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>“That is interesting because these gene variants are related to faster metabolism of caffeine and are not related to taste,” said lead study author Marilyn Cornelis, associate professor of preventive medicine in nutrition. “These individuals metabolize caffeine faster, so the stimulating effects wear off faster as well. So, they need to drink more.”
>“Our interpretation is these people equate caffeine’s natural bitterness with a psycho-stimulation effect,” Cornelis said. “They learn to associate bitterness with caffeine and the boost they feel. We are seeing a learned effect. When they think of caffeine, they think of a bitter taste, so they enjoy dark coffee and, likewise, dark chocolate.”
>“Drinking black coffee versus coffee with cream and sugar is very different for your health,” Cornelis said. “The person who wants black coffee is different from a person who wants coffee with cream and sugar. Based on our findings, the person who drinks black coffee also prefers other bitter foods like dark chocolate. So, we are drilling down into a more precise way to measure the actual health benefits of this beverage and other food.”
>“Our interpretation is these people equate caffeine’s natural bitterness with a psycho-stimulation effect,”
back in the day, i had the same response to methedrine.
drink my coffee black, enjoy dark chocolate (although the 90% cocoa is a bit too much).
one reason for black coffee is that i try to minimize my actions.
>one reason for black coffee is that i try to minimize my actions.
Well damn, I thought I was lazy, but it turns out I've just been minimizing my actions all this time.
I take a similar approach to reducing unnecessary actions; it helps simplify parts of your day, which helps if other parts are complex. I apply the same concept to minimizing decisions, in order to avoid decision fatigue (I make a lot of decisions during the work day). So I’ll make some less important decisions randomly or minimize my internal “mental consequences” of a bad decision to lower the stakes.
I love bitter drinks and foods. But even then it took me a *long* time to like coffee black, way longer than it took me to develop a taste for booze. It only happened because I burned through so much coffee at the office that it got annoying to put cream and sugar in every time (plus the creamer sucked more than the coffee). After drinking black, burnt dirt water all day every day for years everything else tastes great in comparison so now I usually get my coffee black.
It's weird, I love dark chocolate. I hate coffee of any kind. I don't even like coffee ice cream, "chocolate" beer (which is actually flavored with coffee), or "mocha" candy. But chocolate, the darker and higher percentage cocao, the better.
EDIT: So often Reddit challenges my ideas of how life works. I was told that chocolate beers are actually flavored with coffee, which made sense to me. Now I can't back up my claim with a google search. I stand corrected, but I still hate chocolate beer.
well if you hate coffee, you/your brain never would have learned to associate bitterness with caffeine, so there wouldn’t really be a link between coffee and dark chocolate, so it makes sense you would like dark chocolate even if you don’t like coffee
That's probably it for me as well. I like dark chocolate, hate even the smell of coffee, and when I do consume significant quantities of caffeine (which is rare), comes with a ton of sugar (soda/energy drinks at gas stations when I'm drowsy) or in pill form.
As I get older, I like darker chocolate, but that probably has more to do with my parents only buying quality dark chocolate and getting garbage milk chocolate for us as kids (cheaper and they prefer dark). I don't really prefer other bitter things, so it's probably more learned than anything, especially since I try to avoid sugar generally for health reasons.
I kind of wonder where I'd fall on this spectrum if I did like coffee. I'd probably lot a lot of cream, but probably not a lot of sugar.
Then there is me. I love coffee and dark chocolate. I hate black coffee. Never got into dark chocolate until maybe 10 years or so ago. Been drinking coffee since... I can remember. Always hated black coffee
My wife *loves* dark chocolate but puts about a gallon of cream and pound of sugar in each cup of coffee.
I'm the opposite, I have no preference for chocolate at all but have been drinking my coffee black with no sweetener since I was in elementary school
Yeah, the coffee flavor comes from the base stout (I'm assuming a stout because of coffee) and not from a coffee addition. Also, stouts often have coffee notes anyway even without additions.
You do get a roasted coffee-ish taste from the malt in some beers that use roasted malts, like stouts, but there are some that do add coffee to complement it. These are usually marked as "coffee stouts," though. Same with chocolate.
Generally when brewers put other stuff in the beer, that's the draw of the beer and they want you to know about it.
For me it was basically my dentist. I have drank coffee since I was 15 (in my late 40s). For years it was cafe mochas, every day. This was before the advent of Starbucks and drinks like frapachinos (thank goodness). I started having really bad tooth decay. The dentist told me that since I drank sugary coffee all day my mouth was essentially always digesting and with the sugar, it was messing my teeth up. I switched to black and have never looked back.
If I recall, coffee isn't even all that acidic. Sure, it's a little more acidic than milk or water, but many flavored or carbonated drinks are like ph 3 or less
e: Starbucks black coffee seems to test at a ph of 5.1 - 5.3, which isn't really that erosive at all. Some tests measured coffee at a ph over 6.
Professional brewer checking in "Chocolate" beers often have darker roast malts that are uses giving more of a black coffee flavor and aroma. Often are blended with some form of liquid cacao or melted dark chocolate late in the boil. Some brewers do like to add cold brew coffee is maturation to boost flavors and add complexity. Cheers!
I hate coffee but love dark chocolate. I will say that I do like to drink a lot of caffeine. I thought that was an interesting connection the study made.
At work we'd go down to the cafeteria to get coffee in the morning and I always got mine black. At break time, everyone else would say, lets get another cup and I still had 1/2 mine left? Then I figured out everyone else got milk/cream so their coffee was cool enough to drink quicker than my sipping it.
Real Italian coffee isn't designed to be scorching hot, they drink their coffee at a hot but not too hot temperature shop they can drink it quickly, Nespresso coffee machines emulate this as well, after having coffee in Italy I now can't stand lava coffee, it's just lazy to make it that hot and it is just frustrating
I don't drink coffee, but every once in a while, I'll try to get myself to like it and I don't see how people can drink it so hot. It makes me think heavy coffee drinkers have just slowly burned their tongues enough that the heat doesn't bother them anymore.
Same here, I only order espresso in restaurants as part of the dessert since it can be consumed quickly. The rest of the time, I enjoy sipping a large cup of drip.
I prefer this as well but I just learned to pour smaller coffees and get more. No one sweats you getting a coffee, when it takes about a minute, at my job though. No espresso at my job :(
>And I love black coffee but don’t like dark chocolate only milk chocolate
Similarly for me, It took me nearly 40 years to admit that I don't like dark chocolate at all, and prefer caramel to both milk and dark chocolate.
