How Do You Drink Your Coffee - Follow Up

WINE TALK
62

My mum has been drinking regular moka coffe with milk for decades.

I didn’t like the average coffee much, used to drink with milk only when I needed the caffeine or if I was out with somebody at a bar.

Then I started drinking proper coffe and prepare it myself (specialty, light to medium roasted, freshly grinder, aereopress extraction).

The first time I made a cup in the kitchen my mum was there looking at me very perplexed: her gaze was full of contempt coming from generations of old padanian women who lived and died strictly following traditions passed down to them, traditions probably born in a time when people believed in spirits.

One day she asked me if I could give her a bit of the coffe I was preparing (even if she’d made remarks against my process). I agreed but forbid her to put milk in it, like she usually does. So she asked if sugar could be added instead because “otherwise it’s too bitter”. I said no, and after a bit of protesting she agreed to drink it like I demanded.

After tasting it she said that it was very good, not bitter so there’s no need to add milk and I was right.

She keeps doing her old style moka pot with bitter burnt coffe with milk for most of the week (she doesn’t want to spend money nor time to replicate what I do)
and asks me to give her some of mine when I’m at home in the weekends.

3 Likes
63

Guillermo,

If I send you a SASE, and a few bucks “for a cup of coffee”, would you be willing to send me a couple strips of each?

  • Brian
64

I think there’s a conflation in the studies and interpretation of the studies between sensitivity to bitterness and dislike of bitterness. Just because you’re sensitive to bitter doesn’t mean you dislike it. There’s plenty of people who are bitter-chasers; just witness the double-triple IPA phenomenon in beer. I’m pretty sensitive to bitterness; I often detect it in wines when others don’t. But I find it an attractive quality in the right context - and compare it to amaro or angustura. In other contexts it can be totally gross.

Even when it’s deemed pleasant, I think bitterness is an acquired taste. I hated IPAs and bitter melon the first time I tried them. Now I love IPAs, although I prefer balance and moderation, and not beers that chase bitterness as a pursuit. Same with spiciness, smokiness in Scotch (Give me a mildly smoky speyside any day over a Lagavulin), etc. A friend of mine grew up in a Midwest Irish Catholic household, and couldn’t handle the barest of spice in college. Fast forward 2 decades and marriage to his wife who is Indian, and he is now a spice hound and eats far spicier foods than I can handle.

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65

I don’t get all the hostility and postering over this topic. Some folks just need to lighten up a bit.

When I was at Larry’s tasting room last season, I spoke to him about this coffee preference correlation with wine preference. There were five of us. All close friends who travel together, visiting various wine regions. We know each other’s wine preferences. All of us appreciated this little study of Larry’s and found ourselves agreeing with it and finding it humourous (in a good way). Is it a controlled scientific study? No. But who cares?

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66

Just message me your address. No need for a SASE. :joy:

(If the description is correct, I’ll have too many strips anyway.)

67

The authors involved in various publications (Kahtryn LaTour, Michael LaTour, Brian Wansink, Miguel Gomez) are basically all marketing professors. My employer has access to a large number of journals, but not that one.

Here is the Research Gate profile on one of the authors (easy to find the others, too), gives an idea of the types of things she researches and where she publishes.

https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Kathryn-A-LaTour-79219840

-Al

68

Putting aside the manner in which this topic was presented, and instead focusing merely on the topic/hypothesis at hand …

I fall squarely within the hypothesis of the “study.”

Coffee: Black. Always. But I do have a strong preference for lighter roasts from certain areas that produce beans that make citrusy/fruity coffees, as opposed to coffees that feature more earthy tones. For me, putting cream/milk/sugar in a fine black coffee is heresy.

Beer: at least 90% of what I drink is IPA; I also love sours and stouts. Actively dislike dubbels, most tripels, quads, and malty lagers.

Fruit: grapefruit may be my favorite. I eat it like an orange.

Chocolate: here’s my exception: I prefer milk chocolate, if I’m just going to “eat some chocolate,” but I literally never have that desire; I’m not a chocolate person (don’t really have much of a sweet tooth, either) …

rather, I have a salt tooth. And spicy. Salt and Vinegar or spicy kettle chips are my jam. Not so into the Nacho Cheese or BBQ flavors, both of which I would deem “sweeter” flavors than the ones I tend to prefer.

Love mustard. Dislike ketchup.

Love vinegar-based salad dressing; Ranch is fine; dislike French.

Prefer spicy/vinegary/smoky BBQ sauce over sweet.

Generally more interested in “a little bit more dinner” than I am a sweet dessert.

prefer Champagnes on the super-dry/austere end of the spectrum
usually prefer white wines to be super dry
tend to prefer acidic wines.
as a wine’s sweetness increases, so must its acidity if I am to continue liking it, generally.

69

I don’t see any hostility.

We care because one study, one forum poll and some anecdotal tasting room survey are being presented as some truth rather than fun banter. There is little logic or evidence to support the assertion being presented.

1 Like
70

I didn’t see Larry presenting this as “truth”. In fact, he’s just saying based upon this one possibly flawed study, some anecdotal tasting room conversations that he’s had that kinda sorta fall within the study he wanted to expand that onto an online discussion board about what he’s seen and heard.

