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Comment by markrages | Hacker News Reader

You can't distinguish between freshly-brewed coffee and microwaved instant coffee?

I can. I love all sorts of preparations, and really enjoy the broad range of flavor profiles out there. I only drink instant coffee when I'm staying at somebody's house. I don't insult their hospitality and drink it.

For many people, the cost (both labor and monetary) of "good" coffee doesn't come with a corresponding increase in their enjoyment. You won't change their mind.

Nope. Nor can I tell the difference in a blind taste test between white and red wine. Probably most wine snobs can't either, and probably most coffee snobs couldn't really tell the difference in a blind test.

If it were true in my case for instant coffee, I would be ALL over that.

Instant coffee is not even in the same category as brewed coffee. I am by no means a coffee snob. I do grind beans right before I brew, but they are the lowest priced beans I can find that taste good to me (which is reasonably cheap).

I'd love to just microwave a cup, but that stuff tastes nasty.

What are the two closest flavors that you can differentiate? Because those are some massive gaps in flavor to not taste any differently. Can you tell different brands of soda apart? Styles of beer? Does all liquor taste the same?

I haven't tasted cola in years; back when I drank it I believed I could tell the difference but today I doubt I ever could. I can tell a pilsner apart from a stout. All whiskey tastes like whiskey, but whiskey doesn't taste like gin.

I don't believe I have an impaired sense of taste. I'm just highly skeptical of the objectivity of my sense of taste. Marketting and branding probably has more influence than anything else when comparing two drinks in the same category (wine-to-wine, coffee-to-coffee, etc.)

You're referring to the Brochet experiment? That wasn't a blind test: the white wine was dyed red with a flavourless dye, so there was an element of deception involved.

I did with my family using blindfolds and we all failed. Either seems to demonstrate that perception of wine has a strong visual component.

> I did with my family

Biased sample. There are many confounding factors why if you cannot tell the difference, it is likely your family can’t either.

I do like the idea of testing my wine drinking friends, who are definitely not snobs. I would bet money they would mostly pick the difference between a normal: Oaked Chardonnay, Reisling, Savignon Blanc, and Cabernet Savignon. I suspect the red wine drinkers could tell some of the red wine varietals too (I would struggle there).

Taste sensitivity and perception is varied among humans and is also dependent on your genes. Cilantro, brussel sprouts, super tasters, etc.

You can't tell the difference between a chardonnay and a burgundy?

> You can't tell the difference between a chardonnay and a burgundy?

Well, that's a bit of a strawman, isn't it, given it would typically boil down to "vanilla/not vanilla" for most chardonnays?

Only when I can see it..

I would take that bet. I'm prepared to believe there are wines that if the only question is 'white or red' I might not know, especially if an ambiguous temperature. (Most people are accustomed to drinking white 'too' cold, and red 'too' warm - so obviously in such a test you have to remove that cue, but then what do you choose and still get a good fair test?) but there are also wines that I could tell you which of two grapes it is with nothing but my teeth. (I wouldn't say I'm a snob, but I'm sure you'd disagree.. meh, whatever.)

Coffee.. geeze, much more so. If the only thing available is a jug of brewed coffeewater that you pump out nice and bubbly, as at hotel breakfast bars or conference centres, I have to really 'need' it, and then I pack it with sugar to take the taste away. (I don't ordinarily drink coffee with sugar at all.) Instant, I just can't drink. I could definitely tell you the difference between instant 'coffee' and real, it's not a case of having a preference and better 'notes' like 'essence of snobby bullshit' - one I would be able to drink, and the other I would want to spit out before it even hit my lips.

Not really a snob either way, but I'll take that bet for coffee. Probably for wine, too.

> Probably most wine snobs can't either, and probably most coffee snobs couldn't really tell the difference in a blind test.

I think you are concluding too much for the data points you have (of your personal experience).

I have a similar palate (lack thereof) like yours, but even my family members can tell when I've (say) used "too much" garlic in a recipe--when I can't even tell that the garlic is even there in the final product. (I only use it because the recipe says to.) Using a (e.g.) different marinade for chicken does not change my perception of it much when I chow down, but it does for others eating it.

I once heard the explanation that the 'flavour' of a food is made of the taste (tongue), aroma (smell), and even texture of a food. Adam Ragusa made a video on the smell part recently:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O-E-7MMNyE

I suspect that I (and you given your descriptions) may have some kind of lowered sense of smell when comes to intaking foods and beverages, and so do not perceive the "tastes" as much as some other people. For example I cannot tell the difference in a lager, stout, etc, types of beer (they're all 'yeast water' to me), but I know people who love beer so much that if you put down a random one in from of them they could ID the style and often the maker and make.

The flavours that do not exist in your experience may in fact do so for folks who have senses that are more sensitive than yours. Epicurious has a series of videos where experts do a blind taste test on "Cheap vs Expensive" products:

* https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLz3-p2q6vFYUpr-f2wOSQ...

There certainly are folks that pre-judge things by simply knowing which is which beforehand, but to say that 'there are no differences' is swinging the pendulum the other way too much as well IMHO.

Find a few coffee gear testing reviews where they use the same beans, using the same grinder, and yet different brewers cause slightly different results as perceive by the testers.

America's Test Kitchen is a good source, as they often have a dozen-plus folks do blind tests to find the most-liked ("best") product.

I'm given instant sufficiently infrequently that it always comes as a shock -- I'll decline if I know it's going to be instant coffee, so I am indeed in the state of taking a mouthful of something that I expect to be regular coffee and discovering to my distaste that it's actually instant.

And I'm definitely not a coffee snob. But I can tell you that bog standard Tesco "house blend" coffee tastes nicer in a Philips Solimo machine than in an Aeropress, and nicer in the Aeropress than in a cafetière. And Amazon branded Solimo sachets aren't quite as nice as the ground coffee in the machine, but are good enough for every-day use.

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