12 ms·

These things are detectable in blind taste tests, unlike wine. I did one myself to test how much the time-since-ground made a difference in flavor. I had 1 mont

by poke111 13y ago

These things are detectable in blind taste tests, unlike wine. I did one myself to test how much the time-since-ground made a difference in flavor. I had 1 month, 2 weeks, 1 week, 2 days, and fresh grounds. In a blind test I correctly put them in order, except for transposing the 2 day and 1 week old grounds.

e12e 13y ago
That's interesting. So you found that while fresh ground coffee is still different (one would assume best, but lets go with different) -- if you're "pre-grinding" one week old is fine. Did you keep it refrigerated? Room temperature? Dark/daylight? Sealed? Btw, what do you mean "unlike" wine? Certainly there's a difference between wine that's been left to breathe, and the same wine straight out of the bottle (well "wine" is a bit wide, but for many good wines).
- Avshalom 13y ago
  by unlike wine ze means that there's a couple studys out there showing a) price is suuuuper loosely correlated to quality b) you can get some undergrad oenologists to describe (some unspecificied) whites like reds if you add food coloring From which people --who apparently think color is the only differentiator in wine-- leap to the conclusion that the there is no discernable difference between a chianti and a reisling ice wine. Hell no difference between a malolactic chard and and non-mal chard. And that only posturing fools would drink anything but boones farm.
  - e12e 13y ago
    Which is funny, as a far as I know, the main reason for price difference in coffee is scarcity, not "quality". Although, as for most things, the crappy stuff is cheaper.
- dylangs1030 13y ago
  He means that most people cannot tell the difference between different wines based on quality or cost in a blind taste test. If you tell them it's a high quality label, they drink it and act that way. If you tell them it's a low quality label, they don't use fancy descriptors when you ask their opinion. What it really is doesn't correlate with the results at all; it's all placebo. And what the other commenter said is also true. Most people can't even tell a difference in color. If you serve white wine dyed red, people describe it as they would red wine, and vice versa. EDIT: Citations: [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_tasting#Blind_tasting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_tasting#Blind_tasting [2]: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-tasting-junk-science-analysis http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-tas... [3]: http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/handle/37328 http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/handle/37328 [4]: http://www.yumsugar.com/Wine-World-Reels-2-Buck-Chuck-Wins-Award-404101 http://www.yumsugar.com/Wine-World-Reels-2-Buck-Chuck-Wins-A... (not a citation in the strict sense, but a demonstrative reference)
  - Avshalom 13y ago
    Well... the gaurdian article is fucking useless because it doesn't break down the numbers, for all we know 39% got it right one hundred percent of the time, 39% percent got it wrong one hundred percent of the time and the remainder was just flipping coins. Which may very well mean that 78% absolutely can tell. That AgEcon paper actually bears that out, though obviously much less dramatically, the hoi poloi can tell the difference and they (to a small extent) 'prefer' the cheap stuff, and the experts can tell the difference and they 'prefer' the expensive stuff. 'prefer' standing in for perceived quality not necessarily enjoyment. Yes "most" is still legit word to use here, BUT, please try to find anything, anything at all, where "most" people can unambiguously determine 'quality'. And hell price is a piss poor predictor of quality in just about anything, what with price being some combination of supply, current profit strategy (loss leader?, cash cow?), social signaling, manufacturing cost, number of middlemen, and about a billion other things. --- The color study was a group of like a dozen oenology undergrads. A handful of oenology undergrads is not "most people". It's not a large enough N, and there are different pressures on a student in field when describing wine than a random consumer. For all we know they could all tell the difference but none of them wanted to be the asshole to look at a glass of red fluid and say "you know I don't think this is a fucking red". --- As for coffee I'll go see if I can dig it up but I'm pretty sure there was a test that recently showed 'most people' couldn't tell quality either and just preferred stronger over-extracted coffee to "good" coffee.
