[strogonoff]

Regular filter coffee at a café, cheapest store-bought Segafredo powder in a moka pot—I still like that more than almost any expensive coffee (as far as black coffee goes, at least), but there is perhaps one particular hand drip the taste of which beats everything. It’s hard to come by and I do not know how to describe it except that it is not sour at all and is diametrically opposite to what many coffee hipsters want (“what is your sourest bean?” is something I overheard once or twice).

I got the beans, same beans roasted and ground in the same way in the same shop where I found my desired taste recently, and after making it a couple of times learned that too many things affect the taste. The first time it was good, the second time it was too sour. It is “fun” trying to diff the culprit: water temperature? way of pouring water? psychosomatic factors?

A fun fact I re-learned recently and was able to replicate for myself for coffee: there are different sensors in different parts of your tongue that taste different aspects; sides taste sour more so even the shape of your cup affects the result (wider cup may taste more sour with the same coffee).

[spdif899]

The tongue map is debunked: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/neat-and-tidy-...

[strogonoff]

I wrote that I have personally observed it. One cannot debunk a factual data point.

Even if one could, the article you linked does not even attempt to do that:

> Hänig found that there was some variation around the tongue in how much stimulus it took for a taste to register. <…> Hänig’s hypothesis generally holds up. Different parts of the tongue do have a lower threshold for perceiving certain tastes, but these differences are rather minute.

Within the category of “coffee”, all differences are minute. The whole point of coffee hipstertude is enhancing individual sensitivity to those minute differences in taste in order to pointlessly argue and express sophisticated preferences about such.

(It took me years of drinking single origin hand drip to just start noticing a difference between light and dark roast, and believe it or not there are people who have much more narrowly defined tastes.)

[slothtrop]

Diner coffee is something I appreciate as a separate category, you can consume several refills of without feeling it much. I don't love it like e.g. local medium roasted coffee, but it's pleasant.