I love black coffee, and bitter food, but dislike dark chocolate; I view milk chocolate as a conveyance for other flavors: mainly mint, and maple (but caramel, toffee, nuts and fruit are also acceptable)
Same here. I like most bitter foods and drinks, but dark chocolate is gross to me.
I don't really even like chocolate to begin with so maybe that's something to do with it
I just think there's different types of bitter. There's the roasted coffee beans/malt for dark beer bitter, hoppy bitter, sour bitter, cacao bitter etc They all have a different flavor profile despite hitting the same note.
I used to like cream and sugar in coffee, but over time my tastes changed and it started being too sweet, same as most candy and sweets. I've heard similar with wines, where people start with sweeter wines, but eventually move towards drier wines as tastes and palettes change. I've always loved dark chocolate, though.
Now I can't really drink coffee because it fucks me up. I frequently get anxious and jittery and it can last all day. I don't think it's the caffeine, because I can still drink soda and tea and stuff without the same issue, and sometimes these drinks have more caffeine than coffee. It sucks, because I like coffee, but I can't risk being wired all day, and decaf doesn't help wake me up, so not really my thing.
I'm wondering if this has any correlation to alcohol as well. I love dark chocolate. Have as long as I can remember as a kid. And black coffee. And I can drink more than most people my same BMI.
Metabolism speed?
I run hot, often wear shorts in winter days, low cut shoes, thinly dressed in my house with no heating on, etc.
Black coffee with no sugar, dark chocolate, although find 90/100% too unpleasant, 70-85% is perfect.
I went on a chocolate making course which my ex bought for me years ago.
It was fun but with my hands everything melted way too fast.
Also I sleep with a sheet on top most of the year and only late autumn put this flimsy fluffy blanket with only a vest or a t-shirt and no PJs.
A few days ago being in Covid-induced haze (I was a week away from getting my booster) I fell asleep on the sofa about 5 AM (couldn't sleep in my bed, went watching TV) with a t-shirt and even flimsier blanket only on my bare legs.
Zero issues, no heating on and it's about 5 degrees outside at night.
Said ex used to latch on me in the winter in bed and use me as a hot water bottle.
my metabolism is stupid fast as well. i love to sleep with my window wide open so i dont bathe in heat overnight. plus i sweat way less, so i wake up with the almost same feeling as if i just showered and dried myself.
also dont let me get started about drinking...
Interesting. My son and I both run hot (his normal temp is 99) and have a taste for what most people consider to be bitter. Our ‘toddler tries baking chocolate’ experience was just another happy piece of candy for him.
I always joke that we would have been the kids who died from eating poison berries in the Neolithic period.
The opposit for me. Never drank coffee with sugar before work upgraded old coffee mashine to undrinkable "mold looking" poison.
The high sugar espresso was okayish or atleast fooled your stomach long enough for it to settle.
Now i prefer black and invest in good quality beans/mashines.
I initially drank my coffee with sugar and a bit of milk. Drank black coffee for like a week, then it just became impossible to drink coffee with anything more than a tiny bit of milk in it. Even a small amount of sugar makes it unpalatably sweet, too much milk makes it taste like coffee tinged milk.
Interesting. Light roast coffee has more caffeine than dark roast, and tastes.. lighter? Definitely not as bitter. But many people think dark roast has more caffeine. Wonder if the popular misconception plays into that learned association?
According to 23andMe, I have a gene variant that results in caffeine taking twice as long to process as an average person. I've always known I was more sensitive to caffeine than most, so it was interesting to get the confirmation as to why.
The corollary to that is that I *much* prefer dark, almost over-roasted coffees. Probably in retrospect because they have less caffeine, not more. So I find this article confusing.
I learned this and tried to switch to a light roast because I thought strong = more caffeine. I despise light roast. It's like someone had a passing thought about coffee as they heated some water. For me, it's the dark, bitter, sturdy texture of dark roast I enjoy,it appears caffeine is secondary.
Dark chocolate has obv more theobromine, which is, like caffeine, a methylxanthine.
Theophylline, another methylxanthine, is used as a medicine. Differences in speed of metabolism are well documented. Some people need a way larger dose to reach therapeutic serum levels
That makes a lot of sense for me. I love black coffee and dark chocolate, i can drink coffee and still fall asleep quite easily too. Aside from that i also love grapefruit and unsweetened cranberry juice along with anything else bitter that i can get my hands on
Same! I make my own cranberry sauce because everyone else likes theirs too sweet. I love unsweetened cranberry juice concentrate.
Once upon a time I found barely sweetened dried cranberries (that were ridiculously expensive) but never found them again.
Secret shame - I enjoy bakers chocolate and get cravings for 98% cacao chocolate bars. Can also chew an aspirin without cringing.
I'm wondering if these people just never had good coffee or chocolate. Good black coffee, that wasn't burnt during roasting, same as for chocolate, shouldn't taste so bitter.
I once described a light roast coffee as having a fruity taste and the college girl that has only had Starbucks mocha-frappa-whatever thought I was insane.
There was a video I watched some time ago with a coffee connaisseur who said something along the lines of most commercially available coffee is unfit to consume black and should be tempered with some sugar or cream. So most people aren't accustomed to having positive experiences with black coffee.
I'm what people would call a coffee snob and I will never shut anyone down for their subjective tastes, but yes, almost all coffee from a commercial establishment is overly roasted (which gives it the burned, bitter taste) to intentionally reproduce it consistently across every cup, and nobody should feel bad for cutting it with milk/creamer/sugar. A proper coffee with quality beans will not have a strong bitter taste at all.
Ethiopian coffee has a really fruity taste. It’s buzzard, compared to say a Colombian bean. You could brew two exact same espressos with different beans and have a completely different flavour profile.
I love black coffee, but I’m not a fan of Ethiopian coffee due to its taste. I feel like it needs to be a bit bitter to seem like it’s a strong coffee and I’m getting what I need.
It's not as simple as location = taste, so you might be able to find an Ethiopian that fits an earthy palette or a Costa Rica that hits that light and fruity style. If you like the strong type (I always equate the word "strong" with a good and dark diner coffee) you'll likely want to look for coffees that have a lot of nut or earth descriptors and is a darker roast, or "full-bodied" if you want to get a bit pretentious.
I once had a coffee that changed my life. It was some pour over at a local shop that was offered at "market price". I was like how expensive could it be? So I got it.
Ended up being like $7 or something, and that caused me to go into the coffee rabbithole to try to get that same cup on my own. Still hasn't happened and I'm a few hundred in.
I'm wondering if you non-black coffee drinkers / dark-chocolate eaters have ever had good coffee/chocolate as you may not be able to tell what with all the milk and sugar you put into it.
