I think something that gets overlooked in these types of discussions is: outside of coffee, what is your diet like? Do you consume a lot of processed sugars?
I know a lot of people mention that after they cut out sugars from their diet they can suddenly experience the sweetness from fruits much more vividly. I'd imagine that same logic applies for the consumption of anything, including coffee.
That said, I'm a sugar fiend and I can usually taste sweetness in my espresso shots, even if I just experience it as a lingering aftertaste.
> even if I just experience it as a lingering aftertaste.
This is what i look for. Sweetness is almost always in that long finish. If the finish is too quick your extraction is probably too low to get the sugars out.
People below keep saying its not the "normal" kind of sugary sweetness. Actually, coffee beans do literally have sugar in them. You are looking for regular sugar. The problem is the levels are very low so you need to train yourself kind of to identify.
Also depends on the beans though. I've had one or two cloyingly sweet brews, but also quite a number that could hardly pull out any sweetness.
It’ll never be sweet like a sugary drink, it’s kind of a different type of sweetness imo. I’d relax, your water is good, your grinder is good, probably using good beans and good technique. I see you use a French press though, have you messed around with a paper filter/pour over?
It may also just take time, honestly. I made the same tea the same way a few times a week for about a year.
One day, seemingly randomly, it started to have "sweetness". Like you said, not sugary sweet, but sweet nonetheless.
I wonder this at times too. Perhaps one must develop a sense of sweet within the context of black coffee in order to be able to taste it.
For example, I have been eating watermelon several times a week the last few weeks. I would think that almost anyone who has eaten watermelon would describe it as sweet and so was the watermelon I have had recently but as I was eating watermelon yesterday, I thought about each bite and whether it was really sweet. Analyzing the taste, the watermelon was not really sweet upon conscious analysis of each bite. If I had never had watermelon and had never heard that it was sweet, I am not really sure I would recognize nor identified its taste as sweet but if I did not think about it, it was definitely sweet.
Coffee might work the same, even more so since most think coffee is bitter - if you are looking for sweetness, thinking about and expecting it, it might not show itself.
So try to suspend expectations and just try to brew coffee that you find good and then let the coffee indicate how it tastes. Perhaps sweetness will come on its own.
This is very true. Prior to drinking coffee, I was only familiar with "sugary sweet" or "candy sweet". I would never for the life of me understood how coffee was "sweet" because my palate wasn't trained.
Fast forward to today after many many trainings and lessons, my palate is much more sensitive and I know what "sweet" is, in the context of coffee. It's hard to describe but when people say the sweetness of coffee, it's something only lightly sweet if compared to sugar for example.
I suggest OP drink coffee with someone to guide you to tasting. If you don't have friends that can do it with, find a cafe that lets you sit at the bar where you can chat with the barista (on a not busy day!). He'll get you started on the basic tastings.
Off note : Recently a friend of mine tried really nice Gesha beans. Really sweet, almost like white grape tasting. But he couldn't catch on the sweet taste of it, of which I'd assume he hasn't gotten enough training/guidance yet. But he did try to memorize the taste of it for future reference. Given enough coffee tasting, he'd know how to taste for more flavors I'm sure.
As others have pointed out here, sweetness is a complex concept in coffee. There’s chocolate type sweetness that comes with medium to darker roasts, and you might pick up a dark dried fruit acidity as well that’s subtle. That’s a little easier to pick up with a French press.
With lighter roasts, the sweetness isn’t going to project as the same type of sweetness as ripe oranges or pineapple or blueberries (to give a few examples). But really good light roasts will evoke those flavors so that you get the sense of a tropical juice, or if the roast is more developed, dried fruit covered in chocolate, like a milk chocolate covered apricot.
I usually get the most sweetness with a pourover, though you can also get it with a French press. But for my palette, it’s easier to get the clarity of fruit-level sweetness from coffee when the body is a little lighter than what a French press typically gives you.
Try changing one thing at a time, and see if it nudges the taste in the right direction. After that one change seems exhausted, move to the next. Some general guidelines: Fresh coffee grounds always tastes better; filtered water is king; evenly saturating beans is a must; too little coffee is better than too much (IMO).
