What No One Tells You About Learning To Taste

This is both entirely serious, and also a little bit of fun. We talk a lot about the benefits of developing your sense of taste, but we never really discuss the downsides...

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[Jenglotto]

Came here for coffee, stayed for the life lesson

[MrEsaleniuc]

“If everything you drink is special, then nothing is special”

So so so good and an awesome reminder.

[daolchang]

The Hoff going to Starbucks, barista: "omg James Hoffman what are you doing HERE???", the Hoff: "to appreciate beauty", barista "awww thanks...wait...."

[jobboodt]

I started drinking 'bad' coffee again, because I noticed that everyone around me become apologetic about offering me things or even telling me where they go to get coffee. I hate this, because I don't see myself as a judgemental person. It's getting better, but what you describe definitely happened to me.

[rasmus]

This goes way beyond coffee, this applies to life in general, I think this might be what I need right now

[georgeclinton]

For me most of my life I thought alcohol was all just: generic name brand spirits you mixed with soda, shitty beer, and thunderbird wine so I just didn't drink. Then I started working in a high-end liquor store that had hundreds of differents beers, top shelf liquor, and a selection of wines of every kind from across the globe. I was amazed that there was such a wide variety of delicious alcohol. I really learned to taste alcohol and was motivated to be able to describe it to customers.
I was tasting a wine one day that I had heard customers and staff would always describe as 'incredibly complex and delicious' and objectively as I tasted it I could pick out various flavors and understand why people said it was so good, but subjectively _I didn't like the taste._ Sometimes you can forget to pay attention to whether you actually like something when you get into that world, and it made me remember to always ask the customer what they like instead of just recommending the objective "best". The same can happen with coffee where you find yourself seeking "the best" and forget to ask yourself 'What do I _actually_ like?'

[OwlScowling]

"The more knowledge, the more grief, " Ecclesiastes 1:18. It's the classic catch-22 of learning. I've met a few musicians who've simply stopped listening to music. This, to me, is the greatest tragedy that can happen to someone who deepens their experience of food or art is that they give up on enjoying it anymore. I do my best to appreciate not just bad coffee, or food, or wine, but also mediocre coffee, food, and wine and appreciating the positive qualities that the mediocre things possess. Just because something isn't perfect doesn't mean it has nothing of value. If that were the case, none of us would have any value, since none of us are perfect.

[JoshuaParks]

While I tend to almost universally enjoy James’s content this is one of the best, if not THE best and most profound video of his I’ve seen. There’s something universal about this experience across other walks of life and professions. Excellent

[jessejp]

Learning to taste coffee actually made me appreciate bad coffee more. Instead of just thinking something was bitter, I suddenly was experiencing musty, burnt rubbers and ashy cardboards. It really made me appreciate what was bad about those cups in a way I didn’t expect, but was still excited to experience.

[pheonixfeather]

Definitely true. I’m still developing my taste for good coffee, but I learned to put it aside when I went to my grandmother’s house, because she enjoyed making pre-ground Folgers French Roast in her percolater. She didn’t want me to spend money to bring her a Café au Lait—she just wanted to start the coffee and have it ready for me to pour for her as soon as I arrived. What really matters is who you are drinking with. 🥰

[jonccwong]

For me, trying to appreciate the person behind the food brings it back to perspective. Appreciate the person making the coffee, and appreciate the fact that they made you coffee.

[beepboopsloane]

I did something pretty similar. I split ‘bad coffee’ in my head as a separate entity. I still like ‘bad coffee’ if it’s good (confusing I know), but I mean the coffee that your grandma makes or your friends make, the preground, weak, dark coffee, I still love it. It reminds me of camping, or road trips when you have to get up early and a McDonald’s is the only coffee shop open.

With that spectrum of bad coffee, there are some better than others. And I can taste those differences now. So my favorite cup of ‘bad coffee’ is just one that has no complexity but a ton of body and no bitterness. If I get that, I’m happy as a clam

[EuropeanCoffeeTrip]

Great point, James! I like to occasionally have instant or pre-ground coffee with the family or at the supermarket. Two reasons. I want to understand what coffee people around me drink and I want to remind myself how privileged I am drinking speciality coffee most of the time.

[michaelsteinrok]

Without darkness there can be no light. How can we know joy without sadness.

[MartialMonkey]

For me the defining moment of being able to switch off the analytical brain when tasting came with distraction. It was having a coffee that I knew well, and knew was delicious, but because of constant analysis when ever I drank a cup I didn't really "enjoy" it, then some one handed me a cup and proceeded to have a very interesting and engaging conversation with me about things that weren't taste related. Before I realised I had finished the cup and I had thoroughly enjoyed it. I had drunk it not "tasted". We spend so much of our time and effort trying to objectify flavour and remove it from context. I find it very important for myself to occasionally, or frequently, reinsert flavour into the surroundings. Objective tasting is vitally important for our industry, subjective tasting is just as vitally important for ourselves.

[jonny-meyer]

I remember learning something like this in the first philosophy class I took in college. It’s called the Greater Good philosophy. Basically, it states that hardship lead you to appreciate good things more than you would have had you not experienced a hardship. Think how much better water tastes at the end of a long run, compared to if you hadn’t run at all.

[valerielarkin]

This is a good philosophy not only for coffee, but for life.

[patrickellis]

A salient point, coffee for me isn’t just about taste, coffee is about the experience! I would drink terrible coffee in great company and surroundings just to have the rest of the experience. Equally when we drink a coffee with great taste on our own, it’s the solitude that enhances the experience, that moment of splendid isolation, indulgence is equally all about when you won your title you delivered an experience, not just a great coffee!

[Endoplasmic-fckc]

This is how someone talks when they have experienced life. They’ve been through some shit. Thanks James for reminding me that life is about contrast. Cheers mate.

[jing]

Such an amazing reminder!
There's this Japanese comic and anime "Food wars!: Shokugeki no souma". A main character had this fictional God-tongue, basically a perfect pitch version of the tastebud. Her mom was so caught in this trap of only tasting the best, that she eventuallt could no longer stand the taste of mediocre food, and thus couldn't eat, and had to be on IV drips.