Everyday Beans Podcast - Mostly About Coffee and Other Stuff

Coffee Without Acidity: Good or Bad?

• Oaks, the coffee guy • Season 1 • Episode 195

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In this episode, I explore the fascinating world of coffee extremes through my experience with an incredibly sweet Brazilian medium-dark roast that completely lacks acidity. I share my journey of brewing this coffee at different temperatures - from 190°F to 205°F - and how each temperature brings out different levels of sweetness while maintaining its one-dimensional character. I discuss how this coffee represents 100% sweetness without any balance, creating what I describe as a "milk chocolate bomb" that gets even sweeter as it cools.

I dive deep into the concept of coffee extremes and why experiencing them is crucial for understanding your personal coffee preferences. I share the story of how I first discovered true sweetness in coffee through a Costa Rican black honey processed coffee years ago, and how that experience changed my perspective on what coffee could be. Throughout the episode, I emphasize the importance of drinking coffee black to truly understand what each coffee is trying to communicate, and how these extreme examples help identify sweetness, acidity, and balance in future cups.

What You'll Learn: By listening to this episode, you'll gain insight into how brewing temperature affects coffee sweetness, understand the difference between balanced and one-dimensional coffee profiles, and discover why experiencing coffee extremes can help you identify your personal taste preferences and improve your overall coffee appreciation journey.

For good tasty coffee, check us out at: everydaybeans.com

For tips, tricks and still trying to figure it out: https://www.youtube.com/@everyday-beans

[00:00:00] We love Friday now. Today is July 9th, 2025. We're doing pretty good right now. Today, we're going to be talking about extremes. Hopefully they might pick that up because the best sound in the morning is still the same.

[00:00:32] When it gets cool, it's going to get even sweeter. What I have in front of me right now is perhaps, at least for now, the sweetest coffee I've ever had. I think this is a medium-dark roast coffee. This is a Brazilian coffee and it really works well in this application. This is probably the best application for this coffee as a medium to dark and it presents itself very well.

[00:01:06] How that could actually be a problem. There's no balance, there's no acidity in this cup of coffee, none whatsoever. I am not playing around. This one barely has any acidity, if any at all. When you first initially drink your cup of coffee, you may get a bitterness, but after that, as it coats your mouth, everybody's playing the game together. As I drink this coffee, and as I will drink it with you today, it's going to get cooler and it's going to get sweeter.

[00:01:36] This one I brewed at 200 degrees Fahrenheit. One time I brewed at 205 degrees Fahrenheit. I usually do 190. That 190 brings out some crazy stuff in this coffee. So sweet and intense the sweetness. It's hard to explain sometimes when you talk about coffee, but in this case, there's no acidity in this coffee. And why having that other extreme is a problem.

[00:02:06] I mean, it can work, it's fine. If that's what you want. If you want a chocolatey type of sweetness, nutty sweetness, diner type of coffee, this is it for you. You won't get any type of balance. It's extremely one-dimensional. And the story it's trying to tell you is: I am this way, I don't care about anything else.

[00:02:25] It's not a city bomb or anything like that. It's not a fruit bomb. It's just sweetness, sweetness, sweetness. And I have been chasing sweetness for a very long time. And this coffee has absolutely taken the cake. A couple of days ago, when I started drinking this coffee after a week off roast, I was like, what's going on here? Something about this doesn't seem right. And I just kept drinking it.

[00:02:57] I think sweetness on coffee is a little less offensive compared to just acidity, like light roast. Is it as complex and layered? I don't think so. Sweetness can tell the story of just one nutty type of thing. It's like whenever you have a cake and somebody forgot to add salt. Salt does something to the cake where it bounces out a little bit more. But if you don't have salt in your cake or sweet good, you just get this intense, one nutty type of sweetness.

[00:03:40] In this case, this is what you're getting. It's not necessarily bad. And if I had to pick, like I said earlier, I would rather want maximum sweetness than acidity. But it's just trippy. Coffee's trippy. At the end of the day, that's really what I'm getting at. Coffee's trippy, it does what it wants to do. It plays the game that it wants to play. If it doesn't want to play the game that you want, it's not going to play that game. Again, this is at 200 degrees Fahrenheit.

[00:04:13] I brewed this coffee before at 205. 190 is maximum sweetness. I'm sure if I did 212, it will still find its way to be as sweet as it can be. And it's trippy, it's really trippy. And I don't know if you've ever really had an experience like that where you're tasting a cup of coffee and you're waiting for it to talk to you, speak to you, change as it cools, if it does at all. And all it does is just keeps getting sweeter.

[00:04:43] Like I said, if I had to have one way or the other, I would pick sweetness over acidity most of the time. Maybe I should mix a light roast in this coffee together to see if we can get that balanced cup. I don't think sometimes it's as easy as that, but it is as easy as trying it out. But I guess what I'm saying here is that we're on another extreme here when we're talking about coffee.

