How can someone who likes the smell of coffee, but not the taste, “retrain” their tastebuds to like drinking coffee?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “taste like coffee but not coffee“
How can someone who likes the smell of coffee, but not the taste, “retrain” their tastebuds to like drinking coffee?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “taste like coffee but not coffee“
High quality coffee helps, but you can learn to like even bad coffee if it’s the only bright spot in your miserable existence.
Worked for me, anyway.
I have to wonder why you would want to?
But, to answer your question, start by drinking very weak coffee with lots of sugar and milk. Over time increase the strength of the coffee and reduce the sugar and milk.
You’d be surprised how often this comes up “I like the smell of coffee, but not the way it tastes.” This is usually because the speaker is drinking commodity coffee that has been blended and roasted to taste a certain way.
The majority of global coffee consumption comes from the bottom two portions of the pyramid. (This graphic is actually misleading — the top two portions make up less than 5% of coffee produced each year).
The commercial and preparation coffee that you can usually find in big brand stores, gas stations, diners, supermarket shelves, etc, is blended to homogenize the flavor year-round and roasted dark to cover the various taints that come from a lack of quality control throughout the production process.
This shapes the way we enjoy coffee — we add cream/milk/sugar/syrup to balance the bitterness, and then this becomes a self-fulfilling cycle: coffee companies roast with sweeteners and dairy in mind. The upshot is that most coffee is roasted to:
disguise flavor taints.
taste good with sugar and other ingredients.
taste the same all year round.
cut through a large amount of milk owing to massive cup sizes.
This means that most coffee tastes unpleasant to people with high bitterness sensitivity. It smells good — that smell is caused by natural sugars browning — but it tastes burnt. The most sweet tasting coffee (without additions) often smells seed-like or fruity when dry.
The solution? This will depend a bit on what’s available to you, but buying specialty grade coffee from small batch roasters/specialty coffee shops might help you to enjoy coffee. No retraining of the taste buds is needed — instead drink good quality coffee.
Generally, you won’t find anything good in a supermarket despite what they put on the label. What you really want to be looking for is:
Roast date — this shouldn’t be much more than two weeks from purchase.
A single farm or co-op name on the label.
Country of origin.
Information like variety, altitude, harvest date, and processing method.
The benefit of specialty shops is that you can have it both ways — either they can just make something for you without any fuss, or you can get personal advice on which coffee to buy and the best way to grind and brew it. It’s completely up to you how far you want to go down the rabbit hole.
I cannot drink “bad” coffee….and I don’t love plain coffee, but I LOVE good , flavored, quality coffee.
One huge 16 oz tumbler of coffee in the morning is the biggest reward I give myself for getting up. The flavor I dig the most is freshly ground VANILLA CREME BRÛLÉE. It tastes like the most perfect blend of vanilla, caramel and coffee! I brew it in an espresso maker so it’s good and strong. ( very economical, too).
Then I add several teaspoons of stevia, a generous amount of coconut milk, and one big dash of half and half. I also require a bit of spice with my caffeine, so I add a sprinkle of cinnamon. It is a sinfully rich cup of Joe that makes the day promising and delightful!