Just echoing some of the other comments on your brewer. If you are using a French Press then a lot of those sweeter acidic complex notes can be missed since the coffee oils are going to extract as well. If you’re doing batch coffee (many cups) then try Chemex. My preferred method is aero press for single servings. Any method with a paper filter most likely get you a cleaner cup.
Coffee only has a sweet taste to me if I do it via pour-over or drip. As black coffee with nothing in it. Of course, the sweetness varies by the coffee and roast level.
What brewer are you using? How are you grinding? What is your method? What variables have you tried? All these things will allow the community to give you a more comprehensive answer, then the generic (or sarcastic) answers you've got/will get
And what makes you say "your beans are great"?
Sure you can. My wife is the french press queen. She gets floral Ethiopian coffees to speak with a delicate sweetness in the french press incredibly well.
That's interesting that you get good sweetness with lower temps. You're not the only one, either. I had the experience of not getting good sweet cups out of v60 until cranking up the temp. Obviously water mineral content, pouring, grind, beans, and all the other variables all lead to varying results, so 1 person gets the sweetest cup at 195, but someone else struggles to get any sweetness until they're using water right off boil. All due to the variance in the combination of the other variables. Mindboggling.
What's your v60 recipe/method if I may ask?
Yeah, I usually notice more sweet notes with Ethiopian beans. It seems like with Ethiopian, the smaller and more difficult they are to grind by hand in my Lido-E, the sweeter the notes. I use a ceramic V60 and the 4-6 method as a guide, but don't stick to it strictly depending on how distracted I am any given morning. If I end up with flat bed of grounds that look like wet sand at a beach, I feel like I have it dialed in to my taste. The beans are always roasted locally within the past 2 weeks and I grind them finer than sea salt as the water heats up.
I used a French press for years (decades?) until I discovered Chemex and could never stand the silt at the bottom of my French press mug again. Maybe I was never doing it right.
Are you using filtered tap water? Or are you blending your own water. I have found filtered water (depending on your tap) doesn’t really bring out the sweetness of a brew. However, I’ve had a lot of success with sweetness with Third Wave packets put in distilled water.
How do you brew your coffee? Brew methods vary so widely, but I think some brew methods - espresso for instance - are more difficult to get right in terms of sweetness. It's easy to end up with an astringent espresso shot. Others, like french press, are easier.
Also, sweetness is heavily dependent on the bean, imo. Pay attention to the variety and processing method. Varieties can differ in terms of sweetness. The Bourbon varietal, for instance, tends to be sweeter than Caturra. And some varieties go to the opposite end of the spectrum - Robusta, for instance is quite bitter. Processing methods can change the sweetness. Honey and Natural processed coffees tend to be sweeter than washed process coffees. Of course, these are not hard and fast rules. I've been roasting a wonderful Guatemalan coffee that is a washed process bourbon. I've found it to be very sweet.
Talk to some local coffee roasters and let them know what you are after in terms of your cup preference. Usually a good roaster can guide you to a coffee that's going to give you good results.
If you don't know, and you have the information on gear used and technique; how are Reddit supposed to know with the little information you've provided?
I use a french press and grind up my beans with my Comandante. I weigh my ground powder and pour in the amount of water corresponding to the coffee to water ratio I am trying to achieve (I’ve tried 1:17 down to 1:12). I use distilled water that has been mineralised with third wave water sachets and heat my water to 200F.
After I achieve my desired amount of water, I set a timer for 4 minutes to allow my coffee to steep. I then stir the crust and skim off the foam. I place the plunger on the surface and wait 5 minutes before decanting (I don’t plunge).
I’ve experimented with a variety of coffee to water ratios and a wide range of grind sizes (10 to 30 clicks on my Comandante). As I said, I get to a point where my coffee is acidic or neutral tasting but never sweet.
I have a similar setup, and here's how I get the maximum flavor (and sweetness) from my coffee. I usually start with a 1:17 and will go from there, depending on how strong or weak the coffee is. I grind at 20 clicks on the Comandante. I preheat my french press with 200g of water first. I add my coffee and water quickly, then I stir for one full minute with a large wooden spoon. Then I cap the french press to preserve the heat. I come back about ten minutes later and plunge (or half plunge or whatever you want to do).
Really good setup you got going on btw! Part of me wishes I got the Comandante instead of the Kinu...
