**Please be warned! It is a long read.** Having drank coffee for decades from all types of coffee powders, brews and mostly cheap espresso machines, like the general public, we always found the comforts and luxuries the coffee shops bring. We considered the coffee from them as heavenly, can only be made in shops and can’t be replicated at home. Fast forward towards Covid, I was mostly sick of instant powders, pour overs made from pre-ground and terrible black stuffs that came from cheaper machines at home. I stuck to tea most of the time and stopped enjoying coffee from the shops. Then, I struck Gold at the other coffee forum, Hoffman’s videos and here. Dave’s posts and videos were inspiring! The rest is a history. Fast forward, post Covid (really 😉), my wife and I hate the coffee from the coffee shops. We don’t buy coffee any more. We make a great quality black and milk-based coffee consistently. The espressos keeps improving and, thanks to @"MWJB"#139 the pour overs / brews are always consistently very good. We, as a family (mostly self), have been running after various roasts, pay a lot of attention to the notes and so on. This is good as we get to drink and taste coffee from various locations, get a good bargain and decide what works the best or otherwise for us. We will continue this practice to get the best value for the money. Early on, we paid a lot of attention to pick and differentiate the fruits notes. For an example, in the red fruits variety, if the bag mentions Cranberries and Peach, we try to think is it Cranberry or Peach or both (I don’t want to get into Conical vs Flat for clarity, burr size, machine dependency here.) While the attempts to differentiate is a good learning exercise and helps develop a good knowledge about coffee and shot making / brewing, we have been thinking that all the attempts to pick the notes apart in red fruits (as an example) mentioned in the bag may be a little OTT or a little too fuzzy. We think it’s, perhaps, not worth getting stressed about. Because, IMHO, it hard to differentiate between cranberry, peach, nectarine, blackberry in the cup - at least for us at home. May be, we lack the skill sets! I think, it doesn’t matter as long as the notes mentioned in the bag suit our tastes. Because, we are ordinary folks trying to drink some good coffee at home and we are neither aspiring to be super tasters nor aim to run a business in this space. What have we done about it? While buying beans, we generally avoid bags that mention, for example, gooseberry, rhubarb, even cranberry to some extent, lime soda and so on. As long as we can try to avoid these notes in the bags, we are happy. The intent is not to offend anyone for whom all of these may be important. It is fine, if they are. Sorry, if the post comes out that way! 😊 This brings the title of the post! What do you guys think? Please share your views, experiences that gained in your coffee making and anything, which you find it as relevant to the post. Thanks for reading!

@"LMSC"#p18595 I tend to want a good cup of coffee with a rich coffee taste, well roasted enjoyable and if the flavour hints are there it can be enjoyable….some coffees are processed in such a way that flavour notes are very obvious and a few coffees definitely have those flavours within them, without any extended anaerobic processing. I have a special processed Columbian and the boozy sherry notes are so strong, that for me personally it works really well in a blend with a chocolatey Brazilian Daterra. As a pour over, the boozy notes are so pronounced it might be overwhelming for some. My pet hate is when roasters "incorrectly" try to maximise on flavour notes (rather than having coffee taste like coffee) by severely under roasting or light roasting without anywhere near enough development, due to inexperience. **Probably because we are too fussed, or obsessed about the flavour notes**…the wilder the better…there is a lot of marketing hidden away in those myriad flavour notes.

> @"DavecUK"#p18596 I tend to want a good cup of coffee with a rich coffee taste, well roasted enjoyable and if the flavour hints are there it can be enjoyable….some coffees are processed in such a way that flavour notes are very obvious and a few coffees definitely have those flavours within them Exactly! This is what we all should aim to get / achieve in our efforts to make a good coffee at home. We probably lost track some where down the line in our coffee quest, focussing too much on the notes. > @"DavecUK"#p18596 My pet hate is when roasters “incorrectly” try to maximise on flavour notes (rather than having coffee taste like coffee) by severely under roasting or light roasting without anywhere near enough development, due to inexperience. I would think this approach has, perhaps, misled us in scratching our head re-the notes to some extent. > @"DavecUK"#p18596 Probably because we are too fussed, or obsessed about the flavour notes…the wilder the better…there is a lot of marketing hidden away in those myriad flavour notes. It’s a vicious circle; we chasing the notes; the marketing leveraging it to mention notes that we can chase; some think they can; the others can’t, and, so on! Some where on the back of our mind, many might know, this obsession or what ever we might want to call it, is not worth it or elusive or just a mirage.

ive had some coffee where ive never tasted some of the notes, but then ive never eaten a dandelion so some of the floral stuff is lost on me

I think there definitely a lot of marketing in tasting notes. You could call something citrus, or even better lemon, but yuzu sounds more exotic again. It's like any food menu that doesn't have roast lamb, it has slow roasted lamb. Cheese & Onion crisps are mature cheddar cheese and caramelised onion. However, just to contradict myself. I guess most roasters would have a coffee that could come under the red berries description, but they won't all taste the same so describing one as cranberry and one as redcurrant might just be so there's differentiation between roasters. I personally go for a general style of coffee, usually avoiding anything with too many chocolate/nut flavours but won't get too hung up on trying to find a specific flavour.