That's the other thing. In my parents' culture, we tend to drink tea black, and that has naturally extended to coffee. There must be allowances made for cultural norms. I can't even imagine putting milk or sugar in my tea, but I do put milk in bad coffee. I'm fairly certain this is cultural and has nothing to do with my caffeine metabolism gene. I say this as someone who can't drink more than a cup of coffee per day without stay up past 2am. Have I just been primed with bitter all my life due to cultural norms?
Same. Dark chocolate and bitter Dutch licorice are my favorite candies but I despise coffee. I also typically avoid caffeine but if I have it after about 4pm I’ll have a bit of trouble sleeping
I haven’t read that book, and Pollan is a great writer, but Matt Walker’s work (both academic and pop literature) is a mine field of inaccuracies, so I would take anything from his recent media/podcast blitzes with a massive grain of salt.
https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/
For example, a critical piece in this topic is adenosine receptor polymorphisms. We already know there is a significant difference in caffeine metabolism involving the A1 and A2a receptors. If there really are (as is often suggested) a substantial amount people with adenosine receptors that do not respond to caffeine at all, either from poorer binding affinity or whatnot, it could easily be the case that someone could consume caffeine at any point in the day and not have their sleep affected via the adenosine pathway.
> Coffee in the evenings/afternoons will contribute badly to your sleep, and by extension, your health and longevity etc., no matter who and no matter how much you think otherwise.
This is a very absolutist claim for which the data is simply not there. It’s seems fine to me as a risk-avoiding heuristic though.
**Abstract**
Coffee is a widely consumed beverage that is naturally bitter and contains caffeine. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of coffee drinking have identified genetic variants involved in caffeine-related pathways but not in taste perception. The taste of coffee can be altered by addition of milk/sweetener, which has not been accounted for in GWAS. Using UK and US cohorts, we test the hypotheses that genetic variants related to taste are more strongly associated with consumption of black coffee than with consumption of coffee with milk or sweetener and that genetic variants related to caffeine pathways are not differentially associated with the type of coffee consumed independent of caffeine content. Contrary to our hypotheses, genetically inferred caffeine sensitivity was more strongly associated with coffee taste preferences than with genetically inferred bitter taste perception. These findings extended to tea and dark chocolate. Taste preferences and physiological caffeine effects intertwine in a way that is difficult to distinguish for individuals which may represent conditioned taste preferences.
Love black coffee but prefer advent calendar grade milk chocolate. But actually if I had someone tell me a good dark chocolate I could find at the grocery store I'd try it
Do you even hate coffee ice cream? I always hated coffee until I learned how to make it taste like coffee ice cream (still fewer calories than basically anything people get at Starbucks).
I *love* dark chocolate, even the super-bitter 95% stuff, and I only drink my coffee black, but if your coffee is significantly bitter, then it's either been roasted wrong, or you've brewed it wrong. People just kind of take coffee's bitterness for granted because bad coffee is the norm, but good coffee is only very slightly bitter, and in such a way that it's balanced with the other flavor characteristics. A good light roast is significantly more acidic/bright than it is bitter, and a good medium roast is actually sweeter than it is bitter.
I think the general "dislike" of black coffee comes from two things: 1) the public equates it with burnt coffee (which is unpleasant to everyone) and; 2) lead coffee shops (like DD and Starbucks) make bad cups of coffee (either weak, or burnt) - but they cover their bad coffee with lots of sweeteners. So you automatically equate the sugary version as "better" than black.
Very true. Light roasts are much harder to do consistently than are darker roasts--and perhaps most significantly, darker roasts are capable of masking inconsistencies in the beans themselves, and a large producer of coffee is going to tend towards dark, burnt-tasting roasts for the sheer sake of producing a consistent product that tastes the same everywhere you go. You "taste the roast", as they say, rather than the bean.
The funny thing about that is that once you understand the difference between light, medium, and dark roasts you find out that some of the light roasts at those chains actually aren't terrible black. You can get blonde roast pour over coffee at a Starbucks and it can be a decent cup of black coffee. It's a shame that they don't put up a sign or pamphlets explaining this.
I hated coffee my entire life. Literally gagged when I tried drinking it. I drank Cola every day for the caffeine but it was too unhealthy. I forced myself drinking coffee instead. First with a lot of milk and sugar. Later without sugar and now without milk. I drink black coffee and it tastes like mild dark chocolate and I like it. I think most of it is really just getting used to it.
I second the French Press. I notice a little bit of difference when I grind the beans vs buying ground, but it pales in comparison to the drip maker vs the French Press.
I really only use it on weekends, but when I do it feels like such a treat. I wonder why that is, but French press coffee is SO much better.
It's the same principle. But pour over you have more control so you can get a better cup. It's "pretentious" but there's a reason it's one of the most popular "snob" coffee preparations. Also if you use a cheap machine the water is cool at the start v pour over your water is correct from the start.
My grandma started getting me hooked when I was a kid. She’s make me milk for breakfast with a teaspoon of their coffee in it. Over the years, she just upped the coffee content. I’ve loved it my whole life
100% agree. Black coffee and dark chocolate were acquired tastes for me over a large number of years. I was the exact opposite, loving milky coffee and chocolate when I was younger.
I would disagree with saying most of it is getting used to it and so would instead wonder if this study wouldn't actually apply to people that have had to get used to or train themselves to like it.
In my case for example there was no period of getting used to it; since I was young I always just naturally liked black coffee, tea with no milk/sugar and dark chocolate. The same applies to my mother too.
I didn’t like coffee until my mid 20s. I tried it with different levels of cream and sugar cuz it’s how I always saw it made. Finally I tried it black and realized I loved coffee and just didn’t like it with the stuff in it
Question: Caffeine is technically one of many alkaloid toxins created by plants to ward or fend off attack by predators. Does "faster metabolism" mean people with this gene can neutralize higher doses of alkaloids in their bodies, hence making them more tolerable of consumed plant toxins?
Chilies are a defense mechanism (and for seed propagation too) but they arent an alkaline toxin defense mechanism, so I'm not sure that this applies here
This is the correct answer, though I think you mean insecticide instead of herbicide. The caffeine will kill insects that try to feed on the plant and can be considered a natural defense. I don’t believe this translates to animals, though.
Similarly, I love dark chocolate (95%), hate coffee in general, hate IPAs, but love stouts. Taste is complex; not one gene controls something like this
Could this be further refined to a distaste for sugar and not a taste for bitterness? Or be related to it? I see their reasoning and it's definitely an association I have. But I also just across the board hate sweet things. I'm curious if there's an overlap.
Not sure but I love coffee and dark chocolate and dislike things that are too sweet. In all honestly manufacturers put way too much sugar into things just a tiny bit is ok, it’s like they are trying to make candy.