[00:05:10] What do we really think about that? Now for me, for instance, I've been chasing sweetness for a very long time. And I'm chasing it and I'm trying to figure it out. And as I do that, this is a little too intense. I'm glad that this coffee is intense in that way because now I can see the full spectrum of what true 100% unbalanced coffee is like, how it speaks to you, how it talks to you, what does it mean.

[00:05:42] It's interesting. And I hope that you get to experience a sweetness of a coffee that's nearly 100% skewed that way. Because it will help you to identify in the future or even to think about how your coffee has been in the past and how you thought you were tasting sweetness until you've tasted something like this that is 100% just one dimensional.

[00:06:11] But again, I think this can be a problem because always for me - I don't know what you're chasing. I don't know what you're looking for. Are you looking for a balanced cup? Are you just looking for whatever coffee is just lined up next to you? What are you truly really looking for? Because at the end of the day, that's where it comes down to. I can't answer that question for you.

[00:06:34] I think you know that. I think you know that for the most part, no matter who you listen to, and hopefully you're listening to more yourself than anybody else, is that you have your own palate. You have your own way of loving and enjoying or hating coffee and anything in general and how that translates and comes into play whenever you are actually doing anything.

[00:07:00] But this right here, this is sweet as hell. And I'm okay for a couple cups here and there. Probably going to have to take a break from this coffee for like a week, drink it again, see how it changes, but it's just sweet. The coffee's roasted, the coffee's processed, the deed is done. It's now time to just squeeze the extraction out of this coffee and see what it's telling you. I don't think it matters which brewer you use. You can use a French press if you want to.

[00:07:34] French press, maybe a little bit more full body, but all you're going to do or get is a punch in the face with that sweetness of this coffee. And it's kind of cool. I mean, not everybody does this. I know I'm just talking and presenting this audio to you whenever you do get to listen to this and you see somebody actually drinking a coffee from hot to cold and trying to give you an experience that helps you out in your journey.

[00:08:10] But I think that's going to be one of the biggest things, the biggest takeaways here is that: what are you finding in coffee and have you experienced it enough? And I think that's one reason why I really love drinking coffee black because I'm not necessarily saying that when you put milk, creamer, sugar, whatever, on a coffee really does mess up the coffee. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that you don't get the purity. You don't get the nuances of the coffee. And I think that's what you get when you drink coffee black.

[00:08:38] And they're all different. And we have different devices. Sometimes one device will bring out more than the other, sometimes changing the temperature, water chemistry and all that stuff. But at the end of the day, it's one of those things where you get to see what coffee is really trying to tell you.

[00:08:55] And though this coffee isn't my, so to speak, cup of tea, not every time, it does still tell a story of how this coffee was produced probably, how this coffee was grown and what kind of qualities that we're trying to get out of this coffee because truly, this coffee is probably for most people just because this is what they want in the morning. And ironically speaking, a lot of times they're going to be putting different things on their coffee, which is perfectly fine.

[00:09:28] But I think that's one thing that drinking coffee black does for you. It gives you that chance, that opportunity to see what the coffee is telling you. How is it challenging you? How is it just presented in a way where you get to enjoy it? And I do hope that you do get to drink the coffee from hot to cold, even if you like it or you don't like it, and experience it for what it is. And this is what this coffee is doing.

[00:10:00] And it's pretty cool that it's one dimensional. It's truly chocolatey, it's like a milk chocolate bomb in your mouth and it just coats it and it's just really trippy. How you can truly get sweetness in coffee.

[00:10:16] And I think I talked about this story, let me end on this, on how people always talked about sweetness. They talked about how it's sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet. And I was like, you're bullshitting me. I don't ever taste sweetness in coffee. Could have been the way that I was brewing it. Water chemistry, the coffees that I was using, whatever.

[00:10:39] But when I tasted this black honey, Costa Rican coffee years ago, I was like, man, this is sweet because it was so sweet. And the thing that that coffee had over this one was that it's a little bit more balanced. It's probably about 60, 70% sweetness and just that nice purple type of color that I'm seeing as a flavor bomb in that cup of coffee. And as I roasted it darker, it got even better.

[00:11:11] And that was really the first time I tasted sweetness. Even as a lighter roast, like a medium to light roast, it was sweet. And I just sat there and just was mesmerized how something like this can be truly amazing. And this coffee, even though it was extremely one-note, it lets you know what true sweetness is. And I think these coffees are okay just because it lets you know about that other extreme, what you may be getting and how to actually identify sweetness in coffee and all that good stuff. And I think that's pretty cool.

[00:11:50] So this is me just talking about coffee, enjoying coffee. I'm going to finish this offline. And if you can go find a sweet coffee and just sit there and just revel in it and just see what it's telling you because it may just give you a better opportunity to give you a sense of your preference. Probably you do like sweet coffees. Probably you don't care about the acidity. And then you can truly, really keep chasing that or not or find something that's a little bit more balanced and fruity or whatever. But you're the only one who can answer that question. This is Okey at Everyday Brews. I'll talk to you later. Bye.