[stu2b50]

Black coffee, if you don't add sugar of course, has no calories. Caffeine suppresses appetite. So if anything it makes you lose weight.

I'd add that "good" black coffee should not be particularly bitter, and should have a slight sweetness with origin characteristics like fruitiness. The world of fancy single origin coffees is a deep but enjoyable and not particularly expensive rabbit hole.

[hinkley]

Black coffee has negligible calories, not zero. Espresso it turns out has about twenty.

Coffee comes from a bean. It’s going to pick up a couple calories.

[CapstanRoller]

>Coffee comes from a bean.

Colloquially known as a bean, but it's really a seed similar to a cherry pit. The fruit is actually known as "coffee cherry" and is edible.

https://coffeechronicler.com/coffee-cherry-taste/

[hinkley]

Seeds are full of carbs, minerals and proteins. Malting makes most of the calories water soluble which is why you malt grain to make alcohol. But even without it a little bit will make it into the broth.

What surprised me is the ratio of calories in black coffee versus espresso. I wonder if it’s solubility or the fact that fines make it through a screen but not a filter.

[CapstanRoller]

Your comment led me down an interesting path: apparently it is possible to malt green coffee beans!

https://old.reddit.com/r/Homebrewing/comments/8em8ed/malted_...

[hinkley]

Seeds store calories as complex carbs to avoid rotting and I think predation. When the seed decides to sprout, it converts the carbs to sugars so it can put on a growth spurt. In a way, microgreens are tapping into a knowledge that brewers have had for ten thousand years or more. They don't call it 'liquid bread' for nothing.

I wonder what coffee beer tastes like. I've had espresso beer (when I could still eat wheat), but that's the sizzle, not the steak.