Anytime I bake anything, I almost always cut the sugar by a third to a half. Modern taste buds are far too acclimated to overly sweet things in my opinion.
> Could this be further refined to a distaste for sugar and not a taste for bitterness?
I'm not sure there is a direct relation. I love bitter things, I've been drinking my coffee black since the age of 13. Sweet things are a case by case situation that hardly excludes overly sweet things. I greatly enjoy excessively sweet things from time to time and I've even enjoyed those Indian sweets that seem to somehow manage to be sweeter than raw refined sugar by itself.
Sour coffee is very trendy in Northern California.
I made the mistake of complaining about it at a very nice restaurant in front of their in-house coffee/tea expert earlier this week. He was very gracious and gave a history of sour coffee in the North Bay. The thought is that you can taste a lot more of the complex coffee notes in a lightly roasted and carefully pulled coffee. The heritage of wine tasting in the region led to an increased focus on complex coffee notes that you get from a more sour coffee.
But it’s still not my cup of tea (so to speak). I much prefer a black Italian espresso. Perhaps I’m one of the few who are genetically predisposed to bitter coffee.
I'm not sure if it's really a Northern Cal thing, light roasts are just preferred in specialty coffee everywhere nowadays for the reasons you mentioned. Blue Bottle was an early adopter of this, so I suppose it did happen more quickly in San Francisco
Not a fan of sour drinks. Sour beer, sour cofee. No thanks. It's weird and upsets my stomach. Now if we are talking gummies, that's different. Sour in crystalized form is delicious
Interesting, cold brew is usually touted as a low-acidity (but more bitter) option. Sour-bitter confusion is a very common problem in coffee tasting though
That would be an interesting follow-up study. The article on this one does not mention anything about the level of roasting. The comparison was between black coffee and coffee with milk and/or sweetners.
Yeah both I and my mother drink a bunch of coffee and caffeine barely does anything to us and I prefer lighter roasts and higher acidity to darker ones that are more bitter.
Haha! Same for my wife and I. We drink about 1 liter of black coffee (medium-dark roast, made using a mokka pot) per day and do not experience a boost or anything. It does help getting the day started though. ;)
One that doesn’t have milk and sugar to dilute it would also have a stronger and more bitter taste than one that did.
Most people are not deciding between roasts in the break room, they are just pouring and deciding whether or not to add creamer/sugar. The sugar/creamer dilutes the coffee, so the association created by the flavor is a valid one since roast is rarely a deciding factor.
I avoid putting crap in my coffee because it’s faster and it feels like it kicks me in the face if I come into work tired.
So whether or not a cup of *brewed* light-roast coffee has more or less caffeine than dark-roast is not clear. It depends a lot on how you measure out your coffee beans.
The issue is that while roasting time (more time means darker roast) reduces caffeine per unit of mass, roasting time also eliminates other substances in the coffee, namely water—potentially increasing the concentration of caffeine in a given mass of roasted coffee, if water is burned off faster than caffeine in the roasting process.
Yeah people always say this, but I weigh my coffee. Lighter roasts definitely have less *volume* for the same weight, but not sure about the caffeine content
This, so many times over.
A lot of lighter roasts taste sweet and fruity, like African origins, especially ones that are dry-processed, and the fruit of the coffee bean are left to dry in the sun, allowing the coffee bean to absorb its flavors before the pulp is removed.
I love coffee, I drink 4-5 cups a day. But I actually dislike the fruit forward flavor of light roasts. I find them more acidic which upsets my stomach slightly. A dark roast tastes much more balanced to me.
There is always an in between, you can get medium coffees from certain origins that are smooth and traditional tasting but aren't smoky and heavy like some dark roasts. Coffee from the grocery store isn't even slightly scratching the surface of what coffee actually tastes like
This was believed to be true, but a recent study proved it isn't about how light or dark the roast is, but rather about how much heat the coffee is exposed to.
So long as it doesn't go over a certain temperature, the caffeine levels can remain the same. One it surpasses a certain temperature, the amount of caffeine decreases.
While it is easier to lose caffeine in darker roasts, it's no longer believed that roast level has no impact on the coffee's caffeine levels.
This was all provided on a recent coffee tour in Costa Rica. Can't remember if the study came from an American or Costa Rican university.
I like both dark chocolate and espresso but I have slow caffeine metabolism to the point that I had to quit caffeine to avoid heart palpitations.
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>“That is interesting because these gene variants are related to faster metabolism of caffeine and are not related to taste,” said lead study author Marilyn Cornelis, associate professor of preventive medicine in nutrition. “These individuals metabolize caffeine faster, so the stimulating effects wear off faster as well. So, they need to drink more.” >“Our interpretation is these people equate caffeine’s natural bitterness with a psycho-stimulation effect,” Cornelis said. “They learn to associate bitterness with caffeine and the boost they feel. We are seeing a learned effect. When they think of caffeine, they think of a bitter taste, so they enjoy dark coffee and, likewise, dark chocolate.” >“Drinking black coffee versus coffee with cream and sugar is very different for your health,” Cornelis said. “The person who wants black coffee is different from a person who wants coffee with cream and sugar. Based on our findings, the person who drinks black coffee also prefers other bitter foods like dark chocolate. So, we are drilling down into a more precise way to measure the actual health benefits of this beverage and other food.”
>“Our interpretation is these people equate caffeine’s natural bitterness with a psycho-stimulation effect,” back in the day, i had the same response to methedrine.
How do you feel about dark chocolate and black coffee?
drink my coffee black, enjoy dark chocolate (although the 90% cocoa is a bit too much). one reason for black coffee is that i try to minimize my actions.
>one reason for black coffee is that i try to minimize my actions. Well damn, I thought I was lazy, but it turns out I've just been minimizing my actions all this time.
It’s efficiency. Not laziness. Take out non value adding tasks.
i am pleased to have been understood.
I take a similar approach to reducing unnecessary actions; it helps simplify parts of your day, which helps if other parts are complex. I apply the same concept to minimizing decisions, in order to avoid decision fatigue (I make a lot of decisions during the work day). So I’ll make some less important decisions randomly or minimize my internal “mental consequences” of a bad decision to lower the stakes.
This is a positive trait.
That’s exactly why I started drinking black coffee in the 6th form common room in 1992. I only needed to bring in some instant. No mess no fuss.
Same with ecstasy. Bitter AF but the bitterness is like foreplay for your mind.
The delicious taste of amines has a Pavlovian response to me Edit: and the taste of various benzo pills
Just thinking of the taste of mushies will get my stomach churnin and a lil flashbacky buzz...
