What Does Sweet Coffee Really Mean to You?

I dive deep into one of coffee's most elusive and subjective qualities: sweetness. I share the story of my first Costa Rican honey-processed coffee from five years ago that completely transformed my understanding of what coffee could taste like. I thought I knew coffee until I experienced that fruit juice-like sweetness that left me questioning everything I believed about brewing and roasting.

I explore the fundamental challenge every coffee drinker faces - the subjectivity of taste and how we each experience sweetness, acidity, and balance differently. I discuss why the tasting notes on coffee bags might not match what you actually taste in your cup, and why that's perfectly okay. Through live tasting of a Peruvian light roast, I demonstrate how personal palate development works and why brewing with others can help expand our understanding of coffee's complex flavors. Listeners will learn how to develop their own palate, understand their personal taste preferences, and appreciate that their coffee journey is uniquely their own.

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 3:55 The Subjectivity of Coffee Taste
• 6:03 Expectations vs Reality in Coffee
• 8:25 Live Coffee Tasting - Peruvian Light Roast
• 11:23 Reflecting on Coffee Evolution
• 13:34 Growing Your Palate Through Community

Transcript

[00:00:00] - [00:00:30] Making coffee. It was about five years ago. Didn't really have that much expectations for this particular coffee. It was actually my first Costa Rican coffee I bought for roasting. I bought them in the past. Not a lot. But this one was interesting. It had black honey.

[00:00:30] - [00:01:00] I wondered what that meant really. So I looked it up of course. It's been on the pole for a lot longer. And then they do the processing thing. Had notes of whatever right, all the stuff that you want in a coffee right. But I was not so much curious about the origin, the notes on the bag. Only thing that I really cared about was honey process.

[00:01:30] - [00:02:30] And also the most intense that it can be. And you can taste anything else. So I got this coffee. Roasted it like medium whatever. Five years ago I don't remember. And I was there just waiting for a couple of days. Then I brewed me a cup of coffee. I was like what is this. I didn't really know how to describe what I was tasting. It was fruit juice. It was actually sweet. And I was wondering what the hell was wrong with this coffee.

[00:02:30] - [00:03:30] Cup of coffee. And then to make more brews after that constantly and constantly and constantly. And I drink it. I roasted some more roasted a little bit darker went lighter. It didn't matter as much. I still was able to taste sweetness from it. It put me in a place where I wasn't before. I didn't really know what to do about the whole situation. I wondered if I just found this coffee and now I get to enjoy it for what it is.

[00:03:30] - [00:04:30] Yeah interesting stuff. And that's more so what we're talking about right now. The subjectivity. The objectivity. And what you perceive as sweetness. Everybody goes through this on their own journey on their own clock. Some of us won't even really get there. What I'm talking about is sweetness in coffee. Really what does that mean for you for me for all of us because at the end of the day. We're searching for more so the same thing.

[00:04:30] - [00:05:30] But the trick here is that we all have different palettes. We all experience things differently no matter what somebody tells us what sweetness is or acidity to that extent. We have to find it for ourselves. We have to determine it for what it is for us because it's our palette. It's our experience. It's our things that we like about coffee things that we don't like about coffee in the way we brew it the way that roaster does this thing.

[00:05:30] - [00:06:30] And when we do things like that. We experience something in that cup of coffee. Right. And what is that really. And I guess the cool thing about this is that that's not really up to me. That's up to you. And I guess the cool thing about coffee is that we can read so many different things on the piece of bag that says that this coffee is going to be sweet because of that. But do we really taste that.

[00:06:30] - [00:07:30] In our morning brew or evening brew or afternoon brew or whenever the hell we drink coffee. Are we experiencing those same things. Because at the end of the day. We're just trying to find what sweetness is what balance is what acidity is in different degrees of layers of all that stuff. Because I racked my head so many times about this. For instance I was talking to a friend. We're talking about coffee. We're talking about light roast. He said there's so much sweetness in light roast. I say bullshit. I'm just thinking about the recipe. I don't think the recipe matters but I followed it anyway as you saw just now. And I'm just here just thinking if I'm going to taste some type of sweetness from this coffee at a one to 15 ratio.

