Axiom 2: Coffee Should Taste Good

Nothing will upset an aspiring coffee roaster like the question “How strong is your coffee?”

I’m speaking from experience. I’ve lost count of how many times someone has asked me this whilst looking at a retail shelf; so why’s it so upsetting?

I believe the underlying premise is flawed. When someone asks “How strong?” a coffee is, they’ve already made a judgement on what all coffee should be, that is, a means of delivering caffeine to a tired brain.

I’ve never heard anyone at a cellar door asking, “How strong?” a wine is; people go to vineyards to taste, to appreciate vintage, cultivar, barrel aging, skilled fermentation. The strength of the wine, to a consumer, seems a non valuable metric; it is ingrained as a drink for flavours sake, not as a means to throw up in a bin.

Coffee should be similar. Indeed both drinks are an acquired taste, both overly bitter to an untrained palate and both tied up with a drug whose merits and risks, divide opinion.

Taste is commonly cut into five parts; known as ‘The Basic Tastes’; sweet, savoury, salty, bitter and sour. Humans must train their brains to enjoy tastes which are bitter, both coffee and wine sit in this category, and once this training is complete a whole world of flavour opens up to the drinker. The balance of each aspect becoming the source of nuance and a fascination for many. Truly, the success of coffee, like wine, isn’t built on side effects; but on the complex, distinct and interesting flavours that can be enjoyed through it.

If coffee, therefore, can taste good and it’s primary function isn’t to ingest caffeine we should be aiming for it to taste as good as possible. Movement away from this goal undermines the inherent delicious nature of the drink and we lose the true purpose of our endeavours - deliciousness.