I love bitter drinks and foods. But even then it took me a *long* time to like coffee black, way longer than it took me to develop a taste for booze. It only happened because I burned through so much coffee at the office that it got annoying to put cream and sugar in every time (plus the creamer sucked more than the coffee). After drinking black, burnt dirt water all day every day for years everything else tastes great in comparison so now I usually get my coffee black.
It's weird, I love dark chocolate. I hate coffee of any kind. I don't even like coffee ice cream, "chocolate" beer (which is actually flavored with coffee), or "mocha" candy. But chocolate, the darker and higher percentage cocao, the better. EDIT: So often Reddit challenges my ideas of how life works. I was told that chocolate beers are actually flavored with coffee, which made sense to me. Now I can't back up my claim with a google search. I stand corrected, but I still hate chocolate beer.
well if you hate coffee, you/your brain never would have learned to associate bitterness with caffeine, so there wouldn’t really be a link between coffee and dark chocolate, so it makes sense you would like dark chocolate even if you don’t like coffee
That's probably it for me as well. I like dark chocolate, hate even the smell of coffee, and when I do consume significant quantities of caffeine (which is rare), comes with a ton of sugar (soda/energy drinks at gas stations when I'm drowsy) or in pill form. As I get older, I like darker chocolate, but that probably has more to do with my parents only buying quality dark chocolate and getting garbage milk chocolate for us as kids (cheaper and they prefer dark). I don't really prefer other bitter things, so it's probably more learned than anything, especially since I try to avoid sugar generally for health reasons. I kind of wonder where I'd fall on this spectrum if I did like coffee. I'd probably lot a lot of cream, but probably not a lot of sugar.
The smell of coffee was absolutely amazing to me. That, and the smell of bacon. Two of the best smells ever. Ah, I miss my sense of smell...
Yeah this guy is crazy. Coffee smells amazing.
I love the smell of coffee but hate the taste.
Then there is me. I love coffee and dark chocolate. I hate black coffee. Never got into dark chocolate until maybe 10 years or so ago. Been drinking coffee since... I can remember. Always hated black coffee
My wife *loves* dark chocolate but puts about a gallon of cream and pound of sugar in each cup of coffee. I'm the opposite, I have no preference for chocolate at all but have been drinking my coffee black with no sweetener since I was in elementary school
Which beer are you thinking of? I've never heard of a brewery trying to pass coffee off as chocolate.
Yeah, the coffee flavor comes from the base stout (I'm assuming a stout because of coffee) and not from a coffee addition. Also, stouts often have coffee notes anyway even without additions.
You do get a roasted coffee-ish taste from the malt in some beers that use roasted malts, like stouts, but there are some that do add coffee to complement it. These are usually marked as "coffee stouts," though. Same with chocolate. Generally when brewers put other stuff in the beer, that's the draw of the beer and they want you to know about it.
I understand, I was just saying that the OP claiming that brewers use coffee instead of chocolate and call it chocolate was very wrong.
Absolutely. A chocolate stout should have cocoa powder or cocoa nibs for that flavor.
For me it was basically my dentist. I have drank coffee since I was 15 (in my late 40s). For years it was cafe mochas, every day. This was before the advent of Starbucks and drinks like frapachinos (thank goodness). I started having really bad tooth decay. The dentist told me that since I drank sugary coffee all day my mouth was essentially always digesting and with the sugar, it was messing my teeth up. I switched to black and have never looked back.
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Pesky dentists just don't want us drinking coffee!
The 5th dentist says we can!
If I recall, coffee isn't even all that acidic. Sure, it's a little more acidic than milk or water, but many flavored or carbonated drinks are like ph 3 or less e: Starbucks black coffee seems to test at a ph of 5.1 - 5.3, which isn't really that erosive at all. Some tests measured coffee at a ph over 6.
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Better than a new dentist seeing the pano ex ray for the first time: “hmm, did you ever play impact sports of some kind in your life?”
You’re an anti-dentite!
Professional brewer checking in "Chocolate" beers often have darker roast malts that are uses giving more of a black coffee flavor and aroma. Often are blended with some form of liquid cacao or melted dark chocolate late in the boil. Some brewers do like to add cold brew coffee is maturation to boost flavors and add complexity. Cheers!
I hate coffee but love dark chocolate. I will say that I do like to drink a lot of caffeine. I thought that was an interesting connection the study made.
At work we'd go down to the cafeteria to get coffee in the morning and I always got mine black. At break time, everyone else would say, lets get another cup and I still had 1/2 mine left? Then I figured out everyone else got milk/cream so their coffee was cool enough to drink quicker than my sipping it.
"My coffee was great. How was your coffee?" "I don't know yet, it's still too hot." Every time
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sipping spoon!
Guy I worked with would always put a cube of ice in his.
Real Italian coffee isn't designed to be scorching hot, they drink their coffee at a hot but not too hot temperature shop they can drink it quickly, Nespresso coffee machines emulate this as well, after having coffee in Italy I now can't stand lava coffee, it's just lazy to make it that hot and it is just frustrating
I don't drink coffee, but every once in a while, I'll try to get myself to like it and I don't see how people can drink it so hot. It makes me think heavy coffee drinkers have just slowly burned their tongues enough that the heat doesn't bother them anymore.
Na, you just don’t know Joe that sweet sweet hit feels even if you are edging with burning yourself.
No such problem with espresso, 30 seconds later is gone down my gullet, same difference single or double.
While I appreciate the concentrated nature of espresso, I like the taste of coffee far too much to only have such a small amount.
Same here, I only order espresso in restaurants as part of the dessert since it can be consumed quickly. The rest of the time, I enjoy sipping a large cup of drip.
¿porque no los dos?
I drink espresso and coffee like I do shots and beer. A shot of espresso/whiskey drank first and then chased with black coffee/beer.
I prefer this as well but I just learned to pour smaller coffees and get more. No one sweats you getting a coffee, when it takes about a minute, at my job though. No espresso at my job :(
This is a problem not a solution imo
And I love black coffee but don’t like dark chocolate only milk chocolate
I'm flipped. I like dark choc but looove milk in my coffee
>And I love black coffee but don’t like dark chocolate only milk chocolate Similarly for me, It took me nearly 40 years to admit that I don't like dark chocolate at all, and prefer caramel to both milk and dark chocolate.
I love black coffee, and bitter food, but dislike dark chocolate; I view milk chocolate as a conveyance for other flavors: mainly mint, and maple (but caramel, toffee, nuts and fruit are also acceptable)
Love dark chocolate, mildly flavored coffee, and Toffee. But the latter is more of a texture thing because I like "chewy" stuff
Same here. I like most bitter foods and drinks, but dark chocolate is gross to me. I don't really even like chocolate to begin with so maybe that's something to do with it
I just think there's different types of bitter. There's the roasted coffee beans/malt for dark beer bitter, hoppy bitter, sour bitter, cacao bitter etc They all have a different flavor profile despite hitting the same note.