[00:07:30] - [00:08:30] I haven't yet. More than likely I won't because it's my palette. It's the way that I perceive what sweetness truly is in coffee. You may be able to decide what sweetness is. I don't know. But if you can that's awesome. Because it's our palates. It's one of those things that we just keep going down the discovery lane of trying to understand the things that we're drinking. Why we like it why we don't like it and so on so forth. But as I sit here right now and as I try to understand what sweetness means to me. I can't help but think about what you think sweetness is. What does it really mean? What does it mean to you?

[00:08:30] - [00:09:30] Do you get it initially or you don't you think sometimes the stuff on a bag is bullshit. What is it that you find sweetness in? So with that being said let's taste this coffee. Let's see if we can actually taste sweetness. Soft. The acidity is soft. It's mellowed out at 190 degrees. That's what happens usually when you're trying to get as much sweetness as possible. At least that's what I think.

[00:09:30] - [00:10:30] I do like a lot lower temperature for a lighter roast. I love a lower temperature in general anything to carve out to put at bay to an extent. The acidity because I get that all the time because it's coffee right. You're going to get some form of acidity some coffees. You will get sweetness. I get that quite a bit when I'm dealing with like a Mexican coffee with a Brazilian coffee. Something that's a little bit towards the medium to dark roast room but not in a light roast. This is a light roast.

[00:10:30] - [00:11:30] This is a Peruvian coffee that I've drank from time to time. I'm actually drinking it right now as it pertains to a medium roast for another video for another day. But again, I don't want to leave you hanging. The question is am I tasting sweetness out of this coffee out of this particular coffee right now. No, I'm not tasting sweetness in this coffee. Is more acidic than anything. It's less pronounced. It is relatively juicy. Is it sweet? No. Is it a bad coffee? No. But at least to me I'm not tasting sweetness in this coffee.

[00:11:30] - [00:12:30] And that's perfectly fine because you're not going to get that balance all the time when you're actually drinking coffee, right? Sometimes it swings one way or the other. But let me conclude this a little bit as we keep going about this whole thing about purposes and expectations and things that we're actually tasting. I think about getting another bag of it. I kind of really don't want to do that, but I actually should do that just to see how much this has changed, see how much my palate has changed over the years and to see if I can actually taste the same things or something totally different.

[00:12:30] - [00:13:30] It shocked me. It got me to think about what coffee is, what coffee can be. And am I missing that a little bit? Yeah to an extent, but that's okay. We can continue to always try to chase this thing that we've had before or go on this new journey that we're trying to go on. But the reason why I really truly love that coffee is because it showed me what sweetness was, or is, or whatever how you may say that stuff, right? And it gave me a really good perspective on coffee. What it really truly needs to drink coffee and enjoy it for what it is.

[00:13:30] - [00:14:30] Yeah, but I wish this lightly roasted coffee was sweet. A little bit more balance talking to me a little bit more. That's fine. Probably on the next brew different ratios and variations. Probably go a little bit finer or whatever. I'm getting that little grapefruity rind taste on the very tip of the aftertaste. But that's okay. It is what it is. But I think one thing that we can do when we are trying to find different flavors in tasting coffee is we can do it with somebody else, meaning that we either brew a cup with them and then we just talk about life. But more critically about that coffee about what are you tasting?

[00:14:30] - [00:15:48] What is the balance for you? Are you tasting red fruit? Which red fruit are you talking about? Are you tasting limiting acidity? Is it soft? Or does it remind you a little bit more of an underripe apple? Which apple Fiji Apple? Let's get more specific here. Let's talk about those flavors that we're actually tasting in that cup of coffee. And you have your way of seeing it. I have my way of seeing it. And then we can have a better understanding of what that person is perceiving as sweetness as acidity as balance as whatever it may be for that person. And we can do the same thing for them. I think that'd be cool. And that's how we can grow. But we can also learn that this is what this person sees. But again, getting back to the whole thing is about you, right? What do you say about sweetness? What do you think sweetness is to your palate? What does that really mean? Do you want balance? What does balance mean to you? Because we know acidity is there. It's there all day long. But sweetness. It's elusive. It really is elusive. So what does that mean to you?