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Coffee. I really wanted to be able to enjoy black coffee, cuz it smells so deceptively good, is cheap as fuck, and basically zero calorie. Except it tastes like concentrated dirt. Bitter. Acrid. None of the appeal promised by the smell makes its way to the taste.
Unless I acquire the taste!
Typically my coffee has a similar cream and sugar content to a milkshake, so I actually measured it out to get a baseline, then over the course of about two months phased down to just black coffee. ...and over the course of two months, my coffee phased more and more into tasting like shit. But I tolerated it - eyes on the prize. After that, I spent another month drinking it black. At the end of that month, I finally accepted that black coffee tasted just as much like shit as it did on day one.
My coffee is back to resembling a milkshake... fuck.
I tried.
New hypothesis: there's some kind of generic factor at play like there is with cilantro. That shit is delicious to some and absolutely vile to others, and no amount of trying to acquire it will flip that switch. I drew the short straw on that horrid plant, too.
What you're looking for is the super taster gene, read up on the Wikipedia article. I have it and agree coffee tastes like shit.
What kind of coffee are you drinking? See if there's a local brand or cafe to try. Some coffee brands are usually much worse when they don't have additives to hide the flavor (ex, Starbucks)
Starbucks is among the worst. I tried grounds from a good variety of brands, all prepared with a normal coffee maker which another poster suggested is not actually a good way to brew coffee. They all fell somewhere on a spectrum between bad and REALLY bad. Didn't go for the crazy fancy stuff - my favorite ended up being a hazelnut flavored whole bean from the bulk section of WinCo. Which is still my favorite, I just milkshake-ify now.
Fresh ground beans, ~93°C water, pour-over or immersion brewed. If the coffee tastes dirty, acrid and bitter, it's because it was poorly made or it had gone bad. It should be sweat and caramelly or chocolatey.
A lot like how rancid meat is often hidden by added spicy flavourings, bad coffee is hidden by added sweat flavourings.
Bitterness in coffee comes from overextraction, acidity in coffee often comes from underextraction.
On top of that darker roasts tend to be more bitter, and lighter roasts tend to be more acidic.
The main problem is usually the wrong grind size and brew method.
Grinding the coffee too coarsely makes it hard to extract flavours, leading to underextraction (sourness). Grinding too finely makes it easier to extract flavours (both desirable and undesirable) leading to overextraction (bitterness)
Regular coffee makers, pour over, and espresso are all percolation brews. That means that the water flows through the coffee and extracts flavours while it does these kinds of brews can develop channels while the water flows through, which causes the water to overextract the coffee where the channel is, but underextract the rest of the coffee, which can lead to a brew that is at the same time sour (underextracted) and bitter (overextracted)
The other general method of brewing is immersion brewing. This is where the coffee and the water hangs around for a while during the brew, and is then strained away from each other. Good examples are French press, aeropress, siphon, and cold brew. Since these methods can't really develop channels, you don't have the same problem with over and underextraction, and therefore these methods are also much easier to "get right".
So if you want an easy method too get better tasting coffee, try a French press, and be careful grinding too finely. If there's a layer of silt at the bottom of your cup you are grinding too finely. Pregroud coffee is usually too fine for French press.
I had a similar journey.. adding a splash of coffee to my cream and sugar slurry 😂
What did it for me was experimenting with different beans, brewing methods, and grinding fineness/coarseness before finding a combo that tasted rather sweet on its own.
My new problem is that I don't enjoy coffee made elsewhere clownface.jpg
Try doing lattes then americano's with cream, then drop the cream. If you can do americano's it's a baby step above black coffee, and when you get a black coffee just accept that it's shittier than an Americano, but OK more or less.
The quadfecta of disgusting foods that are commonly enjoyed are coffee, raw tomatos, peanut butter and pickles. For coffee, the smell is so gross. I'd rather be in a barn than a coffee shop. But l love tomato sauce and peanuts. Well peanuts by themselves and not mixed in anything like ice cream or candy bars.
I was having a crazy busy day of work and didn't have time to cream or sugar a coffee and developed a taste for it black right on the spot. It's just so earthy. I still drink things like a mocha (with extra shots) now and then but black drip is my go to.