5 ms·

All coffee and all wine tastes the same to me, can people really tell the difference or is it mostly an upper class pantomime?

jghn 3y ago
Have you compared single origin coffees from wildly different regions of the world?
- hobo_mark 3y ago
  Of course not, but I often have colleagues qualify some coffee as "excellent" and some other as "terrible" and I cannot ever tell the two apart.
  - scld 3y ago
    btw, I don't think the poster above is being snarky. There are many coffee shops that will serve two distinct single origin brews and you can just compare by ordering one of each.
    - jghn 3y ago
      I was indeed not being snarky. There are plenty of outlier examples but if someone set in front of me an arbitrary coffee from Costa Rica, Ethiopia, and Sumatra I'd usually be able to tell you which was which.
strken 3y ago
They really do taste different. Try a French roast vs a light roast some time if you want an extreme example, or a very tart wine and a very sweet one. The outliers at each end of the spectrum are very different. If you can't tell which is which in those cases then you might legitimately have a problem with your sense of taste.
- candiddevmike 3y ago
  Roasting certainly changes the flavor of coffee, but can you really tell the difference from coffee bean X and coffee bean Y roasted the same way?
  - damonke 3y ago
    Yes, although roasting them exactly the same way is probably not a great idea. But you can roast them to a similar level. It can be quite a subtle difference, and part of the flavor might also come from the way they process the coffee before it gets roasted (washing the beans, letting them sit in the fruit a little longer, etc.) But I am sure many people can taste the difference between a costa rican and an ethiopian coffee, as long as it's not roasted to charcoal level. That might influence why people ask this question. A lot of coffee people drink is roasted so dark that there's probably no big difference anymore. Additionally it's often blended. I guess it's how you guarantee a consistent flavor (and bottom line).
  - soneca 3y ago
    I do think I can tell between robusta and arabica. I am not sure about two arabica. Probably not.
  - skypanther 3y ago
    I can. I recently roasted up two batches of beans -- some El Salvadoran and some Costa Rican. I roasted both to a Full City (dark) roast level. They were very different. I finished the Costa Rican quickly. It was delicious. I'm struggling to finish the El Salvadoran. I'm terrible at describing flavors, but I'd say it's sour with a tea-like flavor. There's a lot that goes into the flavor of coffee. The beans themselves of course. Brewing technique has a big influence as well. But also growing conditions (altitude, soil composition, rain/sun mix, etc.), processing (wet vs dry process, fermentation time, etc.), handling and shipping (dry or moist conditions), and probably more I don't know about. I strongly prefer wet-processed beans (mostly south American varieties) over dry-processed beans (mostly African varieties are processed this way). I haven't tried honey-processed yet. Green beans stay "fresh" for a really long time, but once roasted beans become stale quickly. I can taste the difference between my roasts a day or two after roasting vs days or weeks later.
Broken_Hippo 3y ago
Then you should widen your search. I buy a coffee advent calendar every year. Beans from small roasters, different sorts of processing, and so on. I've had coffee that tastes more akin to a fruity tea than coffee - and some that tastes much more like the coffee flavor I expect. Some of them were surprising - I didn't know coffee could taste like that. A lot of coffee in your average stores taste somewhat similar - some much more than others - but are certainly not the same. If they didn't, folks wouldn't really have as many preferences. Roasts make a difference as do the beans origin and quality.
soneca 3y ago
I don’t know about wine, but coffee do tastes different. Very different. Compare a pour over at home with a cheap supermarket brand and a espresso at a fancy coffee shop. You can say they all deliver the same “pleasure” to you and it they are interchangeably experiences, but probably they effectively taste different. Unless you have a problem with your tasting sense.
- hobo_mark 3y ago
  > Unless you have a problem with your tasting sense. I mean, there's two comments proposing that already, but why would that be the case only for high-ceremony drinks (coffee, wine...).
  - soneca 3y ago
    Have you done that test? You really see no difference between two very different beans using different preparation methods? To your question. I think that’s where the economic incentives for creating and selling different variations are. Tea also, but tea gets it from different plants. I can taste differences in hot chocolates, btw, solid bar chocolates too. Hershey’s milk chocolate bars in the US are horrible to my taste. Any brand milk chocolate bar where I live (Brazil), tastes much better. Even the supermarket cheap ones. But more fancy chocolate bars do taste different. In my case, a cheap chocolate bar (that is not US Hersheys) is good enough for me, so I don’t care about the fancier ones. But they do taste different. Edit: I do believe there are marketing and status incentives to make a big deal about the difference in this high-end stuff and there is a game of “pantomime” in place as you say. Definitely is there. It just isn’t a 100% “emperor has no clothes” situation. That’s the scenario for “high-end bottled water” in my opinion. They all taste the same and is 100% marketing
    - codr7 3y ago
      Have you tried high end bottled water and compared? I couldn't care less for the regular brands, but usually really enjoy higher end mineral water.
BLKNSLVR 3y ago
I'm no connoisseur at all, but I can tell the difference between a Shiraz (fruitier) and a Cab Sav (drier). Mainly because they're the ones I've had more experience with. Couldn't tell you a Grenache versus Merlot because I haven't reached whatever baseline of recognition is required. That's been a very slow 20 year journey. I'm not detecting hints of blueberry or oak, that feels like pantomime still.
- hobo_mark 3y ago
  > I'm no connoisseur at all... Then proceeds to speak in completely alien language, thank you for proving my point :) I am saying learning such language takes years of practice, and such a hobby is only available to (relatively) few.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- barrkel 3y ago