@"Cuprajake"#p18600 It quickly reminds me of a perception of what we think the tasting notes are. Take for an example, Django’s Santa Ana. Very good roaster. Of their notes of blueberry, blackberry and vanilla, the blueberry and vanilla come out clearly. My 83 year old MIL is enjoying these SO coffee with milk. She always smells the beans. Without any hesitation she said the beans and the coffee smell and taste of a jack fruit! She asked me what the notes should be. I showed her the bag. She did 🙄 Go figure! 😂

I think I remember a James Hoffman video where he mentioned that tasting notes aren’t supposed to be specific, just a general guide. So a coffee saying ‘tastes like lemons or oranges’ isn’t actually going to taste of lemon or orange, just slightly sharp citrus notes. I think milk makes an enormous difference also. My taste in black coffee / espresso is exclusively medium/dark roasts with chocolate/caramel tasting notes. However I really enjoy some of the lighter, fruitier roasts with milk that I find almost undrinkable as espresso.

I think I remember a James Hoffman video where he mentioned that tasting notes aren’t supposed to be specific, just a general guide. So a coffee saying ‘tastes like lemons or oranges’ isn’t actually going to taste of lemon or orange, just slightly sharp citrus notes. I think milk makes an enormous difference also. My taste in black coffee / espresso is exclusively medium/dark roasts with chocolate/caramel tasting notes. I got into coffee through what I suppose would be classed as Italian style, so something that resembles it in some way is my preference. However I really enjoy some of the lighter, fruitier roasts with milk that I find almost undrinkable as espresso.

> @"Dusk"#p18602 It’s like any food menu that doesn’t have roast lamb, it has slow roasted lamb. Cheese & Onion crisps are mature cheddar cheese and caramelised onion. I agree, marketing is a wonderful thing. ![Giphy - marketing GIF](https://media1.giphy.com/media/mwwEcxbodLHIk/giphy.gif?cid=bb77869fvhznfi9uyhdtjts0z5a27lccktcnwn8vwyb2wj6o&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g)

> @"Dusk"#p18602 I personally go for a general style of coffee, usually avoiding anything with too many chocolate/nut flavours but won’t get too hung up on trying to find a specific flavour. Chocolate and nutty flavours are very good either as black or importantly with milk. They are also easy to dial in. > @"Dusk"#p18602 won’t get too hung up on trying to find a specific flavour. I am glad a lot of us feel the same way.

> @"Ernie1"#p18604 I think milk makes an enormous difference also. My taste in black coffee / espresso is exclusively medium/dark roasts with chocolate/caramel tasting notes. However I really enjoy some of the lighter, fruitier roasts with milk that I find almost undrinkable as espresso. My daughter loves black long as they are less acidic and less fruity. With milk, she doesn’t care and in fact thinks light and medium light or fruity coffees are best served with milk. She loves these fruity notes coffee with milk. So is my wife.

Are we too fussed about the notes in the coffee?

LMSC

John_Yossarian Enjoy your break!

CoyoteOldMan

DavecUK especially those where you can faintly hear the sound of nose flutes from the bag

This sounds like something Lovecraft could have drunk… or written… or written while drunk.

Cuprajake

Some I get the tasting notes others not.

I had a Honduras that had bags of strawberry. One of mybfavourite to date.

I don’t like dark roast either.

I do like a bright drink sometime but the. I love lemon cheesecake 😂

I also like ones with a sweet aftertaste.

How ever, with milk that’s where the butty, chocolate, caramel stuff comes into its own for me

cjbailey1

I have to admit I do not have a “go to” coffee and have run for years on various different subscriptions (hasbean, square mile, blue coffee box, dog and hat, etc.) and I really enjoy that. Sometimes I get the tasting notes incredibly clearly and other times I don’t, but it doesn’t worry me and I don’t particularly go chasing them. How I drink my coffee (pourover, aeropress, coffee pot, cortado, americano, flat white, latte and only occasionally straight espresso) is driven by the beans but I’ll usually know from my first cortado how I’m going to end up liking them and will end up sticking to one brew method at home for that bag.

I am very much in the light/medium roast camp and do not enjoy the “burnt” taste I find with a lot of dark roasts. I do have a soft spot for more “acidic” coffees, but will mostly drink them as a cortado. I absolutely love the change between coffee bags when there is such a stark difference it makes you sit up and go “wow” at the fact they are both coffee… made the same way! When I make coffee for friends, or on the rare occasion I drink straight espresso, I will usually choose a coffee with more chocolatey/sweet tastingnotes because they seem to be what people mostly enjoy and I find the notes incredibly useful to guide me.

A little rambling, I guess in conclusion I use the notes for guidance but don’t chase them, particularly as I’m using (don’t hate me) hard tap water run through a peak water filter… but that’s another topic entirely!