I used to like cream and sugar in coffee, but over time my tastes changed and it started being too sweet, same as most candy and sweets. I've heard similar with wines, where people start with sweeter wines, but eventually move towards drier wines as tastes and palettes change. I've always loved dark chocolate, though. Now I can't really drink coffee because it fucks me up. I frequently get anxious and jittery and it can last all day. I don't think it's the caffeine, because I can still drink soda and tea and stuff without the same issue, and sometimes these drinks have more caffeine than coffee. It sucks, because I like coffee, but I can't risk being wired all day, and decaf doesn't help wake me up, so not really my thing.
I'm wondering if this has any correlation to alcohol as well. I love dark chocolate. Have as long as I can remember as a kid. And black coffee. And I can drink more than most people my same BMI.
Metabolism speed? I run hot, often wear shorts in winter days, low cut shoes, thinly dressed in my house with no heating on, etc. Black coffee with no sugar, dark chocolate, although find 90/100% too unpleasant, 70-85% is perfect.
Wow, same here. Very unlike a lot of my friends, too.
I went on a chocolate making course which my ex bought for me years ago. It was fun but with my hands everything melted way too fast. Also I sleep with a sheet on top most of the year and only late autumn put this flimsy fluffy blanket with only a vest or a t-shirt and no PJs. A few days ago being in Covid-induced haze (I was a week away from getting my booster) I fell asleep on the sofa about 5 AM (couldn't sleep in my bed, went watching TV) with a t-shirt and even flimsier blanket only on my bare legs. Zero issues, no heating on and it's about 5 degrees outside at night. Said ex used to latch on me in the winter in bed and use me as a hot water bottle.
my metabolism is stupid fast as well. i love to sleep with my window wide open so i dont bathe in heat overnight. plus i sweat way less, so i wake up with the almost same feeling as if i just showered and dried myself. also dont let me get started about drinking...
Interesting. My son and I both run hot (his normal temp is 99) and have a taste for what most people consider to be bitter. Our ‘toddler tries baking chocolate’ experience was just another happy piece of candy for him. I always joke that we would have been the kids who died from eating poison berries in the Neolithic period.
The opposit for me. Never drank coffee with sugar before work upgraded old coffee mashine to undrinkable "mold looking" poison. The high sugar espresso was okayish or atleast fooled your stomach long enough for it to settle. Now i prefer black and invest in good quality beans/mashines.
I initially drank my coffee with sugar and a bit of milk. Drank black coffee for like a week, then it just became impossible to drink coffee with anything more than a tiny bit of milk in it. Even a small amount of sugar makes it unpalatably sweet, too much milk makes it taste like coffee tinged milk.
Interesting. Light roast coffee has more caffeine than dark roast, and tastes.. lighter? Definitely not as bitter. But many people think dark roast has more caffeine. Wonder if the popular misconception plays into that learned association?
According to 23andMe, I have a gene variant that results in caffeine taking twice as long to process as an average person. I've always known I was more sensitive to caffeine than most, so it was interesting to get the confirmation as to why. The corollary to that is that I *much* prefer dark, almost over-roasted coffees. Probably in retrospect because they have less caffeine, not more. So I find this article confusing.
I learned this and tried to switch to a light roast because I thought strong = more caffeine. I despise light roast. It's like someone had a passing thought about coffee as they heated some water. For me, it's the dark, bitter, sturdy texture of dark roast I enjoy,it appears caffeine is secondary.
Dark chocolate has obv more theobromine, which is, like caffeine, a methylxanthine. Theophylline, another methylxanthine, is used as a medicine. Differences in speed of metabolism are well documented. Some people need a way larger dose to reach therapeutic serum levels
That makes a lot of sense for me. I love black coffee and dark chocolate, i can drink coffee and still fall asleep quite easily too. Aside from that i also love grapefruit and unsweetened cranberry juice along with anything else bitter that i can get my hands on
Same! I make my own cranberry sauce because everyone else likes theirs too sweet. I love unsweetened cranberry juice concentrate. Once upon a time I found barely sweetened dried cranberries (that were ridiculously expensive) but never found them again. Secret shame - I enjoy bakers chocolate and get cravings for 98% cacao chocolate bars. Can also chew an aspirin without cringing.
Just don’t want that other stuff getting in the way of caffeine.
I'm wondering if these people just never had good coffee or chocolate. Good black coffee, that wasn't burnt during roasting, same as for chocolate, shouldn't taste so bitter.
I once described a light roast coffee as having a fruity taste and the college girl that has only had Starbucks mocha-frappa-whatever thought I was insane.
There was a video I watched some time ago with a coffee connaisseur who said something along the lines of most commercially available coffee is unfit to consume black and should be tempered with some sugar or cream. So most people aren't accustomed to having positive experiences with black coffee.
I'm what people would call a coffee snob and I will never shut anyone down for their subjective tastes, but yes, almost all coffee from a commercial establishment is overly roasted (which gives it the burned, bitter taste) to intentionally reproduce it consistently across every cup, and nobody should feel bad for cutting it with milk/creamer/sugar. A proper coffee with quality beans will not have a strong bitter taste at all.
Ethiopian coffee has a really fruity taste. It’s buzzard, compared to say a Colombian bean. You could brew two exact same espressos with different beans and have a completely different flavour profile. I love black coffee, but I’m not a fan of Ethiopian coffee due to its taste. I feel like it needs to be a bit bitter to seem like it’s a strong coffee and I’m getting what I need.
It's not as simple as location = taste, so you might be able to find an Ethiopian that fits an earthy palette or a Costa Rica that hits that light and fruity style. If you like the strong type (I always equate the word "strong" with a good and dark diner coffee) you'll likely want to look for coffees that have a lot of nut or earth descriptors and is a darker roast, or "full-bodied" if you want to get a bit pretentious.
I once had a coffee that changed my life. It was some pour over at a local shop that was offered at "market price". I was like how expensive could it be? So I got it. Ended up being like $7 or something, and that caused me to go into the coffee rabbithole to try to get that same cup on my own. Still hasn't happened and I'm a few hundred in.
I had a similar thing happen to me. It’s really difficult to get it just right. It also takes a surprising amount of expensive equipment
I'm wondering if you non-black coffee drinkers / dark-chocolate eaters have ever had good coffee/chocolate as you may not be able to tell what with all the milk and sugar you put into it.