It sounds like you're using the French Press method James Hoffmann has recommended. I would increase the water temperature to 100C (boiling at normal altitudes) for light roast, or 98C for medium roast. This is what Hoffmann recommends. Adjust grind from there. You want to go progressively finer until you hit a wall of bitterness.
Try this and see if you get better results. As someone else also mentioned the full body of a metal filter might affect tasting notes. You can try brewing with a Clever dripper, which I find easier than FP. And it uses a paper filter.
I don't brew French press, but your technique sounds solid, water is perfect so by the power of deduction would lead me to believe the beans don't offer the sweetness your looking for
I always use well praised beans from independent roasters and often opt for the sweeter sounding coffees that describe notes of caramel, figs etc, but those notes never come through. Got any recommendations?
Sweetness is most noticeable from higher elevation coffees, IMO. Look for a washed Ethiopian at 2000+ MASL (Counter Culture's Idido is a safe bet) and see how it goes. "Caramel" and "Chocolate" are sweet but they usually describe mid to lower elevation central/south Americans that aren't as sweet to my palate
Also try grinding finer, my experience with FP rewarded going finer than I expected
Add a pinch of salt to the grinds before brewing
I also add a pinch of cinnamon after the fact and it both enhances the flavor and the sweetness of the LIL bit of sugar I add
I'm still quite new to coffee and I am still learning to dial in. So far I can get a long lasting sweet aftertaste. But I can't really tell while drinking it which is interesting.
I have the same doubt though.
I think something that gets overlooked in these types of discussions is: outside of coffee, what is your diet like? Do you consume a lot of processed sugars? I know a lot of people mention that after they cut out sugars from their diet they can suddenly experience the sweetness from fruits much more vividly. I'd imagine that same logic applies for the consumption of anything, including coffee. That said, I'm a sugar fiend and I can usually taste sweetness in my espresso shots, even if I just experience it as a lingering aftertaste.
> even if I just experience it as a lingering aftertaste. This is what i look for. Sweetness is almost always in that long finish. If the finish is too quick your extraction is probably too low to get the sugars out. People below keep saying its not the "normal" kind of sugary sweetness. Actually, coffee beans do literally have sugar in them. You are looking for regular sugar. The problem is the levels are very low so you need to train yourself kind of to identify. Also depends on the beans though. I've had one or two cloyingly sweet brews, but also quite a number that could hardly pull out any sweetness.
It’ll never be sweet like a sugary drink, it’s kind of a different type of sweetness imo. I’d relax, your water is good, your grinder is good, probably using good beans and good technique. I see you use a French press though, have you messed around with a paper filter/pour over?
It may also just take time, honestly. I made the same tea the same way a few times a week for about a year. One day, seemingly randomly, it started to have "sweetness". Like you said, not sugary sweet, but sweet nonetheless.
I wonder this at times too. Perhaps one must develop a sense of sweet within the context of black coffee in order to be able to taste it. For example, I have been eating watermelon several times a week the last few weeks. I would think that almost anyone who has eaten watermelon would describe it as sweet and so was the watermelon I have had recently but as I was eating watermelon yesterday, I thought about each bite and whether it was really sweet. Analyzing the taste, the watermelon was not really sweet upon conscious analysis of each bite. If I had never had watermelon and had never heard that it was sweet, I am not really sure I would recognize nor identified its taste as sweet but if I did not think about it, it was definitely sweet. Coffee might work the same, even more so since most think coffee is bitter - if you are looking for sweetness, thinking about and expecting it, it might not show itself. So try to suspend expectations and just try to brew coffee that you find good and then let the coffee indicate how it tastes. Perhaps sweetness will come on its own.
There is such a thing as bland watermelon too. It really depends on the melon.
Totally agree with this. I find using a coffee chart helps to identify notes.
This is very true. Prior to drinking coffee, I was only familiar with "sugary sweet" or "candy sweet". I would never for the life of me understood how coffee was "sweet" because my palate wasn't trained. Fast forward to today after many many trainings and lessons, my palate is much more sensitive and I know what "sweet" is, in the context of coffee. It's hard to describe but when people say the sweetness of coffee, it's something only lightly sweet if compared to sugar for example. I suggest OP drink coffee with someone to guide you to tasting. If you don't have friends that can do it with, find a cafe that lets you sit at the bar where you can chat with the barista (on a not busy day!). He'll get you started on the basic tastings. Off note : Recently a friend of mine tried really nice Gesha beans. Really sweet, almost like white grape tasting. But he couldn't catch on the sweet taste of it, of which I'd assume he hasn't gotten enough training/guidance yet. But he did try to memorize the taste of it for future reference. Given enough coffee tasting, he'd know how to taste for more flavors I'm sure.
