of being connected is the same in growing your own vegetables and enjoying the fruits of your labor.

    As always, keep up the good work, Kap! Keep the information coming! Looking forward to another year of your articles!

  • Jack

    My favorite topic! For a while I mostly bought espresso-based drinks like cappuccinos and lattes from various “hipster” cafes around LA. Over the last year or so, I really got into learning about coffee production and roasting. Right now I predominantly drink pour-over-style black coffee that I make myself at home everyday. Occasionally I’ll add a little bit of 2%, but never sugar. I’ve gone as far as taking notes in a coffee journal with a flavor wheel so I can keep better records of my “research”.

    Recently I’ve come to discover that not all black coffee is inherently bitter. The beans I’m using right now from Colombia are at a medium roast level, and the primary flavor/note is a citrus-like acidity with barely any bitterness at all. A previous batch consisting of a blend of beans from Latin America, East Africa & Indonesia at a slightly darker roast level had a much more pronounced bitterness. Overall, from what I’ve gathered, a light roast retains greater acidity and more of the original flavor characteristics of the bean. As a roast becomes darker, acidity breaks down and processes like caramelization and the Maillard reaction change the flavor and generate bitterness.

    For a number of years until the advent of the “third wave”, I believe people generally didn’t know or care to find out about the roast level or characteristics of what they were drinking - coffee was just coffee. Dark/full roast became synonymous with the generic “coffee flavor” and most of the major chain stores sold coffee that was so bitter/strong that cream and sugar was needed by many just to make it palatable.

    These days I lean towards light-to-medium roasts because I prefer to taste more of the bean’s original flavor, and I’ve found that when the beans are from a single origin it’s easier to distinguish specific characteristics. In a sense, I liken a high quality coffee bean to a good steak. If you cook a great piece of beef till it’s well done, it’ll probably still taste fine - but doing it medium or medium-rare retains more juice and flavor, which will most likely yield a superior steak. Interestingly, many people assume that a lightly roasted coffee won’t give them as much of a caffeine boost (based on a learned response that the stronger coffee tastes/smells, the more potent it is). In fact, just like tea, lighter roasts contain higher levels of caffeine (given a constant set of other conditions) because the longer a bean is exposed to heat, the more caffeine is broken down.

    Kap, I’m curious what your reasoning is for wanting Dane to wait until he’s 18 to drink coffee. When I was a kid my parents gave me the prevalent “it’ll stunt your growth” explanation (I disliked the taste when I was a kid anyway). It seems like the growth stunting thing has been debunked in recent years, but I’ve seen medical studies that found coffee can adversely affect heart rate and blood pressure in adolescents. In any case, when the time comes I’ll probably tell my kids to hold off till they’re 18 as well.

    I’ve heard great things about Black Velvet Coffee - it’s definitely on my list of places to try next time I’m in that area. Thanks for the post and have a great new year! :)

    • Peter Summerville

      Jack,

      That is a powerful take. Thank you for sharing that with us. For me, it took me until 19-20 to appreciate a cup of coffee.

      -Peter

  • Chris Sulit

    I don’t have a favorite between Folgers, Maxwell House or Tasters Choice. They’re all pretty good to me.

  • http://nycphoto.interactivenyc.com nycphoto

    I’ve never been able to do the hot coffee thing. I love the smell of the beans and I like coffee flavoring in things. But hot coffee just doesn’t really taste good to me. I do drink iced coffee, but that’s with milk and a bit of sugar so it’s more like a coffee ice cream drink. Guess I’m the odd person out. Weird thing is I’m the reverse with tea. Like hot tea hate cold.