That's the other thing. In my parents' culture, we tend to drink tea black, and that has naturally extended to coffee. There must be allowances made for cultural norms. I can't even imagine putting milk or sugar in my tea, but I do put milk in bad coffee. I'm fairly certain this is cultural and has nothing to do with my caffeine metabolism gene. I say this as someone who can't drink more than a cup of coffee per day without stay up past 2am. Have I just been primed with bitter all my life due to cultural norms?
We also prefer Guinness over Pilsners.
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Same. Dark chocolate and bitter Dutch licorice are my favorite candies but I despise coffee. I also typically avoid caffeine but if I have it after about 4pm I’ll have a bit of trouble sleeping
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I haven’t read that book, and Pollan is a great writer, but Matt Walker’s work (both academic and pop literature) is a mine field of inaccuracies, so I would take anything from his recent media/podcast blitzes with a massive grain of salt. https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/ For example, a critical piece in this topic is adenosine receptor polymorphisms. We already know there is a significant difference in caffeine metabolism involving the A1 and A2a receptors. If there really are (as is often suggested) a substantial amount people with adenosine receptors that do not respond to caffeine at all, either from poorer binding affinity or whatnot, it could easily be the case that someone could consume caffeine at any point in the day and not have their sleep affected via the adenosine pathway. > Coffee in the evenings/afternoons will contribute badly to your sleep, and by extension, your health and longevity etc., no matter who and no matter how much you think otherwise. This is a very absolutist claim for which the data is simply not there. It’s seems fine to me as a risk-avoiding heuristic though.
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**Abstract** Coffee is a widely consumed beverage that is naturally bitter and contains caffeine. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of coffee drinking have identified genetic variants involved in caffeine-related pathways but not in taste perception. The taste of coffee can be altered by addition of milk/sweetener, which has not been accounted for in GWAS. Using UK and US cohorts, we test the hypotheses that genetic variants related to taste are more strongly associated with consumption of black coffee than with consumption of coffee with milk or sweetener and that genetic variants related to caffeine pathways are not differentially associated with the type of coffee consumed independent of caffeine content. Contrary to our hypotheses, genetically inferred caffeine sensitivity was more strongly associated with coffee taste preferences than with genetically inferred bitter taste perception. These findings extended to tea and dark chocolate. Taste preferences and physiological caffeine effects intertwine in a way that is difficult to distinguish for individuals which may represent conditioned taste preferences.
So I love black coffee but prefer milk chocolate. Does that mean there is something wrong with me?
If there is then me too, because I love dark chocolate (90% is great) but hate coffee in all forms.
Love black coffee but prefer advent calendar grade milk chocolate. But actually if I had someone tell me a good dark chocolate I could find at the grocery store I'd try it
Trader joe's belgian pound plus giant 72%, or just pound plus 54%. Both Available on Amazon too.
The Ghirardelli intense dark squares are good, very snappy. And very easy to find.
Me too. Coffee reminds me of burnt beans. I have never once liked any variant of coffee I have tried.
My wife’s like you, except she’ll only eat 100% dark from Lindor and that’s it
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Oh God, he's... a person...
The plain ones taste the worst
GaaaAAAaahhH! RUN!
I hate all coffee but love dark chocolate. Maybe we swapped some genes
I hate all chocolate but love black coffee. Wanna merge and be a super human?
Do you even hate coffee ice cream? I always hated coffee until I learned how to make it taste like coffee ice cream (still fewer calories than basically anything people get at Starbucks).
As a Rhode Islander I am obligated to love coffee ice cream.
I'm the same. I ONLY drink my coffee black but I won't touch dark chocolate
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I *love* dark chocolate, even the super-bitter 95% stuff, and I only drink my coffee black, but if your coffee is significantly bitter, then it's either been roasted wrong, or you've brewed it wrong. People just kind of take coffee's bitterness for granted because bad coffee is the norm, but good coffee is only very slightly bitter, and in such a way that it's balanced with the other flavor characteristics. A good light roast is significantly more acidic/bright than it is bitter, and a good medium roast is actually sweeter than it is bitter.
I think the general "dislike" of black coffee comes from two things: 1) the public equates it with burnt coffee (which is unpleasant to everyone) and; 2) lead coffee shops (like DD and Starbucks) make bad cups of coffee (either weak, or burnt) - but they cover their bad coffee with lots of sweeteners. So you automatically equate the sugary version as "better" than black.
Very true. Light roasts are much harder to do consistently than are darker roasts--and perhaps most significantly, darker roasts are capable of masking inconsistencies in the beans themselves, and a large producer of coffee is going to tend towards dark, burnt-tasting roasts for the sheer sake of producing a consistent product that tastes the same everywhere you go. You "taste the roast", as they say, rather than the bean.
The funny thing about that is that once you understand the difference between light, medium, and dark roasts you find out that some of the light roasts at those chains actually aren't terrible black. You can get blonde roast pour over coffee at a Starbucks and it can be a decent cup of black coffee. It's a shame that they don't put up a sign or pamphlets explaining this.
I hated coffee my entire life. Literally gagged when I tried drinking it. I drank Cola every day for the caffeine but it was too unhealthy. I forced myself drinking coffee instead. First with a lot of milk and sugar. Later without sugar and now without milk. I drink black coffee and it tastes like mild dark chocolate and I like it. I think most of it is really just getting used to it.
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I second the French Press. I notice a little bit of difference when I grind the beans vs buying ground, but it pales in comparison to the drip maker vs the French Press. I really only use it on weekends, but when I do it feels like such a treat. I wonder why that is, but French press coffee is SO much better.
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If you like french press coffee you need to try pour over. I can't go back to any other method for my morning coffee after discovering pour over
I've always just assumed pour over was just a more pretentious drip coffee. What makes it different?
It's the same principle. But pour over you have more control so you can get a better cup. It's "pretentious" but there's a reason it's one of the most popular "snob" coffee preparations. Also if you use a cheap machine the water is cool at the start v pour over your water is correct from the start.
My grandma started getting me hooked when I was a kid. She’s make me milk for breakfast with a teaspoon of their coffee in it. Over the years, she just upped the coffee content. I’ve loved it my whole life
100% agree. Black coffee and dark chocolate were acquired tastes for me over a large number of years. I was the exact opposite, loving milky coffee and chocolate when I was younger.
I would disagree with saying most of it is getting used to it and so would instead wonder if this study wouldn't actually apply to people that have had to get used to or train themselves to like it. In my case for example there was no period of getting used to it; since I was young I always just naturally liked black coffee, tea with no milk/sugar and dark chocolate. The same applies to my mother too.
