Tuesday, April 25, 2023

What We Taste When We Taste Acidity - Apr 25th 2023

What We Taste When We Taste Acidity

BH Unlimited Update, Apr 25th 2023

Hands up who has ever tried to spot the difference between organic acids in coffee and failed? It's a test that's been floating around the coffee education world for a few years now and I'll be the first to say it's impossible to pass. I can say that as a barista trainer, on the handful of occasions when I've set up this test for folks to try in a classroom situation, I've never seen someone pass this test twice in a row.

Acidity is an important part of every grading system for coffee

You can purchase organic acids like tartaric, citric, malic, and acetic from most supermarkets. Dilute them to a high degree in water and then cup them (we explain the usual dosages in our latest blog post on this topic). Or go one step even more impossible and spike brewed coffee with certain amounts of these acids à la CQI. For what it's worth, acetic acid (vinegar) is actually dead easy to spot in these tests because, unlike those others, it is volatile at room temp, so it has aromatic properties. But the others are basically all completely sour, they dry your mouth even at very low concentrations and they have absolutely no aromatic properties, so good luck to anyone spotting the difference IMHO. Not just my opinion — this has been a particular axe to grind for the folks at CoffeeMind for close to 10 years. And now, thanks to a collaboration between sensory scientist Ida Steen, Morten Munchow, and researchers at the University of Southern Denmark, they've done the full acid test on this one.

In this immense blog post, we summarise the research paper and walk you through the history of the taste test in question, as well as taking you an a full tour of What We Taste When We Taste Acidity.

Ask Martin Hudak Anything

What a privilege and pleasure to feature Martin Hudak in our next AMA. He has finished filming his answers to all your questions, so BH Unlimited Subscribers can head in there now and drink in a cocktail of coffee wisdom, directly from the world's preeminent coffee mixologist.

Martin is one of the world's best known and most successful bartenders. He won the World Coffee in Good Spirits competition in 2017 (and came runner-up twice before that.) And, during his time at the American Bar at the Savoy Hotel in London, they were ranked world #1 in the prestigious 50 Best Bars awards.

Martin currently lives in Sydney, Australia where he is a co-owner and the creative director of Maybe Sammy (ranked #29 in the World — that's the highest ranked Australian bar). If that's not enough, in 2019 Martin was awarded International Bartender of the Year by Drink Magazine Asia. AND he's also got a new book out.

The full AMA is now available to BH Unlimited subscribers and if you're particularly interested in learning how to make a perfect Irish coffee, have a look here.

The Next AMA with Cxffeeblack

Renata Henderson and Bartholomew Jones are co founders of Cxffeeblack in Memphis. Cxffeeblack is a social enterprise set up with the intention to reconnect the Black community with the Black history of coffee and to create more opportunities in the industry for people of colour. At Cxffeeblack, they also happen to use a type of fluid bed roaster called a spouting bed with a partially open roasting chamber. Renata and Bartholomew have kindly agreed to feature in our next AMA. If any of you BH Unlimited Subscribers would like to submit a Question for this Ask Me Anything feature, here's a link to the form.

Quick Links

Cxffeeblack have a fundraiser going right now for the Black Barista Exchange.

Here's the research paper that Ida and Moren co-authored: Birke Rune et al 2023.

Here's Morten's Munchow's vlog where he first announces the findings of the Birke Rune research project and where he makes the comment: "Training, teaching, and testing students [on those acids] is not relevant and is a waste of everybody's time."

BH Tools

Rings, Combs, Tampers and Bowls are in stock at our Australia, US and Hong Kong warehouses. Head to www.baristahustletools.com.

Coffee Education — Without the Advertising

BH provides a level of detail about coffee production that platforms like Youtube are unable to obtain, because we are a subscription service — our members pay us to produce the best, most detailed information for them, rather than creating videos that get the most views for an advertiser.

At BH we never do ads for other company's products on our website. There's no product placement in any of our courses, newsletters or blog posts. Our only income comes from what you pay for your subscriptions.

When you see machinery or coffee gear mentioned in any of our educational material, or featured in our course videos, we have chosen to use that equipment because we like using it, because we think it's historically significant in the evolution of the espresso machine, or because it shows you something you need to see about modern coffee culture. It's as simple as that.

As always, we're just an email away if you have any queries! Have a great week and we look forward to seeing you next time.

To the Boundaries of Coffee,
Team BH