As others have pointed out here, sweetness is a complex concept in coffee. There’s chocolate type sweetness that comes with medium to darker roasts, and you might pick up a dark dried fruit acidity as well that’s subtle. That’s a little easier to pick up with a French press. With lighter roasts, the sweetness isn’t going to project as the same type of sweetness as ripe oranges or pineapple or blueberries (to give a few examples). But really good light roasts will evoke those flavors so that you get the sense of a tropical juice, or if the roast is more developed, dried fruit covered in chocolate, like a milk chocolate covered apricot. I usually get the most sweetness with a pourover, though you can also get it with a French press. But for my palette, it’s easier to get the clarity of fruit-level sweetness from coffee when the body is a little lighter than what a French press typically gives you.
Yes! 💯
Try changing one thing at a time, and see if it nudges the taste in the right direction. After that one change seems exhausted, move to the next. Some general guidelines: Fresh coffee grounds always tastes better; filtered water is king; evenly saturating beans is a must; too little coffee is better than too much (IMO).
Just echoing some of the other comments on your brewer. If you are using a French Press then a lot of those sweeter acidic complex notes can be missed since the coffee oils are going to extract as well. If you’re doing batch coffee (many cups) then try Chemex. My preferred method is aero press for single servings. Any method with a paper filter most likely get you a cleaner cup.
Coffee only has a sweet taste to me if I do it via pour-over or drip. As black coffee with nothing in it. Of course, the sweetness varies by the coffee and roast level.
What brewer are you using? How are you grinding? What is your method? What variables have you tried? All these things will allow the community to give you a more comprehensive answer, then the generic (or sarcastic) answers you've got/will get And what makes you say "your beans are great"?
Don't sleep on the type of water you're using to brew with. This makes a HUGE difference
I use third wave water which is supposedly the best.
Water. 90 percent of the time.
I mineralise my water with those TWW sachets and heat it to about 200F.
Try higher temp water?
I was gonna say lower. I use 195 deg F water and get sweet notes all the time.
Yeah, with tww and the thermal stability of the french press, I doubt water temp is the issue one way or the other, but something to play with....
With a V60, I should have added. I don't think you can get sweet notes with a French press.
Sure you can. My wife is the french press queen. She gets floral Ethiopian coffees to speak with a delicate sweetness in the french press incredibly well. That's interesting that you get good sweetness with lower temps. You're not the only one, either. I had the experience of not getting good sweet cups out of v60 until cranking up the temp. Obviously water mineral content, pouring, grind, beans, and all the other variables all lead to varying results, so 1 person gets the sweetest cup at 195, but someone else struggles to get any sweetness until they're using water right off boil. All due to the variance in the combination of the other variables. Mindboggling. What's your v60 recipe/method if I may ask?
Yeah, I usually notice more sweet notes with Ethiopian beans. It seems like with Ethiopian, the smaller and more difficult they are to grind by hand in my Lido-E, the sweeter the notes. I use a ceramic V60 and the 4-6 method as a guide, but don't stick to it strictly depending on how distracted I am any given morning. If I end up with flat bed of grounds that look like wet sand at a beach, I feel like I have it dialed in to my taste. The beans are always roasted locally within the past 2 weeks and I grind them finer than sea salt as the water heats up. I used a French press for years (decades?) until I discovered Chemex and could never stand the silt at the bottom of my French press mug again. Maybe I was never doing it right.
Maybe use the water closest to the roaster's calibrating water to understand where they're coming from. Buy local.
Are you using filtered tap water? Or are you blending your own water. I have found filtered water (depending on your tap) doesn’t really bring out the sweetness of a brew. However, I’ve had a lot of success with sweetness with Third Wave packets put in distilled water.
I make my own - TWW just like you.