  Ripe Australian Shiraz (14+% alcohol) has really distinct blueberry, it was a style heavily favoured by Robert Parker and really common in the early 2000s, but it's tapering off now. Syrah, the same grape, from northern Rhone is cooler climate, lower alcohol and has more of a pepper profile. Grenache - I tyically drink Spanish Garnacha - has a crunchy berry profile in a young early drinking wine, but can get more interesting in pricier examples from Priorat etc. Grenache + Syrah (aka Shiraz) + Mourvèdre (GSM) is the southern Rhone blend, and is typically very high alcohol and quite opulent. I'm not much of a fan though. Mourvedre is fantastic stuff when done well. Mourvedre reminds me of Carignan, both make savoury / meaty wines. Domaine Tempier Bandol is a Mourvèdre-dominant blend and is absolutely delicious, my favourite example of it. Oak is a big part of really good wine. American oak, French oak and unoaked all produce very different wines. Typical Rioja has heavy American oak flavours, while e.g. red Burgundy typically has pronounced French oak.
  - BLKNSLVR 3y ago
    I love the "underwater part of the iceberg" of life that's implied by that level of knowledge summarised "above the water". There is a very limited number of things an individual can get deeply into.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
FergusArgyll 3y ago
IMO the best way to start noticing differences is tasting two cups together. then you really notice the contrast, it's harder to remember what the last Sumatra tasted like.
barrkel 3y ago
Different non-fortified, non-dessert still red wines using different grapes taste about as different as raspberry, cherry, blackcurrant (cassis) and blackberry juices taste from each other. They're all recognizably wine, but the fruit flavours, tannin, acidity, sweetness, oak and mouthfeel varies quite a bit. Cheap house wine from an open bottle at a bar or restaurant without a wine list can taste pretty similar between bottles. These wines are typically industrial product made in large vats where the wine itself, excluding taxes and everything else, costs a fraction of a dollar. If the bottle has been open for a day, the wine loses most fruit flavours, and structurally cheap wine is pretty similar - not very tannic (it's not usually a crowd pleaser), probably has added sugar.
- hobo_mark 3y ago
  > taste about as different as raspberry, cherry, blackcurrant (cassis) and blackberry juices I can trivially tell these apart, and I did not have to "study" any of that. From other comments it sounds like doing the same for wine takes years of practice, which is obviously only accessible to the leisure class.
  - barrkel 3y ago
    No - I could put a glass of Burgundy, an oaky Rioja and ripe Australian Syrah in front of you and you'd be able to trivially tell them apart, no training needed.
    - hobo_mark 3y ago
      Of course. But now do a blind taste with someone off the streets, and ask which one is the "oaky Rioja".
      - roughly 3y ago
        That’s a different statement from “they all taste the same.”
      - explaininjs 3y ago
fabian2k 3y ago
Dark roasted coffee will usually remove most of the differences that were in the original beans. To notice the details you will have to use light to medium roasted beans and be reasonably good at preparing the coffee well. There are many parameters you can adjust while brewing coffee (not all methods expose those parameters), and this can affect the taste rather significantly.
mc32 3y ago
A lot of the taste of coffee comes down to process, from roasting to preparation and includes things like temperature, pressure, and time. And it does taste different. Some of it is just undrinkable and makes me gag; horrible stuff and other coffee is enjoyable to drink. That said coffee afficionades do go overboard with their fussiness. A good coffee is good coffee.
hoseja 3y ago
I bet you could tell the difference if you lined up multiple samples and tasted in succession. I think it's a perfect pitch thing, some people seem able to identify taste without reference like some people are able to identify tone.
webignition 3y ago
I work as a software developer but once trained as a barista when considering opening my own coffee shop. I can offer some fact-based reasoning as to how different coffees have the capacity to taste different (whether people have the capacity to discern the difference is another matter). The dominant factors in the flavour of coffee comes from the preparation, both the roasting and the brewing. Roasting reduces the acidity of the beans and draws out oils towards the outer surface. Both the acidity and oil content of the affect the flavour, with the acidity directly impacting bitterness and the oil impacting the smoothness. The amount of total acidity contributors and oil contributors that are drawn out of the bean when brewing are a direct function of water temperature, water pressure and duration. Too low a temperature and the resulting drink is more akin to watery coffee dust. Too low a pressure and you get sort of the same results. An ideal temperature and pressure combination, given a fixed duration (let's say 30 seconds) draws out enough of the oils to balance the acidity to get a good strength coffee (optimal bean to drink yield) that doesn't taste horrid. The acidity takes longer to draw out such that too long a duration results in a more bitter (and generally less acceptable) flavour. That's a rough overview meant only to highlight that it certainly is possible, from both roasting and brewing, to significantly alter the flavour of coffee. I've oversimplified for brevity. But can differently-grown beans of the same type affect flavour? I don't grow coffee beans but I do grow tomatoes. From personal experience, the length of growing season, the amount of sunlight and the average temperature across the growing season affect the quality of the fruit. I find the same for sweetcorn, squash and many plants that grow above ground. I don't think it is a stretch to suggest that the same factors have the capacity to impact the oil content of coffee beans if nothing else. If growth conditions impact the oil content of the beans and the oil content of the resulting drink impacts the flavour, it seems plausible to suggest that the growth conditions can impact the flavour.

