Salting your coffee: negative result

[elfs]

So, following the hot new trend of putting a pinch of salt into your coffee to cancel the bitter taste, I have to say that I'm disappointed with the experiment. Either I tasted no difference, or the salt was sufficient that it distracted from the coffee taste, and I was unhappy with it either way.

Which is kind-of sad. When you blog, you want to be able to teach about something great, and I have nothing great to report. Salting coffee doesn't seem to do much for me. Then again, I may have a reason for that. See the next post.

Comments

[contrarywise]

Some hot new trend. My grandmother did that back in the 60s and 70s, when practically all coffee known to humanity came out of a can.

unhelpful comment

[hydrolagus.livejournal.com]

Not that you need to, as you mentioned, and not that it helps with coffee purchased while out, but a pinch of dried mint leaves tossed in with the grounds when brewing will help tone down harshness without adding a noticeable minty flavor.

[elbowfetish.livejournal.com]

Try salted yak butter.

[neoteny.livejournal.com]

Or unsalted butter:

http://www.bulletproofexecutive.com/how-to-make-your-coffee-bulletproofand-your-m

[alicephilippa.livejournal.com]

Like yourself I've never found salting coffee to have any effect. I suspect for very much the same reason – I don't brew bitter coffee.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

Yes. This.

[amindofiron.livejournal.com]

the way I learned it, from my ex-army granddad who learned it from *his* ex-navy father is that salting is used mostly when you're dealing with coffee that's half a step above carbon black. mostly this was to cut a little of the bitter burnt taste and try and bring out what tiny scrap of flavor it had. I was pretty much told not to bother if you had "good" (in this case they meant Folgers)coffee but I would guess that extends to actual good coffee as well.

[tamino.livejournal.com]

I tried to post this a bit ago but it didn't show up -- and it turns out I wasn't logged in anyway, so even if it had shown up it'd be from anonymous.

I was under the impression that the salt in coffee thing was chemical, not taste related... either something about the sodium and chlorine, or something about the pH, helps get more of the stuff out of the beans so that you're throwing less away with the used grounds.

That's not authoritative in any way, that's just what I'd thought was behind the phenomenon. Are you pretty sure that when people do that, there's no chemical effect they're going for, that it's a purely sense/olfactory/bitter-perception thing?

[http://www.flutterby.net/User:DanLyke (from livejournal.com)]

Yeah, I either roast my own or buy a light roast from the local roaster. I got turned on to the salt in the coffee thing from Ideas In Food a while ago, tried it, and stopped bothering. If you have bitter coffee you need to fix, that's what milk is for.

Water Temperature

[elbowfetish.livejournal.com]

Is your water at 85C?
I'm partial to the high tech yet simple aeropress, upside down French press. No salt. Water temperature and speed/pressure both impact degree of bitterness.

[ladyallyn.livejournal.com]

Should go without saying it needs to be non-iodized salt. I was told to do it by a dentist and it does, in fact, reduce staining.

There used to be a product on the market caller Coffee Tamer; granulated, tasteless calcium carbonate. I haven't been able to find it on the shelves for several years, but it reduced the acid enough that my partner will Barrett's esophagus could drink it. He could not tolerate even the best coffee otherwise.