Wonders of extraction: Coffee (part 1)
I only became a regular coffee drinker after I finished my PhD in chemistry and got a real job. The reason was that I had a 1 hour commute and I needed the caffeine to stay awake and focused. Prior…
Tag bitterness
Norwegian egg coffee
Egg coffee – a mild and refreshing drink that can be served warm as well as cold I recently stumbled over “Norwegian egg coffee”. At first I thought it was a joke, but it turned out that this is indeed…
Eating fruit with salt
Salt helps to bring out the flavor of watermelon In Asia it is not uncommon to eat fruit with salt or even soy sauce. From my own experience, and via friends, I known that fruits such as mango, guava, honey…
Testing salt in coffee with Tim Wendelboe
One of the good things about living in Oslo are the coffee bars. Norwegians drink a lot of coffe (a healthy dose of 9.9 kg anually per capita, only second to the Finnish) and perhaps that is one reason why…
A pinch of salt for your coffee, Sir?
A small sprinkle of salt will suppress bitterness – and in some cases it can benefit the overall coffee flavor. I’ve tried it with an espresso and somehow it works, but it’s difficult to describe the flavor. I prefer my…
Suppression of bitterness
I received an email last week from a supertaster (read more: BBC, Wikipedia) with an interesting question: Certain foods contain bitter substances that only a fraction of the population can taste. Examples include a group of compounds called cucurbitacins, found…