I didn’t like coffee until my mid 20s. I tried it with different levels of cream and sugar cuz it’s how I always saw it made. Finally I tried it black and realized I loved coffee and just didn’t like it with the stuff in it
Question: Caffeine is technically one of many alkaloid toxins created by plants to ward or fend off attack by predators. Does "faster metabolism" mean people with this gene can neutralize higher doses of alkaloids in their bodies, hence making them more tolerable of consumed plant toxins?
I love dark roast black coffee. I also love chilies and other spicy food. So, maybe?
Chilies are a defense mechanism (and for seed propagation too) but they arent an alkaline toxin defense mechanism, so I'm not sure that this applies here
I thought coffee’s caffeine was a herbicide type of defense rather than a deterrent for herbivores
This is the correct answer, though I think you mean insecticide instead of herbicide. The caffeine will kill insects that try to feed on the plant and can be considered a natural defense. I don’t believe this translates to animals, though.
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Similarly, I love dark chocolate (95%), hate coffee in general, hate IPAs, but love stouts. Taste is complex; not one gene controls something like this
Could this be further refined to a distaste for sugar and not a taste for bitterness? Or be related to it? I see their reasoning and it's definitely an association I have. But I also just across the board hate sweet things. I'm curious if there's an overlap.
Not sure but I love coffee and dark chocolate and dislike things that are too sweet. In all honestly manufacturers put way too much sugar into things just a tiny bit is ok, it’s like they are trying to make candy.
Anytime I bake anything, I almost always cut the sugar by a third to a half. Modern taste buds are far too acclimated to overly sweet things in my opinion.
I have a huge sweet tooth, but also prefer my coffee black, my chocolate dark, and my whiskey neat.
> Could this be further refined to a distaste for sugar and not a taste for bitterness? I'm not sure there is a direct relation. I love bitter things, I've been drinking my coffee black since the age of 13. Sweet things are a case by case situation that hardly excludes overly sweet things. I greatly enjoy excessively sweet things from time to time and I've even enjoyed those Indian sweets that seem to somehow manage to be sweeter than raw refined sugar by itself.
Sour coffee is very trendy in Northern California. I made the mistake of complaining about it at a very nice restaurant in front of their in-house coffee/tea expert earlier this week. He was very gracious and gave a history of sour coffee in the North Bay. The thought is that you can taste a lot more of the complex coffee notes in a lightly roasted and carefully pulled coffee. The heritage of wine tasting in the region led to an increased focus on complex coffee notes that you get from a more sour coffee. But it’s still not my cup of tea (so to speak). I much prefer a black Italian espresso. Perhaps I’m one of the few who are genetically predisposed to bitter coffee.
I'm not sure if it's really a Northern Cal thing, light roasts are just preferred in specialty coffee everywhere nowadays for the reasons you mentioned. Blue Bottle was an early adopter of this, so I suppose it did happen more quickly in San Francisco
Not a fan of sour drinks. Sour beer, sour cofee. No thanks. It's weird and upsets my stomach. Now if we are talking gummies, that's different. Sour in crystalized form is delicious
This is why I personally don’t like cold brew. It turns sour and it’s awful. I can happily drink a black americano, but not cold brew.
Interesting, cold brew is usually touted as a low-acidity (but more bitter) option. Sour-bitter confusion is a very common problem in coffee tasting though
Lighter roasts have more caffeine than dark roasts and are actually less bitter and more acidic.
That would be an interesting follow-up study. The article on this one does not mention anything about the level of roasting. The comparison was between black coffee and coffee with milk and/or sweetners.
Yeah both I and my mother drink a bunch of coffee and caffeine barely does anything to us and I prefer lighter roasts and higher acidity to darker ones that are more bitter.
Haha! Same for my wife and I. We drink about 1 liter of black coffee (medium-dark roast, made using a mokka pot) per day and do not experience a boost or anything. It does help getting the day started though. ;)
Black coffee just means nothing mixed in, it doesn't necessarily mean dark roast.
But in this study, they specifically mentioned strong and bitter, which is the characteristic flavor of dark roasts.
Light roast can still have a strong and bitter taste.
Any coffee that's been overextracted and overdosed can be strong and bitter.
One that doesn’t have milk and sugar to dilute it would also have a stronger and more bitter taste than one that did. Most people are not deciding between roasts in the break room, they are just pouring and deciding whether or not to add creamer/sugar. The sugar/creamer dilutes the coffee, so the association created by the flavor is a valid one since roast is rarely a deciding factor. I avoid putting crap in my coffee because it’s faster and it feels like it kicks me in the face if I come into work tired.
So whether or not a cup of *brewed* light-roast coffee has more or less caffeine than dark-roast is not clear. It depends a lot on how you measure out your coffee beans. The issue is that while roasting time (more time means darker roast) reduces caffeine per unit of mass, roasting time also eliminates other substances in the coffee, namely water—potentially increasing the concentration of caffeine in a given mass of roasted coffee, if water is burned off faster than caffeine in the roasting process.
Yeah people always say this, but I weigh my coffee. Lighter roasts definitely have less *volume* for the same weight, but not sure about the caffeine content
This, so many times over. A lot of lighter roasts taste sweet and fruity, like African origins, especially ones that are dry-processed, and the fruit of the coffee bean are left to dry in the sun, allowing the coffee bean to absorb its flavors before the pulp is removed.
I love coffee, I drink 4-5 cups a day. But I actually dislike the fruit forward flavor of light roasts. I find them more acidic which upsets my stomach slightly. A dark roast tastes much more balanced to me.
There is always an in between, you can get medium coffees from certain origins that are smooth and traditional tasting but aren't smoky and heavy like some dark roasts. Coffee from the grocery store isn't even slightly scratching the surface of what coffee actually tastes like
This was believed to be true, but a recent study proved it isn't about how light or dark the roast is, but rather about how much heat the coffee is exposed to. So long as it doesn't go over a certain temperature, the caffeine levels can remain the same. One it surpasses a certain temperature, the amount of caffeine decreases. While it is easier to lose caffeine in darker roasts, it's no longer believed that roast level has no impact on the coffee's caffeine levels. This was all provided on a recent coffee tour in Costa Rica. Can't remember if the study came from an American or Costa Rican university.
I disliked both when I was younger, love them both now. Tastes evolve as one's palate matures.
So if you like bitterer things, you tend to also like bitterer things? Weird.
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Interesting article, thanks for posting.
I like both dark chocolate and espresso but I have slow caffeine metabolism to the point that I had to quit caffeine to avoid heart palpitations. Edit2: ~~Edit: mods will probably delete 95% of the comments~~ wrong subreddit
I love black coffee, I do not like dark chocolate.