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Comment by galangalalgol | Hacker News Reader

15% of people don't taste bitterness in the same way. Hops taste floral and a bit sweet to me and I like to chew on Artemisia species my family finds hideously bitter. I could put cheap gunpowder green tea in a percolator for an hour and it wouldn't taste bitter to me. Perhaps the gp has the same trait?

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Maybe that's true, but arguing that putting boiling water on decent (i.e. not bancha or genmaicha or whatever) japanese green tea is a weird, minority opinion for a good reason. Also, gunpowder greens are not japanese.

i suppose i'm in that 15%. i sometimes drink a tea made from a fresh hop cone to help me sleep. it's not so much that i don't taste bitter, just that i'm not averse to a lot of the flavors people call bitter (and there are a lot of flavors people call bitter.)

i don't know if it's related but i've also noticed i'm much more tolerant of ginger than most people and i can't taste cardamom (seed of the ginger plant, interestingly) at all.

hey, people are different.

I’m a bitter taster. There are some strains of loose leaf green tea that are my go to. One I confused with jasmine tea the first time I had it. Black tea is a vehicle for caffeine, as is coffee. Earl Grey is five kinds of bitter at once ans somehow gets a pass, but only in small quantities. English breakfast once in a while, but the rest is chai.

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