jghn 3y ago

Have you compared single origin coffees from wildly different regions of the world?

hobo_mark 3y ago
Of course not, but I often have colleagues qualify some coffee as "excellent" and some other as "terrible" and I cannot ever tell the two apart.
- scld 3y ago
  btw, I don't think the poster above is being snarky. There are many coffee shops that will serve two distinct single origin brews and you can just compare by ordering one of each.
  - jghn 3y ago
    I was indeed not being snarky. There are plenty of outlier examples but if someone set in front of me an arbitrary coffee from Costa Rica, Ethiopia, and Sumatra I'd usually be able to tell you which was which.

strken 3y ago

They really do taste different. Try a French roast vs a light roast some time if you want an extreme example, or a very tart wine and a very sweet one. The outliers at each end of the spectrum are very different. If you can't tell which is which in those cases then you might legitimately have a problem with your sense of taste.

candiddevmike 3y ago
Roasting certainly changes the flavor of coffee, but can you really tell the difference from coffee bean X and coffee bean Y roasted the same way?
- damonke 3y ago
  Yes, although roasting them exactly the same way is probably not a great idea. But you can roast them to a similar level. It can be quite a subtle difference, and part of the flavor might also come from the way they process the coffee before it gets roasted (washing the beans, letting them sit in the fruit a little longer, etc.) But I am sure many people can taste the difference between a costa rican and an ethiopian coffee, as long as it's not roasted to charcoal level. That might influence why people ask this question. A lot of coffee people drink is roasted so dark that there's probably no big difference anymore. Additionally it's often blended. I guess it's how you guarantee a consistent flavor (and bottom line).
- soneca 3y ago
  I do think I can tell between robusta and arabica. I am not sure about two arabica. Probably not.
- skypanther 3y ago
  I can. I recently roasted up two batches of beans -- some El Salvadoran and some Costa Rican. I roasted both to a Full City (dark) roast level. They were very different. I finished the Costa Rican quickly. It was delicious. I'm struggling to finish the El Salvadoran. I'm terrible at describing flavors, but I'd say it's sour with a tea-like flavor. There's a lot that goes into the flavor of coffee. The beans themselves of course. Brewing technique has a big influence as well. But also growing conditions (altitude, soil composition, rain/sun mix, etc.), processing (wet vs dry process, fermentation time, etc.), handling and shipping (dry or moist conditions), and probably more I don't know about. I strongly prefer wet-processed beans (mostly south American varieties) over dry-processed beans (mostly African varieties are processed this way). I haven't tried honey-processed yet. Green beans stay "fresh" for a really long time, but once roasted beans become stale quickly. I can taste the difference between my roasts a day or two after roasting vs days or weeks later.