  - e12e 13y ago
    From the wikipedia article: "One of the most famous instances of blind testing is known as the Judgment of Paris, a wine competition held in 1976 where French judges blind-tested wines from France and California. Against all expectations, California wines bested French wines according to the judges, a result which would have been unlikely in a non-blind contest." So, the judges can taste the difference, but they aren't honest unless it's a blind test. That's very different from saying there is no difference... Now, that people can't "tell a difference in cost" should be almost a tautology -- what moron thinks that what tastes better will be more expensive, all the time? All things being equal, if you can, from a given, source, make something that tastes good and bad, with approximately the same amount of work, you'd think you make more that tastes good, and due to the benefit of producing large quanta, the good stuff would be cheaper? In fact, if "most people" prefer the cheaper wines, I guess the wine industry people are doing their jobs, and selling most of what most people want. That doesn't mean it's what I (or you) want, just what "most people" want. Incidentally, my tastes in coffee doesn't correlate very well to the description of what "most Americans" prefer, in the article, but that doesn't mean that I don't see that it makes a difference in taste what beans you choose, how you grind it, and how you brew it. It just means that I'll consistently make coffee "most Americans" would think is far too strong and bitter. No problem, let them drink whatever kind of coffee they prefer. But don't try and tell us there isn't a difference in taste.
poke111 13y ago
I kept all grounds in a ziplock freezer bag in a dark room-temp cabinet. As I went from freshest to least-fresh I found that there were flavors missing and more bitterness and acidity. What I meant about wine is that there is a lot of stuff in the wine world that people obsess over, but is not detectable by even experts. For example, the differences in regions of origin, price of the bottle, etc. I'm not saying that everything in the wine world is BS but there is plenty of if. Even experts have been fooled with food coloring into describing white wines with adjectives normally used to describe reds.
- stdbrouw 13y ago
  There's two separate issues here. One is whether wine experts are able to detect certain flavors or even figure out the grape variety and origin of a certain kind of wine. The other is whether in blind tastings cheap wine is consistently rated as inferior to expensive wine. I've found people in the wine industry can figure out where wine is from with surprising accuracy. But their skill is not in the least based on a judgment of how much they like the wine. It's about having an encyclopedic knowledge about which wine is associated with which flavors and production techniques, and then matching up what your nose tells you with one of those taste profiles in your head. Once you know what type of wine you're tasting, you can infer the price category: * French Pinot Noir is generally more expensive than New Zealand Pinot Noir. * Wine that's been in new oak barrels (evident from e.g. vanilla and toasted flavors in the wine) is more expensive than wine that hasn't been. * Wine that tastes only of red and black fruit is probably young and thus cheap, wine that tastes of weird things like truffles and what-not is likely to be older and thus more expensive. * Sweet white wine which tastes like marmalade and honey and nuts has a good chance of being made from grapes with noble rot, which are picked individually, berry by berry, and thus result in incredibly expensive wine. * ... and so on. So the link between quality and price in wine is very tenuous, but that doesn't mean professionals "can't tell the difference". They can.
  - JoeAltmaier 13y ago
    Professionals are a self-selected group, perhaps with vastly superior noses or some such. It has no bearing on My enjoyment. Other trials use undergrads, who couldn't tell any wine from any other wine, no matter how you run the experiment. I'm probably like the novices tested, less like the professional. Maybe you're different.
lostlogin 13y ago
Try doing it as days since roast. I like 30 mins old (well, cool enough to grind) lightly roasted (just after first crack). This type of roast seems to get progressively worse for 2-3 days then gets particularly good from for 2 or three days. After that it's stale. The darker the roast, the less effect time has on its taste as far as I can tell.