71

The supertaster topic made the newspaper rounds way back before this board existed. Robert Parker strapped on a cape and declared himself the bestest supertaster ever.

I agree the most sensitive tasters aren’t likely to like coffee or wine. But, this study is drawing arbitrary lines in a continuum, segregating out the top and bottom 25% brackets. Some of us seem to be around the margin.

I think it’s more useful information to product developers and the like. If you make grocery store wines or cater to random tourists at your tasting room, you want to steer clear of characteristics that will turn off any significant number of people, the same way you may turn to cheap gimmicks to appeal to them. That’s why Pinot Grigio and Meiomi are successful.

Daniele’s coffee journey hits on something. Early on in our wine explorations we probably all came across wines we found harsh or unpleasant in some way. Now, we have better context. We can see one as a “food wine” and have ideas of what foods may go well with it to tone down and balance out its extremes. We can realize some wines we don’t enjoy drinking young, but do enjoy with age, so we can taste with that in mind, enjoy it intellectually as we analyze it in that context, as spit.

There’s also the subject of the sensory processing areas of our brains. That’s something we can grow significantly, if we tell our brains it’s important to be paying attention. In other words, just because you go traveling around wine tasting doesn’t mean you have an advanced palate. But, if you have spent a lot of effort over time with your sense perception, you are going to be more keen with those nuances.

That circles back to quality. We may be more sensitive to tastes but not turned off by, say, higher bitterness. Not all bitterness is the same in how we perceive it. How is it framed, off set and so forth? So, we may like some quality food and drink where bitterness is a feature, but still turned off by something that has bitterness as a detraction. A beer with lower IBUs can be awkwardly bitter while one with higher IBUs that are nicely balanced out.

72

He repeatedly stated “there are tendencies,” and when challenged, doubled down. Nothing wrong with engaging in bizarre wine-related conjecture, but when you frame it as fact and attempt to set up a flawed testing framework to support that fact, it’s bound to get some reaction.

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73

I think this has been a fun discussion, and some things to think about, even if I’m not particularly convinced there’s some strong relationship between coffee and wine preferences, or even wine preferences and sensitivity to bitterness.

I think people develop all kinds of food and wine likes and dislikes, and those are much more complicated than the straight physiology and biochemistry of their taste buds. I know my wine preferences have changed radically over the decades. I’ve developed a like, even love for certain foods I strongly disliked when I was younger.

I honestly think food and wine preferences are more mental and attitude than physiological.

4 Likes
74

The greatest tasters get to drink DRC and other high-end wines. Doesn’t mean they have the best palate they just get to taste the greatest wines!

75

Stouts for sure in the MN winters!!!

76

I like Larry, and value his contributions here. He’s routinely a voice of reason and patience.

But I second what Chris says, and each time someone has contradicted Larry he’s leaned into “tendencies” or stated that the non-professional research at his TR(not un-professional, no slander intended) bears out his thoughts without questioning his methodology or the issues with a TR dynamic for doing a study of this type.

Thousands of people read this board and use it for education, as well as fun and recreation. As a “what coffee do you drink?” thread this was entertaining and fun. But when we arrived at spinning the theory of palate alignment between wine and coffee choices, and utilizing a non-professional poll to repeatedly backstop the idea and then diminishing the lack of correllation in the response here with a speculation that the WB readers typically have a different palate than the posters, this soured pretty quickly for me.

This is (typically) a fun place to interact and put up opinions about wine. But it’s also a very influential site for MANY people and we do have some responsibility to making sure that if we’re trying to talk science, then it needs to be actual science or carry a solid disclaimer. To be fair, I think that for most readers the negative reactions on the thread will serve as the disclaimer.

And again, I appreciate what Larry brings to the board overall.

.

1 Like
77

The journal doesn’t offer it online, but I found it on a Cornell website. I also found a PhD thesis of a grad student whose advisor was one of the authors and had a couple others on his PhD committee. Not sure these documents are that interesting though, they aren’t really interested in the physiology of taste as they are in perceptions and marketing strategies.

https://ecommons.cornell.edu/bitstream/handle/1813/71659/LaTour41_Impact_of_super_tasters.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

https://ecommons.cornell.edu/bitstream/handle/1813/47897/Li_cornellgrad_0058F_10121.pdf?sequence=1

-Al

78

Larry has a favorite bone and he ain’t giving it up.

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79

Wow, for most of this, I thought you were writing about me! I need to check out what wines you’ve been digging on cellartracker

80

Kudos again at digging those up.

The findings and assertions in those papers, that’s taste physiology is related to perception and preferences, are not that surprising or controversial.

I don’t think they support the direct correlations between specific coffee and wine preferences suggested by Larry and based on his own observations.

That’s ok, it’s been a lot of fun reading this and the associated thread.

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81

I have a hard time buying into most of this, because I’ve seen too many people change their food and wine preferences significantly over time (particularly wine). My physiology isn’t changing, nor sensitivity to bitterness, if I evolve from liking bigger, riper wines, to more delicate, higher acidity, more mineral wines.

Frankly, I think taste is learned, or trained, much more than innately physiological. Granted, there are (apparently) some tastes that are (physiological). Supposedly some people can’t stand cilantro, because of how it tastes. Fortunately, I’m not one of those :wink:

4 Likes