Black coffee made from instant coffee is understandably horrifying and tastes like ammonia smells, but have you considered fresh coffee? I don't mean filter coffee, either, the filter paper absorbs all of the tasty coffee oils, leaving only an ashy aftertaste, I'm talking espresso, moka pot, greek / turkish coffee and french press.
Similarly, if you normally find that you hate dark chocolate, perhaps it is because your chocolate is made with slave labour and also not very good.
I am currently enjoying a fine ten year old aged Java. It is very tasty, and I highly recommend.
I normally don't care for black coffee, I put in just enough creamer to take the bitter edge off, but I've found that when I make it using my percolator rather than a standard drip machine, there's a much greater natural sweetness to it that makes it soft enough for me to enjoy it black. I wish I knew why but I honestly don't know
The drip machine uses a paper filter, right? That's why. It's capturing all the juicy goodness for itself. With a metal filter like in your percolator, the flavour passes right through.
It's not necessarily the filter! Coffee oils can go through most filters, so you're still getting them after the fact. It's probably a combination of the bean quality and machine quality. Since the process is automated, the user is not necessarily getting the proper extraction time depending on the grind level of the coffee, and it's either under- or over-extracted. Drip machines are not all the same!
Interesting, is this right? People go wild about the Chemex for pour over coffee and it was... not good. Not with a paper filter anyway, and that was all I tried. I feel like most household / office drip machines burn the coffee or otherwise sap all the flavour, although now I think about it everyone who has one of these machines is also guilty of used pre-ground mainstream brand coffee, so that could absolutely be part of the problem.
Edit:
You must be right so now just sort of wondering what I was doing wrong.
Well, there's your problem! The Chemex is notoriously a very difficult pourover method. I don't have one (it's insanely expensive here), but from what I know of it, you're gonna need to grind your beans coarser than usual, on account of the Chemex filters being so thick. From what I've read, you ought to expect the Chemex to produce a very light, delicate brew, indeed with much less oil than other methods (it's the oils that give a brew its body). Do you have a barista scale, with a timer? A gooseneck kettle? I don't know if it's even possible to make a good Chemex brew without that! It's a very fiddly method.
It's not the usage of a paper filter per se, it's just that this particular filter does, in fact, remove more oils than most. From your comments, I take it that you enjoy a bolder, more full-bodied brew (so do I), so give the Aeropress a try. It's a very fun method, it's easy to get into and there's a billion different ways to brew with it - you can use paper, cloth or metal filters, you can pick the coffee to water ratio to your liking, and it's not very expensive. Well, at least it wasn't when I got mine, and the filters are still absolutely dirt cheap. You also won't really need any specialist gear for it!
I think the Chemex itself is the fanciest part of my process. I eyeball the beans I pour into the grinder or just use beans pre-ground for non-Chemex use, heat the water in a couple electric kettles and just let the coffee I don't drink sit in the Chemex overnight, then pour it over ice the next day.
I'm not interested in hyperoptimizing my coffee to the point that I need a coffee in the morning to prepare my morning coffee. Having mid taste makes it easy for me to enjoy my fix in places other than my house and frou-frou places.
Yeah, I think the most relevant part is finding what works for you! I like using my gooseneck, scale with timer and fancy grinder, and at this point it's kind of a ritual for me, I suppose. I like the added intentionality in consuming coffee, the ritual and effort makes things feel more meaningful to me, somehow.
No
I do have a kettle with a temperature sensor though, so that is pretty cool
Hell yeah brutha
That's all very interesting, AeroPress looks like the sort of thing I am gonna splash all over my kitchen walls, floor and counter, but cool nonetheless
That would suck, right? Boy am I glad that has never happened to me, not even once!
Edit: Also, how do you say "Chemex"? Is it like kemex or tchemex?
lmao
I say it like kemex, I never even considered that people would say tchemex, that sounds funny to me
Ahaha yeah, I wasn't sure if it was like chemical or chime. Thanks!
well, fortunately the AeroPress will survive that, unlike the one french press I ever bought and never even got to use
I too have broken the glass pot within days of owning
I use a re-usable mesh basket filter in my drip machine