DavecUK

cjbailey1 A little rambling, I guess in conclusion I use the notes for guidance but don’t chase them, particularly as I’m using (don’t hate me) hard tap water run through a peak water filter… but that’s another topic entirely!

You sir must be a rarity…..well done for sticking with it.🤪

cjbailey1

DavecUK not wanting to take this off topic but… I kickstarted it but didn’t end up using it for quite a while so still have filters left. I have had a few bad filters from the early batch (leaking resin) which have been replaced as well so they mean I have some additional over what i bought. I do find I get less buildup of limescale with the water and I also find it does give a cleaner cup. I don’t think I can justify an RO system from both a space and cost perspective and I (personally, not hating on those who do) really hate the idea of using bottled water from an environmental perspective. I am not certain what I will do when I run out of filters. I have thought about it a few times but haven’t come to a conclusion.

LMSC

cjbailey1 less buildup of limescale with the water

How do you verify this ? Do you test the water? I don’t if you mentioned what your set up is ? Brew/pour over, espresso, …

DavecUK

cjbailey1 Lot’s of people seem to use the Zero water jug and then re mineralise as req for whatever coffee type they’re making.

cjbailey1

LMSC totally unscientifically and anecdotally. I have a PIDd silvia which I have had for many years and am quite consistent in the overall usage of. It’s purely down to the fact I have stripped her enough times to know roughly what I expect each time and the last time I did it, which is the first since consistently using water through the peak filter, there was noticeably less to my untrained eye.

LMSC

cjbailey1 Get a drop kit from Amazon. Measure the hardness and alkalinity each on 20 ml of water.

The kit is expensive at this time of the year. It is otherwise priced at around £7-£8 for a pair.

API GH & KH TEST KIT Freshwater Aquarium Water Test Kit 1-Count

cjbailey1

LMSC KH (Well, total alkalinity which I believe is the same thing) I can give you. It goes from over range on my meter (capable of 0-300 mg/L) to 112mg/L. I don’t have the drops for GH though, which I presume is what is referred to as “total hardness” in the pool world.

LMSC

cjbailey1 That alkalinity range is on the higher side IMO. The 50mg/l to 60mg/l is typical range for espresso.

The drop kit will give you an accurate reading. Please get it. It’s worth it. As Dave said, a lot of people here are very happy with Zero Water.

DavecUK

Finally found it, notes in coffee

CoyoteOldMan

😂 What do you mean “finally found it”? This was written 300 years ago…

(worth watching for the staging as well as the singing, unless you are allergic to Baroque music)

cjbailey1

LMSC I hate you all (not really, but I suspect my wallet will shortly)… I know I should have been thinking about my water before but I’ve been content with where I was! Looks like I will probably end up going down the murky path of RO in reality, the worktop machines aren’t too bad space wise as I should be able to get rid of the kettle with an instant hot water module. Lots to think about.

LMSC

cjbailey1 Well. You can use Zero Water jug. We have members who are very happy with it. If you are not making too many espressos and steaming, the zero may just do. I think @dutchy101 is one such happy user.

dutchy101

I am indeed a happy Zero water user, although the plan was to use this as a stop-gap until my Skuma water unit arrives. Having said that I still have a few filters left so might continue using it until these are all gone

cjbailey1

I was looking at the skuma as a possibility, but will look at the zero jug as well. With the zero jug it seems there is the need to make a concentrate, store and mix this relatively accurately. I like the idea with the skuma of not having to faff with the output (although the concentrates look expensive) which would probably be am easier sell to my wife as she uses the machine when I’m away on work. The downside is the long term unknown of it being a speculative product still.

DavecUK

cjbailey1 You also have the Osmio Zero, which is a known…

dutchy101

cjbailey1 With the zero jug it seems there is the need to make a concentrate, store and mix this relatively accurately

I make up batches of 5 litres of zero water (I am using 2 × 5 litre former Ashbeck bottles for this) and add 320mg of sodium bicarbonate to each bottle to raise the alkalinity to an appropriate level and that’s it.

The Skuma will dispense pure RO water without the minerals added too, so I will probably adopt the same approach when using it (adjusting the sodium bicarbonate as required). Without using the unit it is difficult to know what I will need to add to the water and how repeatable it is. If the water is in the correct KH and GH with the mineral solution that will be ideal as it will remove any need to add anything to the water.

I know exactly where I stand with the Zero jug which makes life quite easy.

CoyoteOldMan

cjbailey1 the concentrates look expensive

I haven’t seen the prices expected for the Skuma concentrates, but I got

1 kg KHCO₃ for £6.99
0.5 kg MgSO₄ · 7 H₂O for £3.99
300 g Ca citrate · 2 H₂O for £12.45

I can mineralise hundreds of thousands of litres of water… with different recipes!

simonc

dutchy101 Hi. I’ve just got my zero jug which was supposed to be long term solution but now thinking it’s a stop gap until. Skuma I’m thinking of ordering (not that I’m copying with Minima and Zero already 😂.) But importantly, how do you measure in your bicarb? Do I need more scales?

« Previous Page