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andrewxdiamond

A hacker news favorite, James Hoffmann, got the opportunity to taste this lost coffee about a month ago.

As typical with a James video, it’s high quality and worth a watch.

https://youtu.be/iGL7LtgC_0I

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TL;DW: it's got a clean, sweet, mildly acidic flavor.

Maybe this is the joke, but it seems he says that every video.

Not in the videos where he tastes 50 year old coffee beans someone found in their attic. :)

Aged coffee is a thing. I tried something in the 10-15yo range once, and for a dark roast it wasn't bad.

Was this coffee that was roasted and then aged for that long? That doesn't sound good.

I have gotten some nice aged coffees, an aged Sumatra and a monsooned Malabar (they age it in a warehouse open to the monsoon wind and moisture).

But these were aged while green and I roasted them fresh.

I wonder if what you got was something more like that, aged green and then roasted after aging?

A dark roast that is aged would taste bland. Usually darker roast = faster degradation.

A good dark roast is often oily, so they tend to go rancid in a span of months unless hermetically sealed

Dark roasts hide a lot. I say this as someone who is terrible at roasting, so compensate.

Hence Charbucks. Someone in the coffee industry once told me their real innovation was recognizing most Americans don't have the pallette necessary to distinguish "burned" from "strong". So Starbucks just bought all the lowest-quality beans for cheap, charred them and sold the coffee at a premium.

I'm guilty. I have tried many light roasts and I always come away thinking it tastes weak. Where can I get a new palate?

Tea.

I love a good dark roast, brewed thick enough that it's got mouthfeel. I dated a barista for a while, who was big on light roast pourovers. I'm still not into them, but I did find a preparation I like: a blonde cold brew with a dash of lime juice. It's delightful and refreshing, so far from my usual that it's almost in a different category

I would recommend trying a few “natural process” (the beans are dried before removing the fruit) light roasts. They’re often far richer in flavor, with much more pronounced fruit notes. Then if you can find a natural process dark roast (rare in my experience), compare. You’ll notice that while you may still taste the fruit notes, they’ll be masked pretty heavily by the roast.

It was a natural process roast that got me to even care about the difference, and now I almost always go out of my way for light roasts.

If you’re in/near/visit Seattle or have access to any of these roasters: Seattle Coffee Works specializes in light roasts, most of Victrola’s single origins are light, and many of Ladro’s are as well. All three often have at least one natural process. They’re all quite good!

You can use higher doses, but you'll be losing nuance. Part of the point (for those who care) is to reveal the fruitier elements in the coffee. That means treating it a bit more like tea.

Aged fermented tea is as well. A Chinese tea house had tea’s reaching into the hundreds of dollars (for one brew!)

Best tea I’ve ever had was 20 year old Pu’er tea.

Do you have a recommended legit online source for med - high quality Pu’er?

meileaf.com — you can find it cheaper elsewhere but the stuff on there is curated and I’ve never had a lemon from them.

Thanks!

They also have a pretty good YouTube channel with lots of tips and tricks on gongfu brewing etc, definitely marketing related and sure drove a lot of sales, but it’s worth checking out their masterclass playlist :)

Because it’s basically what you’re looking for in a good coffee? Unless you got into wine tasting stuff with « notes of chocolate and raspberry ».

Who decides what’s good? People have different preferences. My mother doesn’t like the “good coffee” as per your description for example (I love it however).

Also peachy and light like coffee grown at higher altitude

It’s not lost? It just isn’t currently commercially viable.

Read the article carefully - they say “in the wild” about a dozen times.

Stenophylla is known as Highland Coffee in Liberia and Leone (distinct from Liberian coffee, Liberica), and is cultivated and roasted on a small scale. Little to none is exported.

I’ve tried it. It’s ok. Somewhere between arabica and Liberica. Can’t recommend Liberica though, I thought it tasted like burning rubber.

How do we know what burning rubber tastes like ?

I know the flavour you describe.

Probably because what we perceive as taste is also related to our sense of smell [0] and you have probably smelled burning rubber before.

0. https://flavourjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1...

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