by poke111 13y ago

e12e 13y ago

That's interesting. So you found that while fresh ground coffee is still different (one would assume best, but lets go with different) -- if you're "pre-grinding" one week old is fine. Did you keep it refrigerated? Room temperature? Dark/daylight? Sealed? Btw, what do you mean "unlike" wine? Certainly there's a difference between wine that's been left to breathe, and the same wine straight out of the bottle (well "wine" is a bit wide, but for many good wines).

Avshalom 13y ago
by unlike wine ze means that there's a couple studys out there showing a) price is suuuuper loosely correlated to quality b) you can get some undergrad oenologists to describe (some unspecificied) whites like reds if you add food coloring From which people --who apparently think color is the only differentiator in wine-- leap to the conclusion that the there is no discernable difference between a chianti and a reisling ice wine. Hell no difference between a malolactic chard and and non-mal chard. And that only posturing fools would drink anything but boones farm.
- e12e 13y ago
  Which is funny, as a far as I know, the main reason for price difference in coffee is scarcity, not "quality". Although, as for most things, the crappy stuff is cheaper.
dylangs1030 13y ago
He means that most people cannot tell the difference between different wines based on quality or cost in a blind taste test. If you tell them it's a high quality label, they drink it and act that way. If you tell them it's a low quality label, they don't use fancy descriptors when you ask their opinion. What it really is doesn't correlate with the results at all; it's all placebo. And what the other commenter said is also true. Most people can't even tell a difference in color. If you serve white wine dyed red, people describe it as they would red wine, and vice versa. EDIT: Citations: [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_tasting#Blind_tasting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_tasting#Blind_tasting [2]: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-tasting-junk-science-analysis http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-tas... [3]: http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/handle/37328 http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/handle/37328 [4]: http://www.yumsugar.com/Wine-World-Reels-2-Buck-Chuck-Wins-Award-404101 http://www.yumsugar.com/Wine-World-Reels-2-Buck-Chuck-Wins-A... (not a citation in the strict sense, but a demonstrative reference)
- Avshalom 13y ago
  Well... the gaurdian article is fucking useless because it doesn't break down the numbers, for all we know 39% got it right one hundred percent of the time, 39% percent got it wrong one hundred percent of the time and the remainder was just flipping coins. Which may very well mean that 78% absolutely can tell. That AgEcon paper actually bears that out, though obviously much less dramatically, the hoi poloi can tell the difference and they (to a small extent) 'prefer' the cheap stuff, and the experts can tell the difference and they 'prefer' the expensive stuff. 'prefer' standing in for perceived quality not necessarily enjoyment. Yes "most" is still legit word to use here, BUT, please try to find anything, anything at all, where "most" people can unambiguously determine 'quality'. And hell price is a piss poor predictor of quality in just about anything, what with price being some combination of supply, current profit strategy (loss leader?, cash cow?), social signaling, manufacturing cost, number of middlemen, and about a billion other things. --- The color study was a group of like a dozen oenology undergrads. A handful of oenology undergrads is not "most people". It's not a large enough N, and there are different pressures on a student in field when describing wine than a random consumer. For all we know they could all tell the difference but none of them wanted to be the asshole to look at a glass of red fluid and say "you know I don't think this is a fucking red". --- As for coffee I'll go see if I can dig it up but I'm pretty sure there was a test that recently showed 'most people' couldn't tell quality either and just preferred stronger over-extracted coffee to "good" coffee.
- e12e 13y ago
  From the wikipedia article: "One of the most famous instances of blind testing is known as the Judgment of Paris, a wine competition held in 1976 where French judges blind-tested wines from France and California. Against all expectations, California wines bested French wines according to the judges, a result which would have been unlikely in a non-blind contest." So, the judges can taste the difference, but they aren't honest unless it's a blind test. That's very different from saying there is no difference... Now, that people can't "tell a difference in cost" should be almost a tautology -- what moron thinks that what tastes better will be more expensive, all the time? All things being equal, if you can, from a given, source, make something that tastes good and bad, with approximately the same amount of work, you'd think you make more that tastes good, and due to the benefit of producing large quanta, the good stuff would be cheaper? In fact, if "most people" prefer the cheaper wines, I guess the wine industry people are doing their jobs, and selling most of what most people want. That doesn't mean it's what I (or you) want, just what "most people" want. Incidentally, my tastes in coffee doesn't correlate very well to the description of what "most Americans" prefer, in the article, but that doesn't mean that I don't see that it makes a difference in taste what beans you choose, how you grind it, and how you brew it. It just means that I'll consistently make coffee "most Americans" would think is far too strong and bitter. No problem, let them drink whatever kind of coffee they prefer. But don't try and tell us there isn't a difference in taste.

poke111 13y ago

I kept all grounds in a ziplock freezer bag in a dark room-temp cabinet. As I went from freshest to least-fresh I found that there were flavors missing and more bitterness and acidity. What I meant about wine is that there is a lot of stuff in the wine world that people obsess over, but is not detectable by even experts. For example, the differences in regions of origin, price of the bottle, etc. I'm not saying that everything in the wine world is BS but there is plenty of if. Even experts have been fooled with food coloring into describing white wines with adjectives normally used to describe reds.

stdbrouw 13y ago
There's two separate issues here. One is whether wine experts are able to detect certain flavors or even figure out the grape variety and origin of a certain kind of wine. The other is whether in blind tastings cheap wine is consistently rated as inferior to expensive wine. I've found people in the wine industry can figure out where wine is from with surprising accuracy. But their skill is not in the least based on a judgment of how much they like the wine. It's about having an encyclopedic knowledge about which wine is associated with which flavors and production techniques, and then matching up what your nose tells you with one of those taste profiles in your head. Once you know what type of wine you're tasting, you can infer the price category: * French Pinot Noir is generally more expensive than New Zealand Pinot Noir. * Wine that's been in new oak barrels (evident from e.g. vanilla and toasted flavors in the wine) is more expensive than wine that hasn't been. * Wine that tastes only of red and black fruit is probably young and thus cheap, wine that tastes of weird things like truffles and what-not is likely to be older and thus more expensive. * Sweet white wine which tastes like marmalade and honey and nuts has a good chance of being made from grapes with noble rot, which are picked individually, berry by berry, and thus result in incredibly expensive wine. * ... and so on. So the link between quality and price in wine is very tenuous, but that doesn't mean professionals "can't tell the difference". They can.
- JoeAltmaier 13y ago
  Professionals are a self-selected group, perhaps with vastly superior noses or some such. It has no bearing on My enjoyment. Other trials use undergrads, who couldn't tell any wine from any other wine, no matter how you run the experiment. I'm probably like the novices tested, less like the professional. Maybe you're different.

lostlogin 13y ago

Try doing it as days since roast. I like 30 mins old (well, cool enough to grind) lightly roasted (just after first crack). This type of roast seems to get progressively worse for 2-3 days then gets particularly good from for 2 or three days. After that it's stale. The darker the roast, the less effect time has on its taste as far as I can tell.