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Comment by decafninja | Hacker News Reader

I went through my coffee hipster phase. But I eventually came to the conclusion that my palate is just too unsophisticated to tell the difference between supposed “hints of blueberry and molasses” in third wave hipster coffee from a boutique roaster versus the cheap coffee that my local newsstand brews every morning.

Now my only concession to coffee is brewing a cup on a Technivorm. Also Hawaiian coffee is super smooth and mellow which I like, but serious coffee aficionados apparently don’t like it for the same reason.

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I learned enough to know what I like, what I don’t like, and what doesn’t matter to me.

I don’t like expensive coffee that use “fruit” descriptions to their flavors. I like the expensive ones that use “chocolate” or “nuts” descriptions.

I like anything from 1:12 to 1:16 ratio (in my routine, 9g to 12g of coffee to 150ml of water).

Grain should be fine, but I don’t need a precision grinder.

Precise water temperature doesn’t matter much.

I like pour over. Not so much french press, aeropress, espresso, or moka pot. I still drink it, just prefer pour over.

I'm still in that phase, but I like my coffee to taste like coffee. Not necessarily one-note, but not akin to fruity tea (as can be the case brewed with blonde roast, coarse grind, lower water temp, fast percolation). I stick with medium to full-city/espresso roast. Though some single-origin differences can cut through, they don't make much of a difference to me. Where I am enjoying variety more is in my brewing process, french press vs hario switch vs moka pot.

Regular filter coffee at a café, cheapest store-bought Segafredo powder in a moka pot—I still like that more than almost any expensive coffee (as far as black coffee goes, at least), but there is perhaps one particular hand drip the taste of which beats everything. It’s hard to come by and I do not know how to describe it except that it is not sour at all and is diametrically opposite to what many coffee hipsters want (“what is your sourest bean?” is something I overheard once or twice).

I got the beans, same beans roasted and ground in the same way in the same shop where I found my desired taste recently, and after making it a couple of times learned that too many things affect the taste. The first time it was good, the second time it was too sour. It is “fun” trying to diff the culprit: water temperature? way of pouring water? psychosomatic factors?

A fun fact I re-learned recently and was able to replicate for myself for coffee: there are different sensors in different parts of your tongue that taste different aspects; sides taste sour more so even the shape of your cup affects the result (wider cup may taste more sour with the same coffee).

The tongue map is debunked: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/neat-and-tidy-...

I wrote that I have personally observed it. One cannot debunk a factual data point.

Even if one could, the article you linked does not even attempt to do that:

> Hänig found that there was some variation around the tongue in how much stimulus it took for a taste to register. <…> Hänig’s hypothesis generally holds up. Different parts of the tongue do have a lower threshold for perceiving certain tastes, but these differences are rather minute.

Within the category of “coffee”, all differences are minute. The whole point of coffee hipstertude is enhancing individual sensitivity to those minute differences in taste in order to pointlessly argue and express sophisticated preferences about such.

(It took me years of drinking single origin hand drip to just start noticing a difference between light and dark roast, and believe it or not there are people who have much more narrowly defined tastes.)

Diner coffee is something I appreciate as a separate category, you can consume several refills of without feeling it much. I don't love it like e.g. local medium roasted coffee, but it's pleasant.

Everyone's coffee journey is unique and that is awesome!

The palate is a bit like a muscle. Some people have bigger/better ones naturally, but everyone can improve what they have with training.

There's also value in having a mediocre cup of coffee on the regular. A little saline solution goes a long way in improving palatability.

Same here. I tried coffee subscriptions to see if I was missing something by trying different roasters. Nope, it just tasted like coffee. I've tried Aeropresses and other doo-dads, and still, coffee tastes like coffee.

I will say that I just bought a used Bonavita BV1800TH for $9 from a Goodwill store, and all the sudden my 3lb $17 bag of Costco ground coffee tastes significantly better in the Bonavita. Although I'd love a Technivorm one day.

I might have to revisit some different beans again, now that I have a decent machine.

Me too. I went from using various pieces of equipment and freshly grinding it every day to simple cafetiere coffee using pre-ground coffee.

Then I got into coffee again and wondered what the hell was wrong with me. Life is too short for bad coffee. If something is forcing me to make such sacrifices in things like coffee and food I fix the thing.

> Life is too short for bad coffee.

Amen.

Some would argue you adjust your "baseline" overall satisfaction by going without x/y/z regularly, but why race to the bottom into asceticism with that idea? It's basically the most pleasant thing I consume all day, as I do away with junk foods.

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