Broken_Hippo 3y ago

Then you should widen your search. I buy a coffee advent calendar every year. Beans from small roasters, different sorts of processing, and so on. I've had coffee that tastes more akin to a fruity tea than coffee - and some that tastes much more like the coffee flavor I expect. Some of them were surprising - I didn't know coffee could taste like that. A lot of coffee in your average stores taste somewhat similar - some much more than others - but are certainly not the same. If they didn't, folks wouldn't really have as many preferences. Roasts make a difference as do the beans origin and quality.

soneca 3y ago

I don’t know about wine, but coffee do tastes different. Very different. Compare a pour over at home with a cheap supermarket brand and a espresso at a fancy coffee shop. You can say they all deliver the same “pleasure” to you and it they are interchangeably experiences, but probably they effectively taste different. Unless you have a problem with your tasting sense.

hobo_mark 3y ago
> Unless you have a problem with your tasting sense. I mean, there's two comments proposing that already, but why would that be the case only for high-ceremony drinks (coffee, wine...).
- soneca 3y ago
  Have you done that test? You really see no difference between two very different beans using different preparation methods? To your question. I think that’s where the economic incentives for creating and selling different variations are. Tea also, but tea gets it from different plants. I can taste differences in hot chocolates, btw, solid bar chocolates too. Hershey’s milk chocolate bars in the US are horrible to my taste. Any brand milk chocolate bar where I live (Brazil), tastes much better. Even the supermarket cheap ones. But more fancy chocolate bars do taste different. In my case, a cheap chocolate bar (that is not US Hersheys) is good enough for me, so I don’t care about the fancier ones. But they do taste different. Edit: I do believe there are marketing and status incentives to make a big deal about the difference in this high-end stuff and there is a game of “pantomime” in place as you say. Definitely is there. It just isn’t a 100% “emperor has no clothes” situation. That’s the scenario for “high-end bottled water” in my opinion. They all taste the same and is 100% marketing
  - codr7 3y ago
    Have you tried high end bottled water and compared? I couldn't care less for the regular brands, but usually really enjoy higher end mineral water.

BLKNSLVR 3y ago

I'm no connoisseur at all, but I can tell the difference between a Shiraz (fruitier) and a Cab Sav (drier). Mainly because they're the ones I've had more experience with. Couldn't tell you a Grenache versus Merlot because I haven't reached whatever baseline of recognition is required. That's been a very slow 20 year journey. I'm not detecting hints of blueberry or oak, that feels like pantomime still.

hobo_mark 3y ago
> I'm no connoisseur at all... Then proceeds to speak in completely alien language, thank you for proving my point :) I am saying learning such language takes years of practice, and such a hobby is only available to (relatively) few.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
barrkel 3y ago
Ripe Australian Shiraz (14+% alcohol) has really distinct blueberry, it was a style heavily favoured by Robert Parker and really common in the early 2000s, but it's tapering off now. Syrah, the same grape, from northern Rhone is cooler climate, lower alcohol and has more of a pepper profile. Grenache - I tyically drink Spanish Garnacha - has a crunchy berry profile in a young early drinking wine, but can get more interesting in pricier examples from Priorat etc. Grenache + Syrah (aka Shiraz) + Mourvèdre (GSM) is the southern Rhone blend, and is typically very high alcohol and quite opulent. I'm not much of a fan though. Mourvedre is fantastic stuff when done well. Mourvedre reminds me of Carignan, both make savoury / meaty wines. Domaine Tempier Bandol is a Mourvèdre-dominant blend and is absolutely delicious, my favourite example of it. Oak is a big part of really good wine. American oak, French oak and unoaked all produce very different wines. Typical Rioja has heavy American oak flavours, while e.g. red Burgundy typically has pronounced French oak.
- BLKNSLVR 3y ago
  I love the "underwater part of the iceberg" of life that's implied by that level of knowledge summarised "above the water". There is a very limited number of things an individual can get deeply into.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