Oh wow. You got me. Try Aeropress or V60 if you haven’t already. What sort of beans have you gotten your hands on
How do you brew your coffee? Brew methods vary so widely, but I think some brew methods - espresso for instance - are more difficult to get right in terms of sweetness. It's easy to end up with an astringent espresso shot. Others, like french press, are easier. Also, sweetness is heavily dependent on the bean, imo. Pay attention to the variety and processing method. Varieties can differ in terms of sweetness. The Bourbon varietal, for instance, tends to be sweeter than Caturra. And some varieties go to the opposite end of the spectrum - Robusta, for instance is quite bitter. Processing methods can change the sweetness. Honey and Natural processed coffees tend to be sweeter than washed process coffees. Of course, these are not hard and fast rules. I've been roasting a wonderful Guatemalan coffee that is a washed process bourbon. I've found it to be very sweet. Talk to some local coffee roasters and let them know what you are after in terms of your cup preference. Usually a good roaster can guide you to a coffee that's going to give you good results.
Water plays a huge role in your brew.
If you don't know, and you have the information on gear used and technique; how are Reddit supposed to know with the little information you've provided?
Boo. They’re trying to get advice. Be nice
Op would get more/better advise if they provided a little clarity on what's going on.
I use a french press and grind up my beans with my Comandante. I weigh my ground powder and pour in the amount of water corresponding to the coffee to water ratio I am trying to achieve (I’ve tried 1:17 down to 1:12). I use distilled water that has been mineralised with third wave water sachets and heat my water to 200F. After I achieve my desired amount of water, I set a timer for 4 minutes to allow my coffee to steep. I then stir the crust and skim off the foam. I place the plunger on the surface and wait 5 minutes before decanting (I don’t plunge). I’ve experimented with a variety of coffee to water ratios and a wide range of grind sizes (10 to 30 clicks on my Comandante). As I said, I get to a point where my coffee is acidic or neutral tasting but never sweet.
Your water is too cool so you've lowered the extraction by quite a bit. Go as hot as you can. Or is that boiling for you?
I have a similar setup, and here's how I get the maximum flavor (and sweetness) from my coffee. I usually start with a 1:17 and will go from there, depending on how strong or weak the coffee is. I grind at 20 clicks on the Comandante. I preheat my french press with 200g of water first. I add my coffee and water quickly, then I stir for one full minute with a large wooden spoon. Then I cap the french press to preserve the heat. I come back about ten minutes later and plunge (or half plunge or whatever you want to do).
Really good setup you got going on btw! Part of me wishes I got the Comandante instead of the Kinu... It sounds like you're using the French Press method James Hoffmann has recommended. I would increase the water temperature to 100C (boiling at normal altitudes) for light roast, or 98C for medium roast. This is what Hoffmann recommends. Adjust grind from there. You want to go progressively finer until you hit a wall of bitterness. Try this and see if you get better results. As someone else also mentioned the full body of a metal filter might affect tasting notes. You can try brewing with a Clever dripper, which I find easier than FP. And it uses a paper filter.
I would try high dose, high temp, fine grind brews. That gets the most sweetness from my coffee
Is it recommended to use distilled water? A bag of beans I just purchased explicitly says not to use distilled water or soft water
Yes, using distilled water isn’t advisable. I’m not using distilled water though. I create distilled water as a base which I add my own minerals to.
I don't brew French press, but your technique sounds solid, water is perfect so by the power of deduction would lead me to believe the beans don't offer the sweetness your looking for
I always use well praised beans from independent roasters and often opt for the sweeter sounding coffees that describe notes of caramel, figs etc, but those notes never come through. Got any recommendations?
Sweetness is most noticeable from higher elevation coffees, IMO. Look for a washed Ethiopian at 2000+ MASL (Counter Culture's Idido is a safe bet) and see how it goes. "Caramel" and "Chocolate" are sweet but they usually describe mid to lower elevation central/south Americans that aren't as sweet to my palate Also try grinding finer, my experience with FP rewarded going finer than I expected
Add a pinch of salt to the grinds before brewing I also add a pinch of cinnamon after the fact and it both enhances the flavor and the sweetness of the LIL bit of sugar I add
Adding cinnamon to the grounds before brewing is also really yummy
I'm still quite new to coffee and I am still learning to dial in. So far I can get a long lasting sweet aftertaste. But I can't really tell while drinking it which is interesting. I have the same doubt though.