Coffee Taste

2025-09-09

I have enjoyed the art of making coffee in the recent years. I feel like only old people say stuff like this and I guess I that is what I am doing, slowly turning into an old man. But recently (the last few years) I have enjoyed coffee, tea, and beer more, (bitter drinks) instead of sweet ones. But regardless I have learned how to make espresso and drink one cup a day every day. I try to tinker with the taste, dosage, yield, beans, etc. to get a good tasting coffee.

And so the other day I was making coffee and opens some new beans from Trader Joe’s, ground them up, made the espresso, foamed the milk, and had a delicious cup of coffee. And then Sneha gets up and she needs coffee more than I do, so I add a teaspoon of sugar to the cup and hand it to her.

And her response is: Does this taste extra bitter to you? Did you add sugar to this?

And I assure her I did, and I tasted the coffee, it tasted pleasant. Dark beans, slightly bitter coffee, creamy foamed milk, and a bit of sugar. Delicious, caffeinated, a great way to start the day. I handed it back and she had one more sip and reassured me it was bitter.

So I had the bright idea to make another cup and use a different set of beans. I made it exactly the same way but with some beans from Philz coffee which are more of a blend and have a milder taste. I ground up the beans, made the espresso, foamed the milk, added sugar, and made a second, identically looking cup of coffee. I had a sip and then gave it to her and she had a sip.

She said: This tastes much better

And I thought about my sip, I tried both of the cups of coffee, one right after another. And I realize that she has a better or stronger coffee palate than I do. She can literally taste things that I cannot. Part of this is shocking because I have been trying to hard to get good at making coffee and thought that it would impart some sense of coffee palate on me.

But the more interesting thing is that there is a world of coffee and perhaps other things (food, music, tv, etc.) that my wife can enjoy or differentiate that I cannot. When we eat a meal, perhaps I taste a delicious hamburger, tender meat, soft bread, creamy mayo (I enjoy mayo on my burgers now), crisp lettuce, sour pickles, juicy tomatoes, and a smidge of sweet ketchup. But what can my wife taste? Are there layers there invisible to me? When you get the right meat to bun ratio can you taste heaven? Is there some amount of mayo that brings tears to her eyes? I dont know because that world, just like the coffee one, is hidden from me.

And I know that we all see the world different, perhaps there are things that I can see or taste that Sneha can’t. And we probably see most things similarly, just things around the edges are different. I get really happy when we have a clean house, perhaps Sneha doesn’t see it that way. But I think I took the coffee taste thing for granted because I can mostly taste the coffee, it is dark and bitter and full of warmth. But instead of worrying about what is hidden from me, I will try to focus on enjoying my own tastes.

-Gary