FergusArgyll 3y ago

IMO the best way to start noticing differences is tasting two cups together. then you really notice the contrast, it's harder to remember what the last Sumatra tasted like.

barrkel 3y ago

Different non-fortified, non-dessert still red wines using different grapes taste about as different as raspberry, cherry, blackcurrant (cassis) and blackberry juices taste from each other. They're all recognizably wine, but the fruit flavours, tannin, acidity, sweetness, oak and mouthfeel varies quite a bit. Cheap house wine from an open bottle at a bar or restaurant without a wine list can taste pretty similar between bottles. These wines are typically industrial product made in large vats where the wine itself, excluding taxes and everything else, costs a fraction of a dollar. If the bottle has been open for a day, the wine loses most fruit flavours, and structurally cheap wine is pretty similar - not very tannic (it's not usually a crowd pleaser), probably has added sugar.

hobo_mark 3y ago
> taste about as different as raspberry, cherry, blackcurrant (cassis) and blackberry juices I can trivially tell these apart, and I did not have to "study" any of that. From other comments it sounds like doing the same for wine takes years of practice, which is obviously only accessible to the leisure class.
- barrkel 3y ago
  No - I could put a glass of Burgundy, an oaky Rioja and ripe Australian Syrah in front of you and you'd be able to trivially tell them apart, no training needed.
  - hobo_mark 3y ago
    Of course. But now do a blind taste with someone off the streets, and ask which one is the "oaky Rioja".
    - roughly 3y ago
      That’s a different statement from “they all taste the same.”
    - explaininjs 3y ago

fabian2k 3y ago

Dark roasted coffee will usually remove most of the differences that were in the original beans. To notice the details you will have to use light to medium roasted beans and be reasonably good at preparing the coffee well. There are many parameters you can adjust while brewing coffee (not all methods expose those parameters), and this can affect the taste rather significantly.

mc32 3y ago

A lot of the taste of coffee comes down to process, from roasting to preparation and includes things like temperature, pressure, and time. And it does taste different. Some of it is just undrinkable and makes me gag; horrible stuff and other coffee is enjoyable to drink. That said coffee afficionades do go overboard with their fussiness. A good coffee is good coffee.

hoseja 3y ago

I bet you could tell the difference if you lined up multiple samples and tasted in succession. I think it's a perfect pitch thing, some people seem able to identify taste without reference like some people are able to identify tone.

webignition 3y ago

I work as a software developer but once trained as a barista when considering opening my own coffee shop. I can offer some fact-based reasoning as to how different coffees have the capacity to taste different (whether people have the capacity to discern the difference is another matter). The dominant factors in the flavour of coffee comes from the preparation, both the roasting and the brewing. Roasting reduces the acidity of the beans and draws out oils towards the outer surface. Both the acidity and oil content of the affect the flavour, with the acidity directly impacting bitterness and the oil impacting the smoothness. The amount of total acidity contributors and oil contributors that are drawn out of the bean when brewing are a direct function of water temperature, water pressure and duration. Too low a temperature and the resulting drink is more akin to watery coffee dust. Too low a pressure and you get sort of the same results. An ideal temperature and pressure combination, given a fixed duration (let's say 30 seconds) draws out enough of the oils to balance the acidity to get a good strength coffee (optimal bean to drink yield) that doesn't taste horrid. The acidity takes longer to draw out such that too long a duration results in a more bitter (and generally less acceptable) flavour. That's a rough overview meant only to highlight that it certainly is possible, from both roasting and brewing, to significantly alter the flavour of coffee. I've oversimplified for brevity. But can differently-grown beans of the same type affect flavour? I don't grow coffee beans but I do grow tomatoes. From personal experience, the length of growing season, the amount of sunlight and the average temperature across the growing season affect the quality of the fruit. I find the same for sweetcorn, squash and many plants that grow above ground. I don't think it is a stretch to suggest that the same factors have the capacity to impact the oil content of coffee beans if nothing else. If growth conditions impact the oil content of the beans and the oil content of the resulting drink impacts the flavour, it seems plausible to suggest that the growth conditions can impact the flavour.