Enjoy specialty coffee to the fullest.

Enjoy specialty coffee to the fullest.

The relationship between coffee as a fruit and its acidity

"Coffee is a drink made by extracting ingredients from the powder made by roasting and crushing the seeds taken from the fruit of the coffee tree (coffee cherry)."

Coffee is the seed of a fruit (coffee cherry) and naturally contains components that give it a fruity, sour taste.

As the roasting process progresses, the acidic components undergo complex chemical reactions and decrease, being replaced by other components such as bitterness.

Misconceptions and prejudices

Coffee is generally perceived as a bitter drink, but this image usually refers to deeply roasted coffee.

Lightly roasted coffee has a fruity, acidic flavor that comes from the fruit itself, and almost no bitterness.

The preconceived notion and misunderstanding that "coffee is a bitter drink" may be one of the reasons why people feel uncomfortable or have a negative impression of the acidity of coffee as a fruit.

The acidity of coffee can be broadly divided into two types.

It has a fruity acidity that is naturally contained in the fruit.

The other is the unpleasant sourness that comes from oxidation and deterioration.

Unfortunately, the sourness of coffee that is commonly imagined is often the latter case. However, this is not the fruity, good-quality sourness that coffee naturally has, but the unpleasant sourness that comes from aging and deterioration.

Taste is a sensor

The human sense of taste acts as a sensor. In nature, bitter and sour tastes are often found in poisonous foods, so when humans detect them, they instinctively feel uncomfortable. This is because our sense of taste reacts to them as something dangerous.

However, in reality, humans eat bitter and sour foods on a daily basis. This is because, through accumulated experiences in social life, we recognize them as safe and gradually become accustomed to them.

Experience and habit

Coffee is no exception, and there are probably few people who were able to drink it black from the beginning. However, I think that the majority of people gradually get used to the bitterness of coffee through experience and begin to find it delicious.

This also applies to sour coffee. Even if you don't like lightly roasted coffee with its sour taste, if you recognize it as a coffee with a fruity sourness derived from fruit, and experience it repeatedly, your senses and taste will become accustomed to it, and you will be able to appreciate its deliciousness and flavor.

In the first place, if you don't mind the sourness of fruit, you should be able to enjoy the fruity sourness of light roast coffee just as well.

To make specialty coffee even more enjoyable

Even if you don't like the sourness of coffee, once you are freed from those misconceptions and preconceptions, you may be able to discover new aspects, flavors, depth, and ways to enjoy coffee.

Many specialty coffee shops offer lightly roasted coffee. This is because the unique and distinctive flavor of high-quality specialty coffee can be best experienced with a light roast. (Some brands, such as Mandheling, have a distinctive flavor even when roasted darkly.)

Once you get used to the acidity of light roast coffee and start to find it delicious, you will be able to enjoy the profound world of specialty coffee even more.

Let's change our perspective a little.

Perhaps the trigger for changing the scenery we see